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TV Review: 2 Broke Girls

CBS's new girl buddy comedy, feels a little stale but star Kat Dennings makes everything fresh.

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The multi-camera sitcom has become such a dinosaur in the land of television comedy that it feels a bit strange when a new one comes along. 2 Broke Girls doesn’t help matters by both trying to appear hip and frequently dropping references to trends and happenings that feel a bit stale (cupcakes, Bernie Madoff, Brangelina). Thankfully, the show benefits from a winning leading lady who distracts from the sitcom’s lesser qualities.

2 Broke Girls begins with Max (Kat Dennings), waitress extraordinaire, working at a crappy diner by nights. When her fellow waitress is fired for sleeping with the chef during work hours, the boss hires Caroline (Beth Behrs), who claims to have worked in all of New York’s finest restaurants. It turns out their Caroline’s a little more familiar with dining in those restaurants, not serving in them. She’s the daughter of a businessman who was recently busted for duping people into a Ponzi scheme. She’s now been ostracized from her friends, has no place to live and all of her belongings fit into a single suitcase. While not incredibly enthusiastic about it, Max ends up taking Caroline under her wing and the two end up putting their heads together to plan a business venture.

Dennings charmed as the romantic lead in Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist and had most of the best punchlines in this summer’s Thor and 2 Broke Girls leans heavily on her comic talents, to its credit. The supporting cast of characters, however, is cartoonishly over the top and they spew pop-culture referencing jokes that sound like they’ve been sitting in a drawer for a few years. While the show feels a bit strained at the outset, it settles as the premise falls into place. 2 Broke Girls is good for some laughs and Dennings’s appeal makes it hard to resist.

2 Broke Girls premieres Monday 8pm on CBS.

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