Fall TV Friday – 2005 – The War At Home
The War At Home – FOX – 2 Seasons (44 Episodes) – USA
In October 2009 I decided to take a look back at the new shows that debuted during the Fall of 2005. These are their stories.
The final episode of Married… With Children aired on FOX in 1997 and ever since that date FOX have done everything they can to find the ‘next Married… With Children.’ Even by the time 2005 rolled around FOX still hadn’t given up hope that the next M…With C was just around the corner. Enter The War At Home a FOX family comedy that trudges through so much familiar territory that it could almost be a parody of the ‘FOX family comedy’.
Meet Dave, played by Michael Rapaport, he’s a kind of dickish Dad who hates his kids, wants to have sex with his wife and doesn’t like that his son might be gay nor that his daughter might be dating a black guy. Dave’s wife Vicky is a sassy big breasted woman who outsmarts Dave at every turn. Their daughter Hillary hates her parents and is a bit of a slut, their son Larry may be a cross dresser, and their youngest Mike is a generic child actor.
Dave and his family sometimes address the camera directly in cut away scenes shot on a white background I assume is supposed to represent their mind. When we first meet Dave he wanders up to the camera and tells us how he blames Mary Tyler Moore for the fact that women are no longer happy just being housewives. That bitch. Everybody gets in on the cutaway action. In the real world Vicky yells at Dave about watching porn before cutting to the white screen and dropping this sidenote to camera: “The porn doesn’t even bother me. Frankly it’s one less thing for me to do around here.” HOO HAR! The annoying laugh track whoops, and jeers, and gets way to into a show they haven’t even seen a full episode of yet.
In the first episode their weirdo son Larry wants to go meet some girls, so he decides to dress up as a woman so that he can steal his mum’s car and not get in trouble because people will think it’s his mum driving and not him… and honestly I watched the thing and I didn’t quite understand the justification for a bunch of drag queen jokes. There was not a single plausible reason for Larry to dress up as a woman just so he could be caught by his parents other than that the writers wanted to take some shots at ‘the gays’ and didn’t know how else to bring it up.
The script is padded out with the sort of generic FOX sitcom zingers that you could write yourself as you watch at home. Dave and Vicky leave to have sex and he says “we could be back at anytime. Five minutes. Five hours.” She whips back “Five hours? Who are you kidding?”
Dave finds out Vicky has been emailing an ex-boyfriend of hers. He says “Maybe I should email all the women I’ve slept with.” She zings back “I’m sure they’d BOTH be very happy to hear from you.”
Most of the lines are awful, but I have to admit I did laugh a couple of times in both the first and second episodes. Don’t get me wrong, I hated myself for doing so, but there were a few slight laughs to found. Just a few. The problem with the show is that everything has been phoned in from better sitcoms. The supporting cast are a mix and match bunch from Generic Television Families ‘R Us. Michael Rapaport tries his hardest but he’s annoying at the best of times and he really does just prattle on here. Between Rapaport on this and Jay Mohr on Gary Unmarried its becoming increasingly depressing to turn on the TV in the 00’s to find promising supporting actors from the 90’s slumming it as sitcom dads.
The War At Home did manage to scrape up decent enough ratings during its initial run on Sunday nights to warrant a second season where it didn’t fair nearly as well. To put it in FOX perspective it debuted to the same numbers as The Cleveland Show did this year – and Cleveland has already been picked up for a second season. Speaking of which I think we can directly attribute the Sunday night domination of Seth MacFarlane to the failure of The War At Home. The War At Home was the last live action sitcom FOX ever gave a crack at Sunday nights before just handing over all their money to the MacFarlane monster.
In the end though The War At Home is really nothing more than a live action Seth MacFarlane series, only without the animal that acts like a human. In 2005 FOX may still have been searching high and low for the next Married… With Children, but it had always been there. Crude jokes. Jackass dad. Season after season of decreasing quality and relevance. FOX didn’t need The War At Home in the first place, they already had Family Guy.
Good, Alright, Bad Or Ugly?
Bad
