If there’s one form that immediately screams “television,” it’s the multi-camera situation comedy – filmed, taped, or digitally recorded in front of a live audience, or at least made to appear as if it were. . It has gone in and out of fashion over the years, rivaling single-camera comedies – first with laugh tracks, now without – but continues to thrive, in all its anti-cinematic, well-lit, deep, three-way dimensions. walls, a theatrical and long-lasting glory.
Multi-camera sitcoms are broadly divided into family comedies, workplace comedies – which are also essentially family comedies – and comedies alternating between home and work; their common subject is how people live together. For comedic purposes, the characters don’t get along, but from week to week (mostly) everyone survives another episode. There is therefore an intrinsic optimism in the form; a depressing multi-camera sitcom is a contradiction in terms, “Seinfeld” notwithstanding.
At the same time, it is an accommodating form, a democratic form, which adapts to all kinds of contexts and actors, without distinction of race, creed, color, social class, age, sex , genre, period or other. Sometimes there is drama, and often there is sentiment, and even, at judiciously spaced intervals, a little sorrow. There will be differences in tone, with series with a more or less fantastic or realistic tendency. But the main goal is to build a friendly if chaotic place to visit every week, with a grab bag of characters whose lives you could invest in – a place where you know everyone’s name and nod in recognition even if you laugh in surprise.
Network television is where the form lives almost entirely, with three new sitcoms premiering in short order this week and next week. “Georgie and Mandy’s First Wedding,” which arrives Thursday on CBS, is the latest entry into what might be called the Sheldon Cooper television universe; NBC’s “Happy’s Place,” which debuts Friday, features Reba McEntire manager of a bar; and “Poppa’s House,” premiering Monday on CBS, pairs father and son Damon Wayans and Damon Wayans Jr. as … father and son.
From a critical standpoint, I don’t have a bad word to say about any of them. They do the work they set out to do; each delivers a number of satisfying, sometimes very satisfying, performances from actors who give their characters individual lives and more than enough jokes that work. The worst thing that can be said about them, aside from some characters being as boring as they’re supposed to be, is that they’re borrowing from the deep well of the sitcoms that came before them – indeed, they share certain elements with each other. But originality is not the issue; far from it.
In “Georgie and Mandy’s First Marriage,” Rachel Bay Jones, center, plays Mandy’s mother Audrey, and Will Sasso, far right, plays her father, Jim.
(Troy Harvey / Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.)
“Georgie and Mandy’s First Marriage” is unusual, even unique, in that it is a multi-camera comedy derived from a single-camera comedy-drama derived from a multi-camera comedy. A sequel to “Young Sheldon” which was a prequel to “The Big Bang Theory” The new series kicks off with a nod to changing formats, with Georgie (Montana Jordan), her mother-in-law Audrey (Rachel Bay Jones) and her father-in-law Jim (Will Sasso, a master of the understated response) watch an episode of “Frasier.” (It’s the mid-1990s, albeit floating in a never-ending sitcom era.)
“’Frasier’s is a laugh show,” says Georgie, speaking of the laugh track. “I like funny shows. … ‘Wonder Years’, no one is laughing. Is this funny? We will never know.
As the title suggests, the series focuses on Sheldon Cooper’s older and less intelligent brother, Georgie, his wife, Mandy (Emily Osment), and their respective families – primarily his, as the couple lives with them and Georgie works for Jim in his garage. although Annie Potts as Connie, Georgie’s grandmother, Zoe Perry as her mother, Mary, and Raegan Revord as her brooding sister, Missy, make appearances. (The precocious Sheldon, played older by Jim Parsons and younger by Iain Armitage, has decamped to Caltech in Pasadena, where apparently you can’t find Batman Underoos.)
The series closely follows the “Young Sheldon” story arc in which Georgie meets Mandy, both lie about their ages (he adds four to her 17, she takes five off her 29), have sex, have a baby and get married. That their marriage is destined not to last is “Big Bang Theory” canon; how long it will last, or why it might end, who knows. Looking for clues in “The Big Bang Theory” is pointless; Aside from his interest in tires, the prequel Georgie, who is sweet and optimistic, if a little immature, seems to have little to do with his hot-headed and resentful older self, played by Jerry O’Connell in guest photos from “Big Bang”.
