The First Family

I'm quite shocked that aisle b posting the inaugural review for "The First Family," a MyNetwork sitcom that's on Saturdays at 8 & 8:30 PM Pacific. If you hadn't noticed, Saturday often has some pretty crappy shows on TV, implying people choose to do many things on Saturdays than become viewers, thus the only thing worth watching is "Sabado Gigante," a well-watched program by Hispanic viewers for five decades. I'm not a Hispanic, so whenever I play the Wii U on Saturdays at 8 or 8:30, I flip channels between PBS' "Lawrence Welk" (nerdy!) & "Keeping Up Appearances" (quaintly funny but no fart jokes), KNXT-TV, a Catholic-run station's "Mormon Tabernacle Choir" (dull!) & "Classic Cinema," which are B&W PG-rated movies hosted by a priest (definitely paying attention 2 the Wii U), Univision's "Sabado Gigante" (which has babes, after all) & MyNetwork's "The First Family" & then "Mr. Box Office." I'll type a review for the latter soon; I think isle b the 1st, 2. T1STF is created by Byron Allen, a comedian who perhaps exists a few years behind in the thyme-space continuum 'cause sometimes I see his "Comics Unleashed" show sometime after midnight & his (thankfully) short monologue contains '00s jokes, e.g. Britney & K-Fed, freedom fries, & boy bands not named One Direction. & thus, perhaps 'cause he's got ties to MyNetwork, he's made "The First Family," a quaint little sitcom about a African-American family in the White House. Is this comedy an Obama effect? I doubt it; judging by the jokes "The First Family" could've been made during the Reagan administration. It's more appropriate alongside "The Cosby Show," "Just the Ten of Us," & "227," not "Modern Family," "Parks & Recreation," "The Big Bang Theory" or another White House sitcom "1600 Penn" (which I don't watch but assume has edgier, more political humour). In fact, past "227" stars Jackee Harry & Marla Gibbs are in "The First Family" & haven't aged well. I'm also shocked to see legendary Motown chanteuse Gladys Knight on this show, meaning she continues to degrade in celebrity after being a "Dancing w/ the Stars" contestant. & since "The First Family" is pretty much family-oriented, the star of the show, Christopher B. Duncan, might as well be the Prime Minister of Canada or the governor of North Carolina as many story lines are about handling his family instead of the state of the union. Since President William Johnson's platform ain't well-known, he might as well be doing all the notorious things to destroy America as the Tea Partiers allege. Remember when the First Lady got a hairdo shaped like the Statue of Liberty? Perhaps Katherine's hair moved up the agenda past weakly negotiating w/ Middle Eastern heads of state & letting the terrorists win according to Sean Hannity or Mark Levin. Pardon my political rhetoric but I type that in this review to remind you that "The First Family" features no political humor nearly whatsoever. & the jokes about the conflicts & wacky schemes between Jackee & John Witherspoon & whatever the First Kids r up 2 are better left on family-friendly cable channels like ABC Family or The Disney Channel. Even the butler is made out of the Benson/Geoffrey template! So if you like your family sitcoms devoid of the gay agenda like "Modern Family" or political satire like "1600 Penn" & w/ old fashioned (not old school!) comedy circa 1990, by all means watch "The First Family."

Couldn't get much worse with these actors and actresses.

The plots are simply a was of good time. Don't waste your time! Bring back quality TV!

Could we do more with a popular subject? Lines weren't present day lingo.

Have the standards dropped that low?

Quality of Cable TV is better than networks.

Some lessons need to be learned.

Stories about the White House families should have a sense of normal people.

But not in normal situations.

Please listen to the viewers!

This has to be the laziest show ever made, and that's saying something considering we live in a world with House of Payne and Meet the Browns. At least those shows have somewhat comprehensible plot lines and structured characters... the people on this show are pitiful in their attempts at anything remotely related to acting or storytelling. It makes me wonder how low all-black sitcoms will go in the future, because there's obviously no end in sight and no one behind the cameras saying "this is awful." Sitcoms with black families, such as Family Matters and The Cosby Show were lovable. They were also historic. The reason? They didn't ram it down your throat that the characters were black, and that's how it should be. Shows like The First Family are the exact opposite. They exist only to inform you that the people involved are black people, talking like black people, dealing with black people problems and doing black people things. The derogation of white characters is also something that needs to be addressed. How can a race of people who were repeatedly insulted in television and film turn around and do it to another race? That's hypocrisy on a whole new level. The fact that it's being done in this day and age and that it's allowed is mindblowing. If it were the other way around the show would have been off the air before it had a chance to post its ratings.

Garbage like this shouldn't be supported, by anyone. It's lazy, racist and unfunny.

I'm not exactly sure how I came upon this garbage on a Sunday afternoon, but this show is an absolute train wreck. I feel guilty for leaving it on, for fear of raising the number of viewers by one. Complete juvenile "comedy", canned laughter, down right terrible. And as usual with all the black comedies these days, all the non-blacks on the show are portrayed as complete idiots. If the opposite were to happen, it would start a race riot. But that's a whole different topic. The fact remains, this show lasting two seasons according to IMDb proves that there are just too many channels with time to fill, no matter how bad the programming.

If a white man (or South Asian or East Asian or Amerindian or Hispanic or Pacific Islander) had created this he'd have been lynched as a racist. Forget about the idiotic and insulting white, East Asian and South Asian stereotypes, it trumpets and celebrates ridiculous black stereotypes on steroids.

And yes, the scripts, sets, and most of the acting suck. The one thing to be said for the show is that this fictional first African-American First Family would - despite the race jokes, canned-laughter and stereotyping that makes What's Happening Now? look like The Color Purple - it would still be infinitely preferable to the actual one that inspired it, and the fictional President William Johnson - or arguably even actor Christopher Duncan - a vastly better president than BO.