Anna Mindel

I really wanted to like this show, being a fan of Michael Schur's past show creations. My partner and I watched all the first season episodes and kept hoping it would get more engaging. The premise was promising, based on the true story of an older man who goes undercover to solve a mystery in a life care community. Predictably, Ted Danson is the best thing about the show. He is fairly convincing, charming, and touching as a retired professor who has recently cared for his wife through her death from dementia. You feel his stiff loneliness and his difficulty in sharing authentic closeness with his daughter. The characterizations of the residents of the Life Care community don't really rise above classic stereotypes of older people. They are by turns sweet, wise, horny, corny, and ornery in a Golden Girls vein. The employees and family members are equally cartoonishly drawn--the dedicated and long-suffering manager, the kind nurses, the hard boiled detective, the harried daughter, the gen alpha kids. There is very little in Man on the Inside that is laugh out loud funny. There is very little to challenge your imagination or your assumptions or pique your interest. The outcome of the meager mystery is predictable and telegraphed early on. The arc of the major characters, equally trite and predictable. Of course, the lonely, emotionally cut off Ted Danson character finds redemption through friendships with the life care home residents, but in very superficial and expected ways. As a person who can easily laugh at clever comedy, cringe at uncomfortable situations, tear up at an emotional scene... I felt nothing during Man on the Inside. It actually felt a lot like nursing homes I had visited, bland and institutional, with a canned feeling of faux hominess. Not worth the watch.