{"id":465595,"date":"2026-03-09T08:28:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-09T08:28:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/465595\/"},"modified":"2026-03-09T08:28:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-09T08:28:07","slug":"rooster-premiere-recap-release-the-brown-fat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/465595\/","title":{"rendered":"Rooster premiere recap: “Release The Brown Fat”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pressing play on recent Bill Lawrence projects guarantees a main character experiencing a midlife crisis and their heartfelt\/hilarious attempts to start fresh. You can\u2019t really begrudge him for finding a narrative lane that is universally relatable. J.D. (Zach Braff) and Turk (Donald Faison) reckon with modern medicine on familiar turf in the Scrubs<\/a> revival. In Bad Monkey<\/a>, Vince Vaughn\u2019s PI feels lost without his police badge and hopes solving a big case will fix the problem. Lawrence skillfully navigates similar themes without the work getting too repetitive. However, his latest offering does raise comparisons in tone and purpose to Ted Lasso<\/a> and Shrinking<\/a>. HBO\u2019s Rooster, which he co-created with frequent collaborator Matt Tarses, has all the ingredients familiar to fans of both dramedies. It\u2019s comforting, as well as a detriment, as we\u2019ve kind of seen this before. But it\u2019s not like Rooster doesn\u2019t have promise.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cRelease The Brown Fat\u201d has the pitfalls of a premiere whose job is to establish the show\u2019s world and those who populate it instead of presenting a cohesive, confident story. It\u2019s an exposition-heavy setup for Steve Carell\u2019s sweet but stuck-in-life Greg Russo, whose path to a new beginning comes by the way of a job offer, a hot poetry professor, and a house fire. Much like Ted Lasso (Jason Sudeikis), Greg needs a career pivot\u2014even though he won\u2019t necessarily admit it\u2014because he seems to think the best he can do is write the beach read murder mysteries that made him popular. And like Shrinking\u2018s Jimmy (Jason Segel), he\u2019s desperate to reconnect with his daughter\u2014in Greg\u2019s case, Katie (Charly Clive), who teaches art at the liberal Ludlow College. He gets a one-shot solution because, when he\u2019s invited to be a guest speaker there, he\u2019s also asked to be Ludlow\u2019s writer-in-residence. He refuses the gig at first, but by the end of episode one, circumstances will likely make him change his mind.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Plus, Greg makes quite an impression on the teachers and students in merely 24 hours of being on campus. He immediately impresses Ludlow\u2019s buffed-up president, Walter Mann (John C. McGinley), because of how he dealt with the student who was questioning his material. (\u201cWhy do you hate women?\u201d someone asks Greg, while noting how many times his lead\u2014whom the show is named after\u2014has sex. And yes, Rooster does feel like a self-insert, considering the author\u2019s last name is Russo and that the book\u2019s love interest is inspired by Greg\u2019s ex-wife.) Greg later bonds with Professor Dylan Shepherd (Danielle Deadwyler), who invited him to speak to her class, over tequila and warm nuts at the bar. He opens up about the difficulty of moving on from his divorce and feeling inadequate in most avenues of his life. So when she propositions him at the end of the night, Greg awkwardly refuses. Twice. (\u201cDo you know how old I am?\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s your lucky day, grandpa.\u201d) Watching the unexpectedly endearing duo of Carell and Deadwyler engage in embarrassing, delightful, flirtatious banter is a great sign of what Rooster can do with its talented stars.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Of course, the crux here is the father-daughter dynamic, which is also central to Shrinking. In his interview with The A.V. Club in 2024<\/a>, Lawrence said he loves writing about parent-child relationships because \u201cit\u2019s what I know best.\u201d In this case, Greg and Katie aren\u2019t estranged or anything. In fact, they\u2019re more similar than she would like. Katie\u2019s husband, who teaches Russian studies at Ludlow, left her to fuck a grad student. Greg\u2019s apparently far more accomplished ex-wife also cheated on him years ago. So, Greg and Katie both seem unmoored in life. He desperately wants to be there for her, and she reluctantly realizes she needs his support. Without it, she might just continue to stalk Archie (Phil Dunster) and Sunny (Lauren Tsai) by climbing up trees and hiding in bushes.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately for her, though, Greg decides to confront Archie himself first. During the conversation, Archie quite quickly realizes how badly he\u2019s \u201ccocked up\u201d his marriage and decides to win Katie over. As pissed as she is at her dad, Katie goes to talk to Archie the next morning. She does the expected amount of yelling in the vein of \u201cI could murder you\u201d before ultimately relenting that she does see a path forward between them. The timing couldn\u2019t be worse because Archie drops an awful truth bomb on her. He\u2019s just found out that his fling is about to turn into something very real because Sunny is pregnant. Whoops. Her desire for revenge leads to her burning up not just his War And Peace first edition but also his entire home (which looks more like fancy university housing). Something tells me that Greg, who pretends to be her alibi for a hot second before she admits the truth, is going to want to stick around for his kid so that Rooster can take off.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Stray observations<\/p>\n

\u2022 Greg has already made an enemy out of the cop (played by Rory Scovel) investigating the fire because he was also caught buying beer for a student. In his defence, he was tricked by flattery into making the purchase, okay?\u00a0
\n\u2022 John C. McGinley feels like an odd fit in the Rooster world right now. He\u2019s obviously the comic relief and the only one with one-liners, but something just feels off.\u00a0\u00a0
\n\u2022 Greg\u2019s revelations about his marriage include that his ex, Elizabeth, is a famous Ludlow alum as well.\u00a0
\n\u2022 Annie Mumolo makes a brief appearance as President Walter\u2019s secretary, Cristle. Other actors set to pop in during season one include Connie Britton, Alan Ruck, Scott MacArthur, and Robby Hoffman.\u00a0
\n\u2022 Nothing creeped me out more than Archie sending Sunny off on her bike by saying, \u201cBig push for big girl.\u201d Katie, you do not need to go back to this man.\u00a0
\n\u2022 \u201cNobody makes these kids feel bad anymore.\u201d\u00a0
\n\u2022 \u201cLiberal-arts colleges used to be safe havens for free thought, Greg. When did you and I become the bad guys?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Saloni Gajjar is The A.V. Club\u2018s TV critic.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pressing play on recent Bill Lawrence projects guarantees a main character experiencing a midlife crisis and their heartfelt\/hilarious…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":465596,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[96,391,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-465595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-tv","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465595\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/465596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}