Our two supporting loners help to compensate, albeit meekly, but once again, ‘weird’ is a curious word. There is Eric, Stosh’s younger cousin who has a wild imagination, a slow mind and a love of baseball. He’s the dull-witted one that allows for some absurd attempts at comedy. We’ve also got Zara (Meera Rohit Kumbhani), who is an artist, and because she is an artist, she is prone to being a free spirit, which apparently is totally weird.
Weird Loners, created and written by Michael J. Weithorn of The King of Queens fame, doesn’t quite know what to do with Zara yet, but her ‘weird loner’ moment as the show begins has her emotionlessly leaving a longtime beau who is quite emotional and shocked. Maybe the show is trying to say that it’s weird for women who suddenly change their mind and disappear since men have long pulled that move on television?
So, the user, the hopeless romantic, the man-child, and the wanderer are weird. Only, they’re not. They are all stereotypes built against other stereotypes, all placed against the backdrop of convention. The show isn’t at all clever (when Caryn’s mom wants to meet her now-gone fiancé, who do you think steps in to play the part?) and neither is it particularly funny. These aren’t relatable, layered outcasts. These are people who simply aren’t in relationships, and for some reason that’s a problem.
They all conveniently come together in a tenement; Stosh needs to move back in with his cousin because he has no money, and as it happens, Becki lives next door. She is in need of a roommate, so enter Zara. And it all works out happily.
The cast is better than the writing, but their antics are mundane and already repetitive through three episodes. Caryn remains naïve and searching for a man, while Stosh stays effectively duplicitous with little to no redemption. Eric is dumb, and that’s the joke, and Zara is exotic. In one storyline, she pretends to channel the spirit of Eric’s recently deceased father, and Eric is so convinced that he schedules a whole day of activities for them.
Naturally, Stosh and Becki are already forced closer together by the end of Weird Loners‘ third episode, meaning, should the series made it to the end of the season, the title will likely have to be changed, because surely they will end up together.
That is, if the show stays on air that long.
