he My Boys on TBS
Well, I'm back, after an unplanned hiatus of sleep deprivation through the month of July, but I'm back, hopefully. So why not start with some TV?
I have just found My Boys (Mon. 10/9 - TBS) and why has no one told me about this show before now? Hmmmmm? I'm waiting..... This is what happened, I'm at home Sunday morning, having been up until aroun 3 AM, but unable to sleep later than 6:30 and looking flipping through the channels, unable to commit to watching something on my TIVO for fear of passing out when I land on a season marathon of My Boys starting up on TBS. Now, I've never been really impressed by the majority of these cable channels that bring out new shows to spice up the reruns of Magnum PI and six hours of Shawshank Redemption Saturdays, but this looked interesting and I had nothing better to watch in my haze of delirium.
After about the first, oh I don't know, six minutes, I was totally hooked. Like Season Passing it hooked, like watching the entire season that day hooked. Damning TBS for not starting the new season right then, at midnight (the season started the next day at 9PM, but I needed a fix.) Here's the official tag line description: "A female sports columnist in Chicago deals with the men in her life including her brother, her ex-boyfriend, her best friend and a sportswriter for a rival publication." You get the general idea, but there's more.
First, let's review the cast, because there are some gems in here. The center of the show is Jordan Spiro who portrays PJ, the female sports columnist. Spiro is funny, and in this show tomboy funny, she has great timing and can hold her own with a supporting cast of characters that could easily overwhelm a lesser actress. The ensemble of her "Boys" includes Jim Gaffigan as her older, married, living in the suburbs brother. This man is hysterical. That's all that can be said. If you've seen his stand up or any of his cameo work on tons of shows, you know this and here he isn't overused, he isn't underused and is definitely the comedic leader of the group. If this cast isn't soaking up all his knoweledge and skill, they have lost their minds. For me, the show without Gaffigan would be passable, he is the spark that really takes each episode up to good television that you are prepared to venture away from the big networks for.
Another standout, and a blast from the past, is Johnny Galecki, remember David, Darlene's boyfriend/ husband on Roseanne? Yep, he's in My Boys as "Trouty", who is a friend of one of the main characters and is one of those white guys who has completely involved them self in hip-hop culture and probably shouldn't have. Galecki is hysterical and I mean worth watching the show just for his character hysterical. In some scenes you can tell the rest of the actors aren't quite sure what to do with him because he is so far into it. Trouty, who was probably written to be a smaller role at first, really began to expand toward the end of the season and I worry he will be leaving as I saw some promos for something called "The Big Bang Theory" over on FOX this fall of which he is a cast member. I hope he stays on My Boys.
While I could dive into the rest of the cast, who are all pretty good, I just don't have my blogging chops back yet, I'm wearing down, but I will say they are all good and all playing their specific role in the show very well. The show centers around the groups poker games, their long standing friendships, PJ's underlying emotional tention with her best friend, Brendan, and of course Cubs baseball. All the episodes are narrated by Spiro and are compared to the rules of baseball, etc. It's really a sitcom that sports guys can get into. I think a lot of sitcoms fail to specifically target things for guy's guys sometimes and miss the mark when trying to incorporate things like poker games and sports and guys being guys. My Boys hits the mark precisely and seems to have a team of writers made up of most of my college buddies watching Razorback games on Saturdays.
Now My Boys is going to take up space in the old TIVO, I don't know what I'll be axing for it yet, but you can believe I will be keeping up with this one for awhile.
Let's go Cubbies, confidetially, Mr. Ricky.
