I’m behind the times and thought that I would watch Jennifer Falls. I had my reservations about tuning in since it’s a story about a woman being fired from her job and I was sure that the scriptwriter who wrote the show would show that he or she is clueless about corporate america like Hollywood is when it comes to making these television shows. Not only did I find that I was right but it was worse than I ever imagined.
Jamie Pressly plays Jennifer Doyle, an executive at a company who is about to be fired from her job due to anger issues. The attempt at having humor during this scene was poor since there is nothing funny about being fired at your job, especially since you’re making $250,000 a year. Somehow, Pressly does manage to pull that off, playing the woman with anger issues by yelling at her boss for being fired.
You would think that there would be a conversation about her being on a non-compete agreement since executives who work at a very high level in a company would be on one, even though employees in thousands of companies are on a non-compete agreement at all levels of a company. Of course, this wouldn’t happen since this does not exist in Hollywood because we have a scriptwriter who does not do his or her research on this subject.
The fantasy only carries further when Jennifer tells us the reason she can’t get another job in her industry. The reason is because she is being blackballed by her former company. Yes, blackballing is illegal and non-existent in the corporate world just like a reading of a will was in the movie Draft Day with Kevin Costner. Yet, the person who wrote this show figures that his audience is too dumb to know this so why not just say that executives are blackballed from getting another job when the reality is that companies claim to protect themselves from former employees by having non-compete agreements which state that you can be fired at any time for any reason and you can’t go to work for a competitor from 2-5 years.
I found myself cringing when Jennifer was in the unemployment office and here were two women mocking her because she lost her $250,000 job and had to move back in with her mother. Just another example of poor scriptwriting and being clueless about what goes on in the real world yet someone gets paid to see if people would actually laugh at this nonsense.
I have to say that once you get outside the amateurish script, the show does get better because Pressly is talented and she does find ways to bring more laughs to the show. You can say that’s the case because now she is working in a bar and you don’t have to worry about the scriptwriter being clueless about that since it’s not so hard to imagine what it’s like to work in a bar.
As a comedy, there were some laughs for me in Jennifer Falls. Sure, people can say that this is a TV show but the fact is that the person who wrote the show demonstrates once again that Hollywood falls below the standards producing a show that is clueless to the reality of what goes on in the corporate world. If anything, they missed a golden opportunity to create a show that could be funny and interesting if it was done right. I only give it two stars because Jennifer Pressly somehow shines in this poorly done TV show.
Ron Hummer
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