<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" Television shows are notoriously age-blind when it suits their needs. The high schoolers of Glee are pushing 30. Ashton Kutcher was 22 to onscreen girlfriend Mila Kunis&amp;#039;s 16 when That &amp;#039;70s Show premiered. Estelle Getty was a year younger than Bea Arthur, who was her daughter on Golden Girls. But within the worlds of those shows, it makes a kind of sense. Getty had a gray wig. The Glee twenty-somethings have no real teenagers to be compared to. Kutcher is now dating Kunis, retroactively blessing the differential. Fox&amp;#039;s new Tuesday comedy show Ben and Kate, unfortunately, has no such blessing. It&amp;#039;s about a brother and sister who are already approximately 10 years apart, played by actors who are 15 years apart, 37-year-old Nat Faxon (an Oscar winner for co-writing The Descendants) and 22-year-old Dakota Johnson, daughter of Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith. The age discrepancy is distractingly large. Why didn&amp;#039;t the show just cast actors closer in age? Or change the backstory so that he&amp;#039;s the child of the father&amp;#039;s previous marriage? The show only emphasizes the problem with the gap with treacly flashbacks to a teenaged Ben comforting grammar-school-aged Kate. Similarly distracting is the timeline of Downton Abbey, which I refuse to not talk about until the American premiere of the new season. The first episode of season one is set on April 12, 1912, and season three begins in 1920, meaning the characters have aged eight years while the actors have aged two. Of course, there is no effort to either mature the actors using makeup or acknowledge the ludicrousness of the timeline within the show. Better to stick to the soapy class drama. I&amp;#039;m not saying I want television to be hyper-realistic, or that I can&amp;#039;t excuse unexplained phenomena when the storytellers have earned my trust (I don&amp;#039;t care how Homeland&amp;#039;s Brody went from Marine to vice-presidential candidate in six months; I&amp;#039;m too excited about the dramatic possibilities). But when a show has enough other flaws, it&amp;#039;s best not to suspend audiences&amp;#039; disbelief to the point where all they see are the machinations instead of the story, the actors instead of the characters. Downton Abbey is as uneven as it is wildly popular and doesn&amp;#039;t need to change a thing to keep it that way. But a fledgling show like Ben and Kate needs to find its groove by deciding who its characters are. If Kate is as much of a mess as she seems to be, don&amp;#039;t call her &amp;quot;uber-prepared for every possible catastrophe.&amp;quot; If Ben will &amp;quot;probably be a millionaire someday,&amp;quot; why does he have to live with his sister? Shouldn&amp;#039;t they be more likable if everyone else on the show is going to give them an &amp;quot;Oh, you guys!&amp;quot;? Faxon is too old for that. The show runner should take a hint and look up his birthdate. Follow The Culture Blog on RSS and on Twitter at @ESQCulture. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a16097/ben-and-kate-review-13336442/>