Happy Family

It took me awhile to warm up to John Larroquette and Christine Baranski, they're both professional and veteran of the sitcom world. Between them, they have about six or seven Emmys maybe more between them. Both John and Christine are wonderful and believable as a veteran married couple to watch even with mediocre material. They are trying and the relationship between Maggie and young Tim is kind of cute and appropriate nowadays. With 8 time Emmy Winner Cloris Leachman casted as Peter's mother, the show is on its way for improvement. Give it a chance or two. If you want to watch two professionals, tune in on Tuesday nights!

Network: NBC; Genre: Family Sitcom; Content Rating: TV-PG; Classification: Contemporary (Star range: 1 - 4)

Season Reviewed: Complete series (1 season)

Just the prospect of seeing John Larroquette and Christine Baranski working side-by-side in a series is enough to move me nearly to the edge of my seat, salivating at the comic possibilities, in anticipation. Baranski is probably best known for her breakout performance on 'Cybill'. And Larroquette has been all over town from 'Night Court' to 'The Practice' and his own self-titled sitcom (a cult favorite) in between. So you can only imagine my profound disappointment with the final product of 'Happy Family', a show with two Emmy-award winning, arguably brilliant comic actors at the top of its billing that doesn't get the slightest bit of inspiration from them.

I don't know what I was expecting. Surely not the 2nd coming of 'Seinfeld', but at least a few chuckles. Instead of putting Larroquette and Baranski in the role of the take-charge parents and letting the unhinged hilarity ensue, this generically titled series has them tied down in a standard mother/father role. They are more like tortured victims under the thumb of their sad sack children who refuse to leave the nest. Baranski halfway tries (the show high points are in the few moments when we see her old Maryann act shining through) and Larroquette just looks old and tired. Their hearts aren't into it.

The two almost take a backseat to the show's overwhelming focus on the kids. Tim (Tyler Andrews, 'Boston Public') is the dunderhead who leaves the house for the first time only to get in an Oedipus Rex relationship with the next door neighbor (Susan Gibney, 'Crossing Jordon'). Todd (Jeff Bryan Davis, 'The Downer Channel'), the favorite child, has got problems choosing two women despite being engaged to one (can't we all relate?). Lastly, Sara (Melanie Deanne Moore), the ignored child, is, well, ignored. Laughing yet? A character that is usually limited to 1-liners in a background role, Sara is the most interesting of the lot and Deanne Moore is the most engaging in the cast (TV aficionados may find it interesting to know that she was a support group member in ABC's 'Cupid' - one of the best TV shows to ever grace the small screen). She's got a future. The high point of the series is that it never sells out and gives Sara a love interest. Had this show gone on it might - might - have been interesting to see how well the writers could hold this out.

Creators Moses Port and David Guarascio (both from the seemingly endless writers-for-hire staff of 'Just Shoot Me!' now getting their own shows) want this to be an edgier, more original family sitcom and while they don't really succeed the effort is palpable as identifiable twists are made in a standard sitcom storyline. It's certainly better than 'Shoot' but not by much. These twists might evoke a knowing nod but little else, certainly not the knee-slapping hysterics Port and Guarascio are probably going for. I've got no sympathy for them. They stray away from the truly trite but they never really plant themselves into original ground of their own. So the show just kind of floats around tediously. It's to marginally different for those that want another familiar sitcom and to mediocre for those, like myself, that want to see something different. It only doesn't look bad because so many other shows are noticeably so much worse. Director Pamela Fryman's credit list reads like a what's what of inconsequential (or "hack", if you will) NBC sitcoms and she does her best to keep this show as indistinguishable from those and towing the network line as much as possible.

* ½

I personally loved "happy family" - it was a funny family show. Watching it made me realize and laugh at the fact that EVERY family is dysfunctional, insane and quirky (no matter what they look like on the outside) and that's OK. Each week it made me laugh at/with them and at my own families craziness - we're all nuts but we have a lot of love and fun, but that's OK because that's just who we are! I looked forward to this comedy each week and was very, very disappointed at it being canceled, I'm assuming that's what happened although i never heard anymore about it. I don't watch T.V. much anymore, there's nothing really worth my time out there, there's maybe 1 or 2 I will sit down for, but no really good comedies. I'm personally so tired of all the "reality" T.V. shows, we all know they're not that reality anyway, most of them are staged/edited. I wish the T.V. execs would go back to comedy, not just comedy, but family comedy - raunchy/nasty comedy is distasteful and not really funny, just embarrassing. But going back to the beginning, I wonder if there's anyway to get the T.V. execs to get this TV show back up and running again because it really was a cute family comedy.

This was a really funny show. It deserved a second season and the way things ended in season 1 it would have been very interesting. When I first watch happy family i wasn't impressed at all and I missed an episode due to my disappointment. So, it started of slowly, it wasn't really that funny but then towards the middle of the season it picked up and by the end it was making crack up all the time. As soon as Maggie got booted off the show became a lot funnier because Tim had to move back home. Every single cast member performed brilliantly and the material was they had to work with was quality towards the end of the season. Even Alex played by JP was funny on occasions. And the materials focus was spread well throughout the whole family. My favourite character would have to be Peter Brennan and Tim. The episode where the parents decided to be hip an smoke pot was 9/10 and so was the tooth or dental wars episode. But, the best episodes were the last two, the first one when Tim was diagnosed with stress was an absolute crack up.I couldn't stop laughing when i saw Peter's expression and the fact that Tim is a bum, how could he be stress! And the part where he GAVE UP on him and then later on had to care again because he got a job was a classic. And the ending of the final episode was superb! I tape those to episodes and i'm gonna make sure i don't tape over them they were absolutely hilarious. Also, the episode were Dr. Brennan wanted a friend, the ending seen in the plane, how funny was that!!! Excellent script 2nd half of the season! 1st half of season 7/10 last half 9.5/10

I'll leave that question up to the individual viewer. This show is by no means a masterpiece, but it could grow into something special. The situation itself is funny, though they will (of course) need to go somewhere with it. The individual lives of the three offspring will need to develop as the show goes on or it will quickly grow old, though the underlying personalities should fuel new situations. I like the extra layer of the story which results from the fact that each of the parents has a clear favorite among the children. Peter prefers Todd, the eldest child, to the point that he was initially in denial about Todd's "2-woman problem." Annie, on the other hand, strongly favors younger son Tim (I loved how horrified she was upon seeing that Tim's new much-older lover was allowing him to drink soda before bedtime). This also contributes to daughter Sara's pathetic self-image.