Reader Report: The War at Home
Faithful TeeVee reader Mike Morris has more stomach than us, and so he actually watched The War at Home, the inexplicable new live-action sitcom shoveled into Fox’s Sunday-night line-up. Here’s Mike’s report:
Hearing advance word on its awfulness, I decided to give The War At Home four minutes of my time after The Simpsons ended. It was so idiotic, worthless, and transparent in its (failed) attempt to be “water-cooler offensive” that I stayed for the entire half-hour.
Michael Rapaport is an Everyman Dad, blue-collar, traditional-American-values to the core, yet working in a white-collar office with curtains, nice wallpaper, a tie and a briefcase.
His wife is decent-looking, has big boobs and hides smoking from the kids.
His teenage daughter is 16, hot, and wants to date an 18-year old. When Mom and Dad refuse to let her, she brings home a black guy from school whose sole function is to dress and act in ghetto stereotype. Big laughs on the laugh track when he introduces himself as “Taye; It’s short for ‘Wu-Tang’”.
In discussing their daughter dating a black guy, Mom lets it slip to Dad that she’s had sex with at least 3 black guys. The term “Million Man March” is used as a punch line. (Cue that laugh track again!)
Mom and Dad think their “weird” teenage son is gay. (He’s not; he’s just shy and awkward. And weird, actually. But totally heterosexual.) He dresses like Mom as a disguise in order to not raise suspicions when he takes her car over to a girl’s house. (Yes, that is an even stupider premise than it sounds.) He gets caught and chooses to tell his parents he’s a cross-dresser rather than get grounded for taking the car.
More sample humor: Dad asks a co-worker with an adult gay son what it’s like having a gay kid. The co-worker says he sent his kid to a change-your-sexual-orientation seminar and he met a nice doctor there; They became a couple and are adopting a Chinese orphan. Cut to a close-up of a Chinese food container. Pull back to see it’s on the living room coffee table. Mom & Dad are both sitting there, and after Mom asks him why he’s not hungry, Dad responds “maybe we just shouldn’t order Chinese anymore.” (Do I need to mention the laugh track?)
The youngest, pre-teen son didn’t get much airtime on the pilot, outside of NARCing on his faux-trannie brother and always wanting to go to the house of a friend whose Mom just had a boob job. How long until either the Mom or sister walk in on him masturbating?
I can’t wait for wacky neighbors and mothers-in-law to show up! Oh, what am I saying? This thing will be dead and buried by the time the World Series ends. Maybe if I watch it next week I’ll even remember the characters’ names three minutes after the closing credits.