Mom is one of the less-talked-about new shows premiering this season – it certainly doesn’t have the hype of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D or Almost Human, nor the star power of The Crazy Ones (Robin Williams and Sarah Michelle Gellar), nor the sheer wackadoo craziness of Sleepy Hollow (a show where Ichabod Crane survives for 200 years while buried in salt because it has become his supernatural duty to destroy the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and also what is with all the Starbucks everywhere?). No, Mom has a perfectly respectable cast – Anna Faris, Alison Janney, Nate Corrdry, French Stewart – but not a jaw-droppingly stellar one unless, like me, you are an Alison Janney fan forever because of The West Wing. It’s a very grounded sort of family sitcom, so it is hardly wackadoo. And of all the CBS sitcoms airing this year it arguably has the least hype. (We Are Men is getting way more press for reasons I do not exactly understand.)
However, Mom is, I would suggest, the most important show debuting this fall, for one reason: like 2 Broke Girls before it, it represents a sitcom’s attempt to talk about class. Specifically, lower class. Anna Faris’ Christy lives with her two kids in a small one-level bungalow where the living room and kitchen are one room (and not a terribly big room either) and there are three bedrooms (or possibly two bedrooms and a den that has been converted) and a bathroom and that’s it. For TV purposes it’s about as small as a multi-cam set can be. Christy also drives a shit car that’s at least fifteen years old, wears Wal-Mart level mass-produced clothes (as do her kids) and has a unglamourous, manageable hairstyle. She refuses to leave work when she is having a total breakdown because she can’t afford to miss hours. She loses her shit when she takes a day off work to see her kid’s talent show and it’s the wrong day. And of course her useless ex owes her back child support like whoa, because of course he does. Christy is poor, and not glamorous fantasy-hobo poor or resourceful hipster-making-like-Aladdin poor either. She is just “this is shitty” poor, and this is a rare thing to see on TV. And that’s important. Poor characters on TV are guest stars, either played for laughs on sitcoms or murder victims on procedurals. They’re not protagonists.
The problem is that we’ve seen this before, namely with 2 Broke Girls. I have no doubt that Chuck Lorre actually really wants to make class-conscious sitcoms: he got his start on Roseanne, after all. Looking at his body of work, Mike and Molly is definitely lower-class in its aims, and this is the guy whose first major show was Grace Under Fire and that was hardly a rich people show. Plus if you read all those long-ass title cards at the end of all of his shows, it’s clear that he’s something of a socialist (or at least seethingly anti-corporate in outlook). But Lorre also wants to make a popular sitcom, and popular sitcoms have hacky jokes in them, and Mom is no exception: the initial conversation between Christy and her mother is hack writing of the worst variety (it’s really, really bad!) and only Anna Faris and Alison Janney’s respective acting skill elevate it to something tolerable. And Lorre has a track record of shows that go for easy jokes. When you consider his two biggest hits, Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory, “subtle character study” is not what comes to mind. Maybe Lorre isn’t as big an offender in his shows as 2 Broke Girls – great premise, rock-solid cast, and writing that turned into a never-ending mountain of cheap, shitty ethnic jokes by the second episode – but he’s not far off.
Basically, the question with Mom is if we get the Lorre who was one of the key voices on Roseanne during the show’s prime, or the Lorre who indulges in juvenile sex jokes on Two and a Half Men and endless fat jokes on Mike and Molly. This could go either way. I’m hoping for the home run, because Mom has potential to be the next Roseanne and it’s a show that I think western culture desperately needs at this point. But I am skeptical, and I think not unfairly.
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Interesting argument I think a bigger problem with the show is going to be that the characters for the most part or simply unlikable. The only character I had even mild sympathy for was the youngest kid. Even he’s being shown as a screwup. Getting the day for the talent show wrong and being totally blasé about it.
Haven’t watched it yet, but it’s queued up for sometime this week. Allison Janney will always get a watch from me, and I love Anna Faris for the most part, too. Chuck Lorre… eh…
I review 2 Broke Girls weekly, and it is not lost on me how much potential the show had and how far it fell short of that. The best episodes in my opinion are the ones that revolved around the fact that they needed money at any cost, and had them falling back on things like drug tests and selling their eggs.
I feel like many multi-cam sitcoms have these lofty, ambitious goals but ultimately never fully realize them, but I’ve only really been “seriously” watching TV for the past six or so years.
If you want a show that deals with soul-crushing poverty, look no further than Raising Hope. It deals directly with the fact that the Chance family has no money on many occasions, as well as indirect things like Jimmy having about 6 shirts in total that keep reappearing. I’m not sure if Sabrina’s poor tourism detracts from the message or not since she’s reclaimed her inheritance this season, but there’s pretty straightforward class confrontation throughout the series (and also an unfortunate tendency towards scatalogical humour, usually for every episode I decide to try and introduce the series to someone).
I enjoyed the pilot and I’ll be giving the show a regular slot on the PVR for now, but I’m definitely wary. I did appreciate how unflinching it was about making the main character’s life a disaster but the fact it’s a Chuck Lorre show makes me very concerned about where it goes from here.
Actually, I do think of Big Bang Theory as a character study when it fires on all cylinders. In particular, they didn’t take the easy Hollywood out with Penny by making her a Magic Pixie Dream Girl (on the other hand, it also took about three seasons before they really figured out who she is). And Sheldon is really a fascinating character…but hard to write since it’s all too easy to be lazy and have him come off as just a jerk. The key aspect of Sheldon, under all his various quirks and attributes, is that whatever he does must make logical sense to him, even if not to another character.
