The first episode started strong and funny with Rel's conversation on the phone, but it hasn't really been funny again until the last couple of episodes. I continued to watch in the meantime because it was a refreshingly relatively wholesome TV show, but it had a few flaws:
1) No comedy should have characters dressing up as other characters after Martin Lawrence did it on his self-titled TV show and knocked it out of the park. After that I feel like we've seen it, it's not comedically surprising anymore, and it just seems like a ripoff of the beloved Martin TV show.
2) As a black woman I feel like Rel tried too hard to be "black" and funny. The best black TV shows don't try to be black, they just naturally portray things in a way that black audience members can relate to, even though I know that most of the writers for a lot of these shows were actually white). Whatever the case, it was naturally a black experience and from the point of view of different kinds of black people (one stroke does not cover us all just like with other races). As for trying too hard to be funny, the thing with sitcoms is You cannot try to be funny; either you're funny or you're not. Who's to blame? For this show I would say that the writers did not do a good job coming up with comedic material for the bulk of the episodes, and that the actors were not good and delivering comedic lines which is harder than it sounds. For example, I don't think anything that the brother said was written as being funny or delivered in a funny way, Rel and his father (Sinbad) often mumbled through their comedic deliveries, and Brittany many times delivered her comedic lines with too much attitude which goes back to my previous argument about trying too hard to be black. And no, black women do not always have an attitude so I wish they would have told her to tone down that particular stereotype. But, and this is going to be shocking, the funniest one who time and again made me laugh out loud with almost everything he said was the bartender. He was really great!
3) The wrong actors/characters used. If I was to change a few things in the show I would have done the following: Axe the brother. He was unfunny and unnecessary as a character. I would have either left him out or turn him into Rel's sister, someone who can spar with Brittany a la Martin Payne and Pamela James or Fred Sanford and Esther Anderson, except that it would be too women going back and forth. I would also have cast someone else for the father's character. I was happy to see Sinbad make a comeback too, but the truth is that he hasn't done anything noteworthy in a while and is a little out of practice. That showed in the way he delivered his character. Sometimes I felt like he was trying to remember his lines or was unsure about how to deliver them, and he also put too much attitude on everything he said and was very huffy with his speech like he was out of breath.I think that Wendell Pierce would have done really well in this role. Lastly, I would have hired a better team of comedic writers who have experience writing for black comedies specifically.
Still, I give it a 7 because, again, I appreciate that it was relatively wholesome and had some funny episodes toward the end of the season.
1) No comedy should have characters dressing up as other characters after Martin Lawrence did it on his self-titled TV show and knocked it out of the park. After that I feel like we've seen it, it's not comedically surprising anymore, and it just seems like a ripoff of the beloved Martin TV show.
2) As a black woman I feel like Rel tried too hard to be "black" and funny. The best black TV shows don't try to be black, they just naturally portray things in a way that black audience members can relate to, even though I know that most of the writers for a lot of these shows were actually white). Whatever the case, it was naturally a black experience and from the point of view of different kinds of black people (one stroke does not cover us all just like with other races). As for trying too hard to be funny, the thing with sitcoms is You cannot try to be funny; either you're funny or you're not. Who's to blame? For this show I would say that the writers did not do a good job coming up with comedic material for the bulk of the episodes, and that the actors were not good and delivering comedic lines which is harder than it sounds. For example, I don't think anything that the brother said was written as being funny or delivered in a funny way, Rel and his father (Sinbad) often mumbled through their comedic deliveries, and Brittany many times delivered her comedic lines with too much attitude which goes back to my previous argument about trying too hard to be black. And no, black women do not always have an attitude so I wish they would have told her to tone down that particular stereotype. But, and this is going to be shocking, the funniest one who time and again made me laugh out loud with almost everything he said was the bartender. He was really great!
3) The wrong actors/characters used. If I was to change a few things in the show I would have done the following: Axe the brother. He was unfunny and unnecessary as a character. I would have either left him out or turn him into Rel's sister, someone who can spar with Brittany a la Martin Payne and Pamela James or Fred Sanford and Esther Anderson, except that it would be too women going back and forth. I would also have cast someone else for the father's character. I was happy to see Sinbad make a comeback too, but the truth is that he hasn't done anything noteworthy in a while and is a little out of practice. That showed in the way he delivered his character. Sometimes I felt like he was trying to remember his lines or was unsure about how to deliver them, and he also put too much attitude on everything he said and was very huffy with his speech like he was out of breath.I think that Wendell Pierce would have done really well in this role. Lastly, I would have hired a better team of comedic writers who have experience writing for black comedies specifically.
Still, I give it a 7 because, again, I appreciate that it was relatively wholesome and had some funny episodes toward the end of the season.