Being a parent is a veritable gold mine when it comes to comedy.
As a dad, I know this intimately. This past Father’s Day my 5-year-old daughter informed me that she loves me because my favorite color is pink and I have nice hair. I receive numerous texts from my wife relaying comments from our little ones. Recent example: My 7-year-old son asked my wife why she was reading a cookbook about birds. She was reading “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
They do weird things too. I came home the other day to that same child working on a Lite Brite. He triumphantly said he had designed a picture of an airplane flying over Japan. Oh and what is this big blue orb in between the two? I asked.
“A nuclear bomb,” he said.
Gulp. Apparently he did tackle that World War II book I was encouraging him to read.
It’s true, kids do say the darndest things.
Mining a lot of that territory is stand-up comedian Jim Gaffigan. An affable, middle-aged, everyman comic, Gaffigan is known for working clean and being a religious family man — a white whale in the stand-up comedy world. (Sorry, Jim, that wasn’t a crack about your weight). He’s made a living out of self-deprecating humor regarding his eating habits, parenting miscues and, well, bacon.
“Being a parent is difficult,” Gaffigan told Esquire last month. “Being a son and a daughter is difficult. It’s a human relationship. It’s great fodder for material.”
So when I got a press screener for his new TV show, “The Jim Gaffigan Show,” which is pitched as a man struggling to find balance between fatherhood, stand-up comedy and an insatiable appetite, I had an idea: get together some of my God-fearing, humor-loving, bacon-eating buddies and watch a few episodes of the show. Who better to judge whether or not Gaffigan hit the nail on the head when it comes to parenting, religion and food? Heck, one of my friends has six kids to Gaffigan’s five — and is a pastor. (The other pastor I invited only had five kids.)
So we recently gathered together — yes, we all got permission from the wives — with some cold beer and crunchy chips and settled in to watch four episodes of the show. Here were our thoughts:
Where are the kids? Gaffigan has five kids and that is made clear by his comically lugging them around the city in the opening credits. But when it came to the episodes we watched they were conspicuously absence. The kids really only played a key part in one of the plots — and that was more about Gaffigan screwing up their paperwork than about them. We surmised that this was likely due to the age of the kids — they appear to be between the ages of 2 and 6 — and their acting limitations, than a scripting choice. That said, two of the episodes had Gaffigan and his wife galivanting around the city for much of the night with no concern for children. None of us could relate to that. Though, to be fair, none of us have nannies.
There are some real belly laughs. The “dumb dad” tropes and food jokes can get a little tiresome, but overall we were laughing consistently. Whether it’s Gaffigan saying his wife’s well-dressed gay friend looks like “every bad guy on Downtown Abbey” or that his ultra-religious wife is “shiite Catholic,” there are some big laughs sprinkled throughout each episode. Much of the laughs are cribbed from Gaffigan’s stand-up act, which focuses on himself as the butt of the jokes. Also it’s nice that Gaffigan’s not the only one with the zingers. Remarking on visiting Gaffigan and his five kids at their two-room apartment, his single and slimy comedian friend, played by Adam Goldberg, says, “I’d rather visit Somalia in the rainy season.” That’s funny.
Chemistry of the cast is strong. The show was originally developed by CBS with Mira Sorvino as Gaffigan’s wife. The TV Land version seems to have gotten it right with Ashley Williams re-cast as the wife, Michael Ian Black as the wife’s best friend and Goldberg as Gaffigan’s friend. The three equally share screen time and all three are strong playing off Gaffigan’s confused-yet-endearing routine. Gaffigan clearly called in some favors as there are plenty of cameos by comedians like Chris Rock, Dave Attel, Jon Stewart and Janeane Garofalo, plus a recurring cameo by Macauley Culkin that is played for laughs.
The show still seems to be finding itself. This seems like a no-brainer since it’s the first season, but there wasn’t a lot of consistency in the four episodes we watched. The episode about Gaffigan being “caught” carrying a Bible had a social commentary aspect to it, complete with dream-like chase scene, while another episode was supposed to be a feel-good episode, sewing up a fractured relationship between Ian Black’s character and his father. The final episode we watched had an awkward “Law &Order” send-up tacked on to the end. The group’s opinion was that the show needs to find a groove that looks more like the first episode, which had a clever ending that didn’t feel preachy — despite the fact it occurred in a church.
Uncomfortable topics are handled with kid gloves. Religion and stand-up comedy are strange bedfellows, and the show, while poking some fun at each side, doesn’t really engage the subject directly. Gaffigan is the goofy dad who comes to church but isn’t real serious about God. Gaffigan’s wife, as stated above, is more religious, but Williams plays her disapproval as exasperated not harpy. It’s a nice tone, but not very realistic. When it comes to the social commentary on the cross-section of religion and pop culture, the show gets heavy handed. A dream sequence shows Gaffigan being chased down the street by separate mobs after a cascade of events follows him being photographed holding a huge Bible. This is a half-hour comedy so we cut it a break, but the characters never took a stand on much of anything. That’s not parenting.
Overall, Gaffigan is really a funny guy and that comes through in the show. His bozo routine can get a bit thin at times, but the jokes are near constant and many of them hit. In the world of TV comedies centered on dads, there’s “Full House” on one end and “Louie” on the other. “The Jim Gaffigan Show” seems to fall right smack dab in the middle. Laugh-out-loud funny, but safe.
As for more episodes about kids, we can’t speak for the other seven episodes, but hopefully Gaffigan uses them to mine some of that parenting gold.
Heck, maybe I’ll forward him a few of the texts I get from my wife.
Watch
“The Jim Gaffigan Show”
Premieres its 11-episode season July 15 at 10 p.m. on TV Land (cable)
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