The best example of this was from a teaser, where they were trying to figure out what movie at which theater to go to given all the characters’ constraints and desires. Finally, they realize the simplest thing to do that satisfies everything else is not to take Sheldon. They all leave…and Sheldon muses that it was the most rational and correct solution, even though it didn’t benefit him.
I won’t claim the show’s perfect (last season’s tenure episode both got tenure completely wrong and completely miswrote Sheldon, and I don’t like how Amy’s character turned from female Sheldon to sex-crazed-but-not-getting-any), but it does have a fair amount of character study and development going on for a sitcom.
I am also an Alison Janney fan forever. She’s awesome.
But, y’know, multicamera sitcoms aren’t my thing and likely never will be, and if there’s anything you can say about Chuck Lorre, it’s that he’s immensely skilled at adjusting a multicam sitcom down to the lowest common denominator. Which is great for making Nielsen-friendly product, but not so great for making shows *I* would actually want to watch.
So I’m never going to see this show, but at least Alison Janney’s getting a paycheck for it, and that’s good.
This is all being pulled right out of my ass but I wonder how much of a market there is for a show that frankly and earnestly portrays, even in a somewhat Hollywood-ized way, what it’s like to be lower class. By which I mean a show that, like MGK says, isn’t exaggerating things for HUGE LAFFS or presenting a stylish and glamorized (or sanitized might be a better term) view of what being poor is like.
I mean sure, there are a lot of people out there who [i]are[/i] in the lower class…I’m not exactly far removed from that bracket myself…but I kind of have to wonder, of those people how many want to A). be reminded of how much being poor sucks during their designated period of escapist fantasy or B). fervently buy into the whole “American dream” myth even when it’s actively against their best interests to do so, and thus aren’t interested in a show that tries to portray being stuck in a lower-class slump in a sympathetic light rather than “well she should just apply herself harder!”
This is ignoring the actual quality of the show itself which I freely admit I haven’t seen (and probably won’t watch, sitcoms not being my thing), but given the constant bombardment of bootstraps rhetoric in American politics and the genuinely miserable reality of actually being lower class I guess I’m curious how big the audience for a show like this really is.
Wait, Sleepy Hollow is real? I thought the Onion was just making that up. Jesus.
@ali: It’s actually fun so far.
All things being equal, I’d rather watch a character such as Frasier Crane than Archie Bunker. YMMV.
Sitcoms do to your brain what sugar does to your teeth.
Just saying.
People who name themselves after Tapirs do to your soul what public showers can do to your feet.
Just saying.
I think you’ve got a point, Kai. I’m lower-class myself, and I spend enough nights lying awake worrying about myself and my equally lower-class family–I don’t need to start worrying about a lower-class TV family’s problems too, nor am I in a good place to get laughs out of how shitty poverty is.
But I’m never really much interested in sitcoms anyway, so I’m not sure how much my two cents actually buys.
(Also, Lucky Seven can go fuck itself. Hopefully it will just be about how money brings its own problems, rather than being about how poor people have terrible life skills and therefore can’t handle wealth properly, which is probably why they were poor to begin with. But either way, not interested.)
The whole poor-people-want-escapism thing is definitely true. I think the best way to deal with it is to use poverty to make the characters relatable, to weave it into the show in dozens of small ways and in the basic premise, rather than dwelling endlessly on the characters’ poverty. To use a possibly shaky example, there was that very early Simpsons episode where the family lost its Christmas money which drove Homer to get a job as a mall Santa. The point was “Homer as a mall Santa!” and the hijinx that ensued, but the motivator was how tight the family was for money. I think that deals with poverty honestly enough without being, like, a huge downer.
In dramatic terms, of course, there’s Breaking Bad (which isn’t even about a poor guy, but at least part of the catalyst is Walt’s worrying about the cost of his health care bankrupting his family). Actually, given how much real-life unpleasantness is inherent in the premise of Breaking Bad, even before you get into the violence and drugs (cancer, economic malaise, domestic strife) it might put the lie to the idea that people won’t watch a show that reminds them of their own day-to-day struggles.
In an odd way, I think genre stories are best at circumventing this kind of issue. Think Spider-man–he can deal with the problems of poverty, or a lousy job, or a rocky love life, and people still love to read about him because he’s going to fight a super-villain at some point.
LurkerWithout, your comment made me laugh heartily.
Bravo, good sir.
Didn’t see the premiere, but Anna Faris is a pretty incredible comic actress, so I expect I’ll chase down every bit of this show.
Overall I enjoyed the pilot, except for Nate Corddry, who seemed like he was in another sitcom entirely. The running gag with the injured chef wasn’t too great either.
potential to be the next Roseanne
I sure hope we see the next Roseanne soon. I really miss that show.
What I was struck by was the treatment of addicts in recovery. There have been other shows that used twelve-stepping as a plot element (Ah, Ringer, I sort of miss you), but this went hard for the painfulness of all that.
I don’t think it’s great yet. It’s not as whimsical as My Name Is Earl, and the first episode (which I suppose was the pilot) was pretty brutal.
I have enough affection for Anna Faris and French Stewart (and of course everyone loves Allison Janney) to give it a chance, and to be relieved that I’m not a Nielsen household, so my watching it doesn’t trap them in it for years. (Not that French Stewart’s character will even be in it by the end of the season.)