Your Guide to Cooper Barrett's Guide to Surviving Life
[...] they were part of how creator Jay Lacopo pitched the comedy to Fox:
While it's indebted to those movies, the series, premiering Sunday, Jan. 3 at 8:30/7:30c, finds its own identity in the strength of its ensemble and its above-average action for a single-camera comedy.
The show is a clever and heightened take on the "fun people hanging out" genre where the sticky situations the characters get themselves into are less about social cues and more about hostage situations, which is where it goes in the pilot.
Charlie Saxton and James Earl play Cooper's roommates and best friends, and The Hangover's Justin Bartha plays Cooper's older brother Josh, a family man who wants to vicariously live the carefree 20s he didn't really have through Cooper and his friends.
In the pilot (the weakest of the four episodes screened by critics), Leslie is described as a "funsucker," the nagging, mostly unseen wife who wants to ruin the boys' fun, like Rachael Harris in the first Hangover.
[...] Lapira is so offbeat and funny that the writers, realizing what a gem of an actor they had, cast off the shrewish cliche and made Leslie an integral part of the ensemble.