Fractured Families
Gary, a house painter by trade, is recently divorced and attempting to start a new life. Gary Unmarried (Thursdays 7.30pm, Channel 7) is a fast-paced American sitcom filmed in front of a live audience, and full of one-liners about divorce and relationships. Like Two and a Half Men, it is staying in the middle road of sitcoms; hoping to provide light relief, without ever tackling real-life situations with any depth.
Gary, played drolly by Jay Mohr, a Saturday Night Live performer who did a hilarious Christopher Walken impersonation, and hosted Last Comic Standing, enlarges his acting palette to play the immature Gary Brooks. Mohr lends considerable charm to a character who is full of unlikeable tendencies. It is the everyman jokes that rule the roost on this show; they are aimed squarely at New Age philosophies and backed by Mohr’s sharp timing.
Gary’s precocious, politically correct daughter, Louise, who has pictures of Gandhi and Al Gore plastered on her wall, fulfils the American sitcom template of being super-smart and uttering lines that could have come from someone three times her age (ie, the writers). Her adult obsessions and mature wit make me crave seeing a kid on an American sitcom who hasn’t been tutored by Groucho Marx. Louise was initially played by Laura Marano but was replaced in later episodes with a younger, cuter, blonder actress, so I think we all know which way this show is heading (Webster or Danny Partridge, anyone?).
Gary’s fourteen-year-old son, Tom, an inept teenager who is confused by girls and by all the usual teenage upheavals, has to turn to his goofy father for advice, which gives the writers free rein to extol the virtues of men over women. Mysteriously, Tom turns up with a fake tan in later episodes, which makes me think that the television executives got in the producers’ ears about Gary’s son being too white.
Gary’s ex-wife, Allison, is constantly in his house (haven’t these people heard of the McDonald’s drop off?), and is intelligent, controlling and, conveniently, annoying, so that Gary can refer to her as a Nazi. She lays down the rules and gets in the way of Gary moving on to a new relationship. She also gets engaged to the marriage counsellor she and Gary were seeing – an older man, played by Ed Begley Jr, who is in touch with his feelings and considerate, and therefore bears the brunt of Gary’s humour.
Rounding out the cast is Gary’s work buddy, Dennis (Al Madrigal), who just wants to talk about bloke things, and Gary’s new, super-hot, younger girlfriend, Vanessa (Jaime King). In the real world, the newly divorced Gary would never be able to get a girlfriend like Vanessa, but a normal-looking, lonely, middle-aged woman with kids isn’t going to get the ratings.
Gary Unmarried features the traditional clash of rivals; man versus woman, ignorance versus intelligence, old versus young, and funny versus unfunny. This sitcom isn’t trying to re-invent the wheel. In fact, it believes the wheel is doing a fine job of driving a vehicle that aims to please without giving insights, and to supply jokes that make you laugh but won’t make you think.
This piece originally appeared in ‘The Big issue’.
Matt Quartermaine is a Melbourne-based writer and comedian. With Matt Parkinson, Tim Smith and Andrew Goodone, he produces ‘The Chat’, a weekly podcast in which ‘four grown men in comfortable chairs spill their guts’. Click here to download it for free at iTunes.
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