He's like a coked out addict attended a poetry reading.
Or the rest of the characters shouldn't be giving the impression of being at a poetry reading (are they?)
I think the unexpected greatness of Michael Rosenbaum as Dutch upended the show dynamics and he needs to be integrated in better.
Dutch plays against Cam as a romantic foil only if he's the "douche" the writing suggests he was intended to be. But Rosenbaum is not at all playing the guy as a douche (and he shouldn't - what he's doing is great). He's playing the character as a zany but basically decent guy who weirdly sometimes thinks of himself as a douche, but that just makes him all the more likable. He's basically the Kramer character here.
So forget the romance subplot, if Dutch isn't a jerk then Cam looks bad for angling for his girl. Instead, Dutch becomes the zany co-worker who plays off Cam as straight man.
But then where does that leave Oz (Slater)? Dutch has stolen his role in the show, the zany boss who plays off Cam as straight man. Maybe he can be zany in a different way, more dangerous and sinister, but how far can that go and still be plausible? These people aren't going continue to work for a guy who is an actual threat to them.
They could really lock in a surreal tone and make Oz as mean-spirited as they like - if it's surreal, then normal logic doesn't apply - but surreality works against emotional reality, and Cam needs to be grounded in an emotionally real world, because he's far too normal a character to live in bizarro world.
And then there's the rest of the cast. Cash is fun, but Josh is fairly useless. I don't care much for Melanie. They should have been able to find an actress who was both eye candy and decent at comedy, but something about her just doesn't work for me. She seems bitchy and mean, even when the writing isn't calling upon her to be. And it also seems like there are some character slots they could be filling out that are currently missing to give the show more depth. Oz' ex-wife might be one.
So the whole cast needs some serious rebalancing before they come back (if they do) in the fall. There's a kernel of a good show in there somewhere, mainly because Harrison, Rosenbaum and Slater provide so much potential. They're puzzle pieces that just need to be snapped together correctly.
