What a terrible waste of Stephen Fry! Who thought up this mess? Joel McHale is fine in the right role but he does not in the least strike me as a technophobe outdoorsman. Seriously, everything about him screams metrosexual city boy. Don't even get me started on the stereotypical millennials​. CBS had to great talents to work with and they came up with this?!!!

It's a different take on an old concept - generations collide, etc. But, face it, it's current. It's something that a lot of us over age 30 have to deal with - changing technologies and we wonder how in the heck we're supposed to stay up to speed with them. Heck, I'm an IT guy - and have been for 20+ years. I LOVE technology. I've explored new stuff, though usually on the back-end. (The servers that host the stuff, the networks that keep them connected, etc.) But, I don't tweet. *gasp*The characters are fun, the concepts don't go all that deep, but it's some lighthearted fare that is good for some laughs. I've found myself laughing out loud at some of the jokes, and Joel McHale is rocking it.

There are certain comedic concepts that lazy joke writers love. These involve things like mothers-in-law warring with daughters-in-law or residents of Alabama trailer parks marrying their sisters. They require no cleverness or originality, just a knowledge of how such jokes are structured and the ability to recall previous jokes and change them around a little.The Great Indoors is a show that always goes for the easy, obvious laugh. It's the sort of show that, even when you do laugh - which happens rarely - you don't enjoy the laugh that much, because you've already laughed at that joke hundreds of times before.The premise is simple. A macho, outdoorsy writer is forced to take an office job amongst callow millennials. He teaches them something about "real life" and they teach himself about the "modern world."The first thing I find odd about this series is that the clueless old guy is a Gen-Xer. I know a lot of Gen-Xers, and many live on their iPhones, texting and tweeting and posting selfies on Instagram. I feel the character is more like a Baby Boomer; it would make a lot more sense if the part was played by Robert DeNiro. Although I'm a Baby Boomer and look, I'm using the Internet! The portrayal of Millenials makes me think of elderly comedians on stage going, "man, these kids today with their podcasts and their hip-hop, what's up with them?" It's as though the series is written by aliens who have simply read some joke books but have never actually met any humans.This is not to say that there aren't young people are technologically adept but a little clueless, or that there aren't fortysomethings who lives have not intersected much with technology. The problem is not showing such characters, but in acting as though these characters aren't individuals but are rather generational archetypes. I was ready to give up after one episode, but then I happened to see that a couple of people on the IMDb message board for this series said that episode 2 was so much better. This turned out to be untrue; perhaps it was the writers trying to save their show. If so, they put more work into IMDb than they did in writing their jokes.

So, this is my first review. The show is really, really good. Unfortunately, the younger people/viewers (millenials in the show) probably will not going to enjoy it. Sadly, because it portraits them as they are, not all, of course. The differences between the outdoor Jack, and the indoors crew shows more than some jokes. Just look at the scene with the HR woman and the lawyer: true as hell. I hope it endures. The cast is great and, as always, Stephen Fry is awesome. Joel McHale and Susannah Fielding are also very good. And if one pays attention, there will be some kind of "thing" (again) between those two.