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Title: My Wife and Kids (2001–2005)
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Damon Wayans plays Michael Kyle, a man on a tragically funny quest for a "traditional" family. He's a not-so-modern man living in a very modern world. Can you relate? His stay-at-home bride (Tisha Campbell-Martin) became a stock market trailblazer. His only son idolizes gangster rap stars instead of him. His moody, adolescent daughter's two favorite hobbies are asking him for money and giving him grief. And his youngest daughter rarely lets her daddy have the last word. Perhaps after all of the chaos is over, he will realize that his dream of having a normal American family came true a long time ago. Written by Marek Horvat
Network: ABC; Genre: Family Sitcom; Content Rating: TV-PG (for scatological humor and implied sexual content); Available: Syndication; Perspective: Contemporary (star range: 1 - 4);
Seasons Reviewed: Complete Series (5 seasons)
I was a big supporter of "My Wife and Kids" in its first season. An ABC mid-season replacement, "Kids" felt like a refreshing and real family sitcom without the obnoxious strains to be "edgy" or a slavish following of the man-child husband, nagging wife, cute kids formula that runs most CBS comedies. It was an unlikely star-vehicle turn for "In Living Color" alumni Damon Wayans.
Wayans constructs the show as a living homage to "The Cosby Show": a happy affluent African-American family with a father who spends most of his time at home, a strict but game wife, a dim-bulb son and adorable little daughter. Tisha Cambell-Martin (Janet) plays Michael (Wayans) Kyle's wife as a partner in his adventures instead of a constant adversary. The new Theo is George O. Gordon as Junior, the butt of constant jokes about the size of his head from dad, the new Rudy is the a quintessentially scene-stealing Parker McKenna Posey. "The Cosby Show" is highly regarded for a positive portrayal of its characters in the 80s when TV was seen as going down the moral tubes. "Kids" benefits from a similar swing of the pendulum and got some deserved praise for its ability to resist being smarmy in a sea of garbage.
But as the show wore on, Wayans' scatological impulses begin to overtake him. It starts with season 2's "Table for Too Many", a one-hour juggernaut where Wayans faces off with Larry Miller at a Benihana-type restaurant and the "pee pee" jokes begin to fly. A few seasons later, "Wife" makes a spectacular and unexpected leap off the ramp and over the shark when Junior actually impregnates a girl and we're supposed to believe that a character played to us as nearly mentally retarded is becoming husband and father material.
From season 2 forward the show gets lazier and lazier. The show is charming and pleasant enough and would have been a perfect fit for all the conservative crusaders who want all TV to be about nice, happy people who nothing happens too but the show begins to stock itself more routinely with sex jokes that are less clever and less implicit. As when applied to any family sitcom, it's a little creepy.
I like that the show doesn't try to gross us out; it doesn't try to be edgy or contemporary (though there is a memorably clever "A Beautiful Mind" homage re-casting Junior in the John Nash role). Not to mention, the show has the benefit of truly wretched ABC family comedies like "Full House" and "Family Matters" still in our memories to make it look better. Wayans does everything he can with what he has and within the limits of the genre (as well as his own self-imposed constraints) and gets a few good laughs along the way, but he alone can't keep the show afloat. The "Cosby Show" comparisons are a distant memory now as "My Wife and Kids" fell into the network family sitcom rut.
* * / 4