I’m nursing a pretty heavy disappointment after viewing the
pilot episode of NBC’s Welcome to the Family. The show is
rife with limp caricatures and bland stereotypes and doesn’t
deliver on the potential of its actors. I thought it would
be funny and topical, and have enough moxie to stand out
among the zillions of other shows featuring dysfunctional
families. But it doesn’t. Its a lifeless attempt at an
already too-familiar format that is at worst insensitive and
tone deaf, and at best not as funny as it should be.
Mike O’Malley and Mary McCormack play Dan and Caroline
Yoder: upper middle class suburbanites with a slacker
daughter and misspent youth. Their daughter Molly, played by
Ella Rae Peck, is painted with a pretty wide brush as the
dumb-blonde-who-doesn’t-realize-she’s dumb. Her lines are
peppered with girl-power feminism, which is highly ironic
since this show is pretty traditionally constructed in terms
of gender roles, specifically following the storyline that
sees Molly and JR, played by Joseph Haro, abandoning their
college plans to raise the baby, when she unexpectedly
becomes pregnant.
JR Hernandez, the valedictorian, over-achiever on his way to
Stanford, quickly and without much consideration decides to
stay with Molly and “do the right thing.” His over-involved,
helicopter parents, Chuey and Lisette Hernandez, played by
Ricardo Chivira and Justina Machado, respectively, are upset
by this (justifiably so) and seem to offer the only moment
of reality in the most gimmicky and unbelievable storylines
this fall.
The gimmick takes over, and the audience is asked to suspend
their disbelief at how weirdly accepting all the characters
are. Am I the only one balking at teen pregnancy and college
drop-outs? While the racial stereotyping is not completely
overt, and the clichés aren’t so overplayed I can’t like
them, what I found most offensive about this show is its
unrealized potential. They missed an opportunity to use some
talented actors, and Mike O’Malley has proven to be a
clutch hitter in the past, but not even his Everyman-
aw-shucks dynamic can save this show.
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Page updated 9/23/13
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