Partners (CBS) - Series Premiere: Synopsis and Review

On September 24 the new comedy series ‘Partners’ premiered on CBS. The show stars David Krumholtz (‘Numb3rs’) as Joe and Michael Urie (‘Ugly Betty’) as Louis. Louis and Joe are lifelong friends and work together in an architecture firm. When Louis is in a new relationship and Joe gets engaged their relationship is put to the test. The show is created by Max Mutchnick and David Kohan, both creators of ‘Will & Grace’.

Joe is ready to break up with his girlfriend Ali (Sophia Bush, ‘One Tree Hill’), after she announced she wanted to get married and have kids. Joe isn’t ready for this so the next day he goes over to her store to break up. When he arrives she says she doesn’t want to pressure him to get married, she was just afraid to lose him. At this point Joe gets on his knees and proposes to her. This is a sudden turn of events, but Louis told him to go with his guts, so he did.

The next day Louis and Ali have yoga class together. Louis still thinks Joe broke up with Ali so he starts to comfort her and tell her Joe just wasn’t ready to get married yet. Ali tells him they got engaged and Louis, who realizes his mistake, flees the class. Louis goes to work immediately to tell Joe what happened, but as he arrives Ali calls.

Ali tells Joe the engagement is off, and Joe is furious at Louis. Joe doesn’t want to be friends with Louis anymore, he doesn’t even want to work with him anymore. Louis feels horrible about his mistake, this was not what he wanted at all. He decides to go over to Ali and convince her to marry Joe after all.

‘Partners’ is not the world’s best comedy show, but it certainly has some funny elements. For example the way Joe and Louis always make fun of each other. Sometimes the jokes are a little vulgar, and usually have something to do with the fact that Louis is gay. Oh, I didn’t mention before that Louis is gay? Well to be honest, it wasn’t a big deal for the storyline in this episode. Louis’ current boyfriend did make an appearance, but he wasn’t part of the main storyline. However, the show did seize every possible moment to make a joke about Louis being gay.

Somehow I feel like his boyfriend, Wyatt (Brandon Routh) might not stay long in the show. The character doesn’t have a lot of dept yet and quite frankly he seems to be a caricature. The show really tries to let Wyatt come of as a dumb, gay person who’s really proud of his (stunning) body. I feel like the show could have done so much more with this character. But who knows, maybe we will explore a bit more of him in later episodes.