The Simpsons is an unusual animated show. The entire
cast generally records the character voices together.
In most cartoons, the various voice actors record their
lines separately, and they’re edited together later.
In some cases, the actors haven’t even been able to
see the entire script, but only read their own lines
out of context. This can create some rather stiff
readings that don’t integrate well with the
performances of the rest of the cast.
REBA is the first sitcom that I supsect was
created that way. The actors show little sign of
actually responding to one another. It seems more like
a first read-through than an actual performance –
particularly since the first read-through is the time
when the writers hear the script and realize what
portions need reworking (in this case, it seems they
are instead deciding “here’s where we increase the
volume on the laugh track yet again” –it has a huge
ratio of on-air audience
reaction to actual humor content.) This is the sitcom that
takes the “fun” out of “disfunctional family”. Reba’s
husband is leaving her, her high school junior daughter
is pregnant, and her younger kids, well, one of them
makes wisecracks like Darlene from Roseanne, the other
has a weird aura like DJ on Roseanne. But they don’t
live up to their archetypes.
(If there was any question whether the TV theme song
was truly dead, let’s note that this new sitcom
starring singing sensation Reba Macintire has one
of those modern 10 second musical stings at the
opener. Oddly enough, Raiding Dad gets a 30 second
mini-song, about as long as half hour themes get
these days.)
MAYBE IT’S ME attempts to be stylish, and at least
partially succeeds. A 15 year old girl deals with the
thing that most 15 year old girls spend most of their
days dealing with: embarassment. For the most part,
it’s family-derived shame, as her wacky parents,
siblings (including a pair of twins — you can’t have
a wasky family without young twins, in this case a pair
that looks a lot like a set of young Tina Yotherses),
and grandparents. There’s some good cast in here,
notably Fred Willard and Julia Sweeney as the parents.
Designed to be part of a familyp-friendly Friday
night, this will tend to be more obviously moralistic
than, say, Malcolm In The Middle, but it is funny along
the way. The show is narrated by its protagonist, a
trick used in many lackluster sitcoms but it works well
here. The storyline is accompanied by frequent little
visual pop-ups, adding thought balloons or information
about characters and their situations… the use of
pop-ups could be a bit smoother, but it still basically
works. I suspect that this family sitcom would be
watchable by teenage girls and their parents; as a
person who is neither, I consider it watchable, but
not a must-see.
The pilot of RAISING DAD also dealt a lot with teenage
female embarassment, although the protagonist is the
embarasser rather than the embarassee. Bob Saget plays
a recent widower who teaches in the same school that
his eldest daughter attends. It was devoid of humor,
and the would-be touching parts are devoid of touchingness.
Minor new season TV note: The theme songlet to the
two-good-episodes-out-of-two sitcom SCRUBS has the
key phrase “I’m no Superman”. It airs on Tuesdays
at 9:30 on NBC. I guess they’re just trying to make
it clear that you’re not tuning into the second half
of the new young-Superman show SMALLVILLE, which will
be airing at the same time on the WB.
