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One thing you can’t deny about Chuck Lorre is that when it comes to TV sitcoms, he knows how to attract an audience. Currently airing Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory regularly chalk up in the region of 15 million viewers in the US, and classic ‘90s series Dharma & Greg and Cybill, I’m not ashamed to admit, have both earned themselves a place on my DVD shelf. So how does his latest venture Mike & Molly, about a couple who meet at Overeaters Anonymous, slot into his catalogue of success?
Mike is a sarcastic yet loveable overweight cop with a wisecracking partner Carl. Molly is a bubbly teacher who gets no weight-loss support from her skinny cake-loving mother Joyce and partying pot-smoking sister Victoria. Looking for encouragement in a different place, Molly is inspired by Mike’s speech at a meeting, and the two slowly but surely develop feelings for each other.
There are a few rules sitcoms always need to follow; aside from the obvious such as a sharp script and likeable leads, one of them is a strong supporting cast, and unfortunately the latter is where I feel Mike & Molly lacks substance. Carl is a stereotype of a funny black guy who, while getting some of the best lines on paper, fails to deliver them in a non-caricatured manner. Victoria’s performance is even worse – she’s reminiscent of a female Joey Tribbiani (Friends) but is frequently high with no character depth. Pure idiocy can only ever generate cheap laughs, something that should never be lauded.
The reason this series attracted attention was its theme and the inevitable fat jokes that would emerge – is it possible to base a comedy around fat people which laughed with them and not at them? There’s really nothing of offence here, but the problem lies more in the abundance of chubby-reliant chuckles than their content. They need to diversify their humour away from the physical and be a little more daring, precisely by pushing the envelope and making some jaws drop over their potentially controversial topic. There is promise of that – particularly in the classroom scene where Molly’s fourth grade class fire questions at Mike about the police. The only moment that evoked a vocal amused response from me was towards the end – but I blame the off-putting and somewhat aggressive laughter track more than anything else.
Not many sitcoms can bowl you over after one episode, so I’m giving Mike & Molly time to find its feet, build its characters and progress – it could surprise us. For now, it’s a nice way to kill half an hour while doing some other more pressing task that doesn’t require too much attention.
Mike & Molly continues on Mondays at 9.30pm on Comedy Central
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