Premise-wise, TBS’ “Glory Daze” is a male-skewing, 1980s-era copy of ABC Family’s superior “Greek.”
Tonally, “Glory Daze” comes off as a less raunchy version of Spike TV’s “Blue Mountain State.”
In any case, this hourlong TBS comedy (10 p.m. EST Tuesday) is sort of inert. It’s not funny enough, the characters don’t make much of an impression and the “Porky’s”-style humor is too tame to have the requisite impact.
If TBS executives bank on drawing “Conan” viewers to the network an hour earlier, they may be mistaken. Given his style of humor, I’d tend to guess Conan O’Brien’s fans prefer more cutting-edge comedy than “Daze” offers.
“Glory Daze,” set in 1986 for no discernible reason other than to show the characters mocking future everyday technologies like “electronic mail,” follows college freshman Joel (Kelly Blatz, Disney XD’s “Aaron Stone”) as he befriends desperate-to-lose-his-virginity Eli (Matt Bush), conservative preppy Jason (Drew Seeley) and reluctant baseball star Brian (Hartley Sawyer).
The guys end up pledging the Omega Sigma fraternity at the behest of slacker pledge recruiter Reno (Callard Harris, “Sons of Anarchy”), who is basically the same character as Cappy (Scott Michael Foster) on “Greek.”
A few recognizable actors wander through for a payday — Cheri Oteri and Brad Garrett play Joel’s parents; Tim Meadows and Teri Polo are college professors — but their hearts don’t seem to be in it.
The younger cast members are certainly game to be ridiculous and Blatz and Sawyer make favorable impressions, but the material they’re working with is woefully inglorious.