Yet co-creator Chuck Lorre has a taste for sharp edges – the generational alcoholism in “Mom,” the women of “Cybill” behave badly – and the seeds of dissent are sown early. Mandy, a former meteorologist with a communications degree, is looking for a job as a television journalist (“Look at that face, I’m talented on camera”) and plans to look further afield than the small eastern town of Texas that Georgie considers. like at home. Georgie has a panic attack that he prefers to think of as a heart attack. (“Anxiety – that’s just New York nonsense.)
On NBC’s “Happy’s Place,” Reba McEntire plays Bobbie, left, who inherits her father’s bar with her sister Isabella (Belissa Escobedo).
(NBC/Casey Durkin/NBC)
In “Happy’s Place”, Country music legend McEntire, in it third sitcom with (she also had a recurring role on “Young Sheldon”), plays Bobbie, who runs the tavern her recently deceased father left her. In terms of staging, we find “Cheers”, bar in the middle, entrance on the left, office on the right – classic. Even shows that don’t strictly take place in bars have found it convenient to have their characters hang out in one. The staff includes bartender Gabby (Melissa Peterman), desperate to be Bobbie’s best friend; Steve (Pablo Castelblanco), a germaphobic accountant; Takoda (Tokala Black Elk), waiter and handyman, the Woody of the group; and Emmett (Rex Linn, wonderfully modulated), a bearish cook and voice of truth, who plays opera to keep people away from his kitchen.
Into this mostly sedentary environment arrives Isabella (Belissa Escobedo), Bobbie’s unsuspecting and unsuspecting half-sister, to whom their father, previously unknown to Isabella, has bequeathed half the bar. What ensues is generational humor – McEntire is 69 to Escobedo’s 26, although Bobbie is much younger – including jokes, tired but seemingly irresistible, in which older people try to talk like younger people.
Isabella, who “specialized in psychology”, wastes no time in making her opinions known – I mean, I would stay back a bit, familiarize myself with the lay of the land, instead of thinking that my suggestions, based on a day’s experience, were necessary. to be taken seriously. (The show doesn’t disagree. Emmett: “First stop saying you’re entitled to anything, because that’s a whiny word that makes me tighten my ass.” Isabella: “But “That’s kind of my case.” Emmett: “That’s right, that’s right.” (Don’t do that) Bobbie’s defensive annoyance and Isabella’s feeling left out, invisible and unloved. But they will soon be friendly and living together by the end of the second episode, amping up the situation into the sitcom.
Like “Georgie & Mandy,” “Poppa’s House” involves parents, children, marriage and in-laws. Damon (Wayans Jr.) dreams of becoming a director, but for now he works (like Georgie) for his father-in-law, “the king of the foam roller.” He’s been offered a management position that promises to take him away from that goal, but will satisfy his wife’s (Tetona Jackson) desire to send their children to a private school. The youngest live off the generosity of their respective rich parents.
Damon Wayans Jr., left, and Damon Wayans Sr. star in CBS’ “Poppa’s House.”
(Robert Voets/CBS)
Damon’s father, the eponymous Poppa (Wayans Sr.), who lives next door for drop-ins, has his own workplace thread, a sort of reverse version of “Frasier”: it’s a popular New York radio personality who performs, records, takes calls from listeners, and is perfectly happy in his life. But the station overlords saw fit to give him a co-host, a podcast psychologist, Ivy (Essence Atkins), to balance his low-brow, but not quite misogynistic, sexual remarks and bolster his female demographic.
They will obviously clash – like in “Happy’s Place”, there are territorial issues. Ivy says his scruffy beard and “menopausal cardigan” make him look like “ghetto Papa Smurf.” He rates a podcaster below “movies, television, recording artist, radio personality, mime, and organ grinding monkey.”
Her: “There you go again, another stupid reflex comment. »
Him: “First of all, my ass isn’t a nine, it’s a 10.”
That’s how it is.
Judging by the pilot alone, “Poppa’s House” will be a light-hearted show, the lightest of the three. There are recurring jokes about the size of Poppa’s head. But the Wayans are clearly having a great time working together, as highlighted by the nonsense running beneath the closing credits – and what more could you want from them, really?
