The answer, it turns out, is: making a Bill Lawrence show. Rooster makes some concessions to Lawrence\u2019s new stomping grounds, namely its setting, which allows for gags about Zadie Smith and a seminar in \u201cthe poetry of Bad Bunny.\u201d But the show seems less interested in Ivory Tower politics than Ted Lasso was in the nuances of the Premier League. Its idea of addressing contemporary culture is a running gag in which Greg keeps inadvertently offending the school\u2019s hyperbolically thin-skinned students, such as when the woman he refers to as \u201cmy white whale\u201d reports him for body-shaming.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s quickly apparent that Lawrence and Tarses aren\u2019t trying to make a campus comedy like Lucky Hank<\/a> or The Chair<\/a>, or a show that feels as if it was made by anyone whose understanding of modern academia is informed by any research more detailed than dropping their kids off after summer break. The setting is just a pretext for getting Greg, who\u2019s been fumbling through life since his high-powered wife (Connie Britton) divorced him five years ago, back in the game, and keeping him in close proximity to his adult daughter. The protagonist of Greg\u2019s novels, Rooster, is confident, self-assured, and sexy, three qualities that Greg finds himself acutely lacking. But as one of his students reminds him, \u201cThis is college. You get to reinvent yourself here. Just decide whoever you want to be, and you be that shit.\u201d<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t the first time Carell has played a morose middle-aged man in search of his missing mojo\u2014it\u2019s one of his go-to modes, and he\u2019s not being asked to stretch himself in any notable ways here. If there\u2019s a new wrinkle, it\u2019s that Greg doesn\u2019t really need much in the way of adjustment. He\u2019s already a bestselling writer, although he\u2019s got a mild inferiority complex about not ranking higher in the literary establishment. (Lawrence and Tarses modeled that part of the character after the sunshine-noir novelist Carl Hiaasen<\/a>, whose book Bad Monkey they adapted into an Apple TV series.) And Carell is, as one character acknowledges early on, a \u201csilver fox.\u201d He\u2019s barely set foot on campus when Deadwyler\u2019s poetry prof invites him up for a nightcap, and though he\u2019s too caught off guard to take her up on the offer, he has no trouble finding other options.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Greg\u2019s daughter, Katie, is fitfully separated from her husband, Archie (Phil Dunster), a preening aficionado of Russian literature whose first edition of War and Peace plays a key role in the plot. (In case Dunster\u2019s posh accent throws you off, that\u2019s Ted Lasso\u2019s Jamie Tartt, playing a character with an equally lofty estimation of his own prowess, but far less reason to hold it.) He\u2019s in love with his grad-student mistress (Lauren Tsai), even though she\u2019s starting to pull away from him, and he and Katie keep falling back into old habits even though she\u2019s furious with him. In other words, they\u2019re a mess, making what could have been a clean break as ambiguous and complicated as it could possibly be.<\/p>\n Rooster doesn\u2019t have villains, exactly, although the characters are constantly stepping on their own toes and are sometimes self-involved to the point of cruelty. While lying in bed next to a new conquest, Greg excitedly muses about what a relief it is to be having casual, no-strings-attached sex, oblivious to the fact that the fiftysomething single mom he\u2019s just slept with clearly had designs on a real relationship. The students look to their elders for guidance, but the adults are just twentysomethings with bigger bank accounts and less resilient bodies, mucking their way through a life they feel sure they ought to understand better by now.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \n Sam Adams <\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n America\u2019s New No. 1 Song Just Did What Even Taylor Swift Couldn\u2019t![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1772989150_653_0069ce76-3baa-4f5c-90ce-9c6f1c8ffac2.jpeg\")
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