You can't judge a show from its promos for pete's sake...
This is what Fred Goss - who plays Cameron Walker, the center of the cast of Sons&Daughters - had to say about the S&D/AD comparisons, on IMDB.com:
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My partners cringe when I weigh in on the boards, but this stuff makes me crazy.
I'm one of the co-creators and I act in Sons & Daughters.
The idea that we would in any way be compared to or held up against AD never crossed our minds.
I didn't cancel AD, why blame me? Our show is so different in approach than AD.
We are a dramedy in half hour format. We're trying to create comedy not from joke structure but improvisationally and having it stem from out of a relatible, real family scenario. We'd like to get people emotionally attached to the characters and have the comedy come from a more low key place.
That's not AD. If you want AD this isn't your show...but don't tell me you hate the show because it isn't AD...we don't want to be AD!!
I wish that ABC hadn't promoted us in the way they did, because I think the promos are what draw comparisons to AD. The promo dept. said it's impossible to sell the "heart with humor" concept in a 15 second sound bite and I guess they're right, but it's also a drag that people may have been drawn to the show by promos that led them to believe they were going to get something different than what the show actually is.
To all the AD fans who are such haters, I say, how are we supposed to go out there and try new things when you're all so prepared to shut it down as soon as we try. You say you wish network TV would think out of the box more...like it or not but our format is out of the box.
AD was a scripted show. The Office is a scripted show. The jokes are very structured. Our dialogue is improvised...our aim is to not tell a joke, but to play the scene as real as possible and let the humor come from the size of the elephant in the room. Whether or not someone finds something funny in our show has a lot to do with whether or not it speaks to their personal family experience.
We've got a real uphill battle here trying to get the network and the audience to let a different approach to comedy compete in the old school arena...give us a break.
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