Amazon's new TV pilots: 'Betas'

Amazon launched 14 pilots on its website this past weekend with the goal of creating a new series — or 14, depending on viewer response, which so far is good. The retail giant said eight of the 10 most streamed TV episodes this past weekend were among these, which include six children's show, and eight comedy pilots, including a remake of "Zombieland," and a show from Onion ("Onion News Empire").

This week, time permitting, I’m offering capsule reviews of the comedy pilots here in TVZone; my personal guarantee: None of these reviews are thought out — not that any of my reviews ever are — but are pure streams of consciousness. (Hence, if some of this is unintelligible to you, it was to me as well) This morning, we body tackle .?.?.

Again, Bezos, if he did indeed pick this one, must see these kinds of arrivistes and their blather as representative of all the bilge that's flooded his industry with bad ideas and worse execution. "Betas," in other words, is his revenge.

But TV pilots sculpted as weapons hardly ever work, and "Betas" does not work. It's noisy, pretentious, mean-spirited and shallow. In fact, it's shallow and smart and intensely vulgar — someone's attempt to mindmeld with Todd Phillips and/or Judd Apatow and instead hooking up with Gilbert Gottfried.

But the thing is, TV pilots are supposed to be small slices of promise — a promise that the journey you are about to undertake will be enjoyable, amusing, possibly illuminating, and hopefully funny. Especially that you'll care about the characters enough to want to go on this trip with them.

But with "Betas," you kind of get the sense that these guys would be even worse after they got their billion, their bile and blather even more repellent. As such, this show seems more like a threat than a promise.