Doing It All Feels Like Never Quite Enough in NBC’s ‘I Feel Bad’

© 2018 NBCUniversal Media, LLC. Credit: Evans Vestal Ward/NBC

I Feel Bad

NBC

Premieres: Oct. 4

Airs: Thursdays at 9:30pm ET/PT

Who’s In It? Sarayu Blue, Paul Adelstein, Madhur Jaffrey, Aisling Bea, James Buckley

What’s It All About? That one little bad thing that makes you forget how good you are. A few examples from the show’s title sequence are “I Lie to My Kids,” “I Can’t Explain Everything,” “I Hate Other People’s Children,” “I Miss Important Moments” and “I Kill the Mood.”

Emet (Blue) is a wife and mom of three who’s also a successful artist for a videogame developer. She leads a team of nerdy millennial males who spend much of their workdays getting stuck on the rock-climbing wall and sketching unrealistic images of digital heroines. At home, she tries her best to manage the family while trying not to become like her demanding mother (Jaffrey).

Feelings of “mommy guilt” — though dads get them, too — occur when a good, hardworking mom gets down on herself when everything isn’t absolutely perfect all the time. That notion is at the center of I Feel Bad, which was created by Aseem Batra and has Amy Poehler among the executive producers.

“This is a lens in which to tell a working-woman story that I haven’t quite seen before, which is this idea that whenever we’re doing it all, there’s about two or three things on that list that we feel like we’re giving 10 percent to,” Poehler says. “There’s always something that feels like it’s getting short shrift.”

There are some laughs — especially from Emet’s crew of geeks — but we have a bad feeling I Feel Bad won’t resonate with the right audience.

About Ryan Berenz 2166 Articles
Member of the Television Critics Association. Charter member of the Ancient and Mystic Society of No Homers. Squire of the Ancient & Benevolent Order of the Lynx, Lodge 49, Long Beach, Calif. Costco Wholesale Gold Star Member since 2011.