I was flipping through the channels yesterday afternoon, when I came upon a rerun of My Wife and Kids on ABC Family. Instead of continuing to flip the channels, I stopped. It had been quite a while since I sat down and watched the Damon Wayans sitcom, but they were doing a special episode in the Bahamas, and I do love me a good TV stunt. I was only about five minutes in when I recalled something that I had forgotten: this show is actually pretty funny.
My Wife and Kids certainly isn’t the edgiest series that has ever been on television, nor does the writing set the world on fire. What it is, is a solid family sitcom — and what’s wrong with that? As much as I love it, not everything needs to be Arrested Development. Part of what made My Wife and Kids great is that even though the day-to-day situations were slap-stick and ridiculous, the characters were grounded in the real world.
Michael (Damon Wayans) and his wife Jay (Tisha Campbell-Martin) play the middle-class parents of three kids, Junior, Claire and Kady. Michael was a self-made man who tried to teach his kids hard work and discipline, but with a very nouveau Bill Cosby sensibility. In fact, MWaK often reminded me of a more modern version of The Cosby Show. While The Cosby Show occasionally delved into serious issues, they didn’t do what this show did when it made teenage pregnancy one of its central themes.
Jay and Michael got married right out of high school because she got pregnant with Junior. Several episodes throughout the series’ five-season run dealt with this fact. Michael and Jay constantly tried to stress to their children that even though they made it work and became successful, they wanted a better life for their own children. They were always upfront with their kids about sex and how difficult their own situation was in the beginning.
What made this storyline so poignant is the fact that in the fourth season, despite all of the lessons and warnings from his parents, Junior gets his own girlfriend pregnant while they are both still in high school. This leaves Michael and Jay to watch their son repeat their own mistakes and hardships, while trying to figure out where they went wrong.
The other big highlight of the show for me is Noah Gray-Cabey, the piano prodigy who you may know better as Micah Sanders from Heroes. As youngest daughter Kady’s precocious boyfriend, Franklin, Noah pretty much played himself — a funny kid who also happens to be a brilliant musician. He could do a lot more than many other child actors and was always fun to watch.
I found a clip on You Tube of the Bahamas episode I saw yesterday. It perfectly encapsulates the absurdist humor and the “dad joke” cheesiness that makes you laugh in spite of yourself. Michael and Jay, stranded on an island, start talking about what they hate about the other person, including Michael’s gross foot freaking Jay out during sex and the fact that Jay sometimes smells like warm bologna. Seriously. Then, Franklin meets his Italian doppelganger and has a fistfight with him. None of it makes much sense, but I defy you not to giggle anyway.
As absurd and slap-stick as this show is, it’s a family sitcom with real humor and was constantly underrated during its run. In other words, the exact opposite of According to Jim.
Clacked by Kona Gallagher 
on Mar 19, 2009 @ 10:30 EST5EDT
