Now in its fourth season, ‘Rules of Engagement’ is on a painfully slow track toward cancellation. Content to spin its wheels with no real progression, the show follows a married couple, an engaged couple and their single friend through the stereotypical ups and downs of relationships. ‘Rules of Engagement’ is a prime example of a series that has tried to revamp the old comedy sitcom formula of showcasing different couples in various stages of their lives. Unfortunately, the show brings nothing new to excite viewers.   

‘Rules of Engagement’ features Jeff Bingham (Patrick Warburton) and Audrey Bingham as (Megyn Price) spouses who often give advice to the freshly engaged couple, Adam Rhodes (Oliver Hudson) and Jennifer (Bianca Kajlich). David Spade rounds out the principal cast as Russell, the stereotypical bachelor who constantly harps on his friends in relationships for being locked down with the same woman for the rest of their lives.
    
The show is first and foremost about relationships. Jeff and Adam often talk about the rules of marriage, and their wives complain about the same. Russell, meanwhile, continuously praises how great it is to be single.  

The telling sign that a show is losing its momentum is when new characters are added to the cast. At the start of Season 4, Russell’s assistant, Timmy (Adhir Kalyan), became a regular cast member. This is when the show began to lose focus from the original cast members and the original premise. But this is not necessarily a bad thing. The characters of Timmy and Russell play off each other well, and some of Timmy’s interactions with other characters are sometimes the best scenes in certain episodes. This is because Timmy helps Russell make more jokes about his personal life.

Timmy being a recurring character on the show means getting more lines and screen time, which means less focus on the couples. Kudos goes to executive producers Tom Hertz and Doug Robinson (a Syracuse University alumnus) for adding another character that Russell can play off. However, the permanence of Kalyan’s character on the show is quickly becoming a distraction to what was originally a show about looking at the different stages the couples are going through in their lives.
      
There are some funny moments in the show, but the trouble is that they are buried deep within the dialogue. When the funny moments are unearthed, they feel contrived due to a studio laugh track in the background.

The sad fact is multiple members of the writing and producing crew come from successful sitcoms like ‘Frasier,’ ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’ and ‘The King of Queens.’ It’s a huge disappointment that this show isn’t significantly funnier. The difference is that in all the aforementioned sitcoms, the stories were based on the deep development and individuality of each character. You see this method trying to be used in ‘Rules of Engagement,’ but the characters’ personalities are just cookie-cutter characterizations that have been on television for decades.
      
‘Rules of Engagement’ has been satisfying CBS executives for the past four seasons with an average of 8 million to 14 million viewers a week, depending on its time slot. But the show has never had a full season of episodes (most sitcoms usually consist of 22 episodes). So maybe the CBS executives will see that once they solve their smaller problems with characterization and plot development, they have other issues to deal with.
      
jawalk05@syr.edu