If Halfway Home has anything down, it's the Real World-like camera work that it rips off seamlessly. But the residents of Comedy Central's prison rehab center don't have the luxury of a jacuzzi or any of the other amenities that the kids on MTV get. But, like on MTV, they get to crash in the same place of a bunch of other derelicts and have their lives taped.
But that camera work isn't the only thing the show has going for it. It's faux reality show premise is vaguely Office-like, but instead of easing the audience into its not necessarily classy jokes (and cringes) like Michael Scott and the gang, Halfway Home skips all that and shows you the large black woman (aptly named Serenity) beating the living puff out of the nerdy, Napoleon-Dynamite's-brother-type character (a fire-obsessed arsonist) during a a group exercise.
The show isn't what you'd call edgy (especially not when it follows directly on the heels of the South Park that ran Wednesday night), but it certainly has its funny spots. It's leaps beyond the annoyingly bad Sarah Silverman Program that Comedy Central quickly embraced, and much more brilliant in its idiocy. Not that it's in the same league as shows like Office, Always Sunny or Arrested Development.
I really wanted to dislike it, thinking the show would disappoint me the way a lot of other Comedy Central offerings (and really, most comedic television offerings) have. But the partially improvised, stupid comedy makes no attempts to be anything but stupid. Which is fine, as long as it's funny.
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