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Three
Men and a Teenager: Oh Grow Up
Written
by James Koonce, September 23rd, 1999
Men living
together is an accepted TV staple. Has been for decades. Think
M*A*S*H, The Odd Couple, The Courtship of Eddie's
Father, even Bosom Buddies. The domestic angle provides
instant opportunity for all sorts of fish-out-of-water scenarios:
men in the kitchen, men cleaning house, men doing laundry. All
tried-and-true laugh getters, at least once upon a time. But it's
almost the millennium, of course, and audiences today are much
more sophisticated than that. Which is why ABC's new comedy Oh
Grow Up puts a clever spin on the whole arrangement - one
of the men is actually gay!
Okay, so
maybe it's not the shocker it might once have been. But at least
it gives the show a little something to distinguish itself, which
it desperately needs. The household in question is populated by
Hunter (Stephen Dunham), successful building contractor and major
lothario, Norris (David Alan Basche), mildly neurotic medical
supply salesman-turned-artist, and Ford (John Ducey). The three
were roommates once before in college, and only recently has Ford
returned to the fold, having realized that in spite of his marriage,
he's gay. There's also a dog named Mom, which is probably the
most original thing about the series. Mom occasionally holds forth
on the goings-on, barking her displeasure (which is conveniently
subtitled for those of us who don't speak spaniel, or whatever
kind of dog she is).
Throwing
a wrench into the relative idylls of Hunter's life is Chloe (Niesha
Trout), who turns out to be his eighteen year old daughter he
never knew about (the product of a short-lived fling half his
lifetime ago). She turns up on his doorstep one night, new in
town, enrolled at NYU as a freshman. Suddenly, a black cloud appears
on the horizon - how will Hunter possibly maintain his busy sex
life knowing he's got progeny out there? And girl progeny at that?
Hot girl progeny, for heaven's sake! Clearly something has to
give, so in one fell swoop, the inveterate ladies' man transmogrifies
from footloose, fancy-free perennial bachelor to instant father
figure.
It's not
all fun and games for the other guys, either. Norris, a nervous
wreck about a gallery show coming up, frets that he'll never sell
a painting and be forced to return to the world of wholesale catheters
and bedpans, his dreams of being a professional artist dashed
forever. (Of course, someone needs to sit down and tell him that
being represented by a gallery as a tyro is a pretty good sign
of good things waiting to happen, but still.) Suffering a crisis
of her own is Suzanne (Rena Sofer), Ford's wife, still deeply
mired in a love/hate relationship with her gay spouse and shocked
that he's actually going through with batting for the other team.
(Even more shocked that she never saw the signs, a Celine Dion
CD collection and a boyhood love of Tarzan among them.) Their
friendship isn't going as well as they might have thought, too
laden with baggage as it is, and she comically turns to wine to
take her mind off the whole thing.
Created by
Alan Ball (also responsible for the amazing feature American Beauty),
the premiere episode has some good laughs, but unfortunately not
much more. The cast are all serviceable sitcom players, but they
never push the envelope, and the dialogue never really requires
them to. Dunham looks like he graduated from the Ted Danson school
of acting - stooped shoulders, staccato delivery, furrowed brow.
Ducey's Ford finds himself living in a whole new world, yet remains
relatively nonchalant toward his newfound gayness. His resistance
to all things screechingly queeny is refreshing from a societal
point of view (hear that, Will & Grace?), but it makes him fairly
dull as a character. Only Basche as Norris comes the closest to
being real, and one suspects that he's the one with whom Ball
finds the most in common.
Pinpointing
exactly why a show misses the mark is never easy, and "scrap the
entire thing and start over" isn't very constructive advice. But
in this case, it would seem to be the best thing, because while
the premiere is never terrible, it's not very good either. And
at some point it's time to Grow Up and move on.
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