September 11, 2005

TV: The War at Home

First of all, let's fire whoever it was at Fox who completely overlooked the possible insensitivity of debuting a show with this title on September 11. Oy...

The show itself combines bits and pieces of lots of other Fox family sitcoms. It's got the talking-to-the-camera shtick from Malcolm in the Middle and Bernie Mac; the "ooh, aren't we edgy!" sensibility of -- well, pretty much every Fox sitcom; the parents-vs.-kids topic matter of Grounded for Life (which started at Fox before moving to the WB for its final years).

The parents this time are played by Michael Rapaport and Anita Barone, and they're coping with three kids. Hillary is 16, screams "I HATE YOU!" a lot, and likes to freak out her parents by dating boys they won't like. Larry is 15, and his parents think he might be gay (which is milked for way too many really unpleasant jokes). Mike is 13, and the schemer of the family.

The actors are very good, but the writing is on the trashy side and the jokes aren't especially funny (and you'd think that the first episode would be the one they'd spent the most time on). Nice comfy timeslot between The Simpsons and Family Guy, but I won't be surprised to see this one moved or cancelled early in the season.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I didn't even bother watching it, but the American Dad season premier: primo!

Drew McManus

Keith said...

I never managed to get into American Dad; it felt like a bad Xerox of Family Guy (which I do love) -- geeky teen son, mildly rebellious daughter, housemate with badly imitated celebrity voice (the Paul Lynde-ish alien / the Peter Lorre-ish Stewie).

And I miss the off-the-wall digressions of Family Guy. I don't think anything made me laugh as hard last year as Peter and his barbershop quartet singing "You've Got AIDS."