ABC may have found his next big family comedy – and his secret weapon is a man best known for a show about dick graffiti.
Home economics, which premieres on Wednesday, begins with a simple premise: three siblings, each in a very different income group, navigate their complicated financial relationship to stay family-bound. Topher Grace, which reflects his run as Eric Forman’s endearing debut That 70’s Show, anchors this new series as a wet blanket older brother Tom Hayworth. The Impossibly Alluring Jimmy Tatro, best known for his side-splitting as Dylan Maxwell in American Vandal, plays Tom’s insane brother, Connor, while Caitlin McGee plays their eldest sister, Sarah – who is recently unemployed, the most financially difficult. (You can see, because the apartment she shares with her wife, Denise, is cramped and painted dark green for the best thing; also, their car has pop-up windows.)
It’s fascinating to see this series on ABC, about a decade after the network launched its Emmys juggernaut. Modern family. Although debuting at the height of a global financial downturn in 2009, the comedian-style sitcom (which was extremely popular with affluent audiences) drew the recession-resistant Pritchett family and became a trusted hit with critics and audiences for years. . . During the Mod FamIn government, the sitcom genre seemed to follow, at least on the broadcast, until Donald Trump’s 2016 election sparked renewed interest in the working class.
Unlike the Pritchetts, Home economics“Hayworths has to think about money. While Tom, a struggling novelist, struggles to get a loan from his absurdly wealthy baby brother, Sarah jokes about the idea of their quarantine brother sitting in his old mansion in Seattle – where his pool boy is a TikTok has been influenced. The show handles its class tension with a light touch and uses the genre identity show to alleviate these awkward conversations with humor and humanity. Its early deliveries are promising, mainly due to the easy chemistry of the cast – who all seem to understand their assignments perfectly.
It’s hard to imagine anyone other than Grace, who plays the executive as well as the lead, and plays Tom with such sweet yet unpleasant ease. (“I won the most promising debut novel at the Nantucket Book Festival in 2009, non-fantasy or science fiction,” Tom boasts at one point. “I think I can handle a wedding loaf.”) Like Eric Forman, Tom is kind. , a little picky and deeply insecure. His wife, Marina, played by a delicious sardonic Karla Souza, is a retired lawyer who, despite the family’s financial woes, mostly spends her time listening to podcasts of murder and wondering out loud if she should go back to work. . (I mean … probably ?!) The two share a daughter, Camila, and a baby twin.
McGee, meanwhile, hits all the right comic notes as the older sibling who does not work, but just wants to prove that she still knows best (even if she does not). Authors Michael Colton and John Aboud also know clearly what they have in support of player Sasheer Zamata, who plays Sarah’s wife, Denise – an earthly, astrologically-obsessed earth sign who just wants her in-laws to have the devil cools. Their children, Kelvin and Shamiah, mostly spend their time frying Sarah when her antics get out of hand.
But it’s Tatro who reliably runs away with the program in each of the three episodes available for review. The actor’s charisma ensures that his one-percent character, who loves nothing more than to remind people that he bought his palace house from Matt Damon, is simply too oafish to hate.
It does not hurt that Connor also, as we learn early on, divorces, forcing him to reevaluate his life and invent such boring things as what he calls ‘the guardianship place’ with his daughter Gretchen. Tatro never loses his heartless character’s face, making scenes like one of his character desperately sway his sadness to the tune of Flo-Rida’s “Low” as strange as they are creepy.
The series unfolds in chapters while Tom turns the story of his family into a book. Tom’s narration is fortunately sparse, and prevents the well-known gimmick from surpassing the series. It’s unclear how long we’ll have to wait before Tom reveals his plans to the family – but given how invested he seems to keep it a secret, it seems inevitable that a settlement is on the way. Hopefully, when the bigger clan realizes this, Connor is not too angry; after all, he only lent a substantial amount to Tom to keep his family going.
‘It’s unclear how long we’ll have to wait before Tom reveals his plans to the family – but given how invested he seems to keep it a secret, it seems inevitable that a settlement is on the way.”
This perhaps brings us to the one weak link of this series: Although Souza makes the best of her role, Marina feels underdeveloped. It is unclear why the retired lawyer, given the family’s apparent financial problems, did not seriously consider returning to her practice. The series nods to Souza’s Mexican roots by allowing her to fry her TV husband in both English and Spanish with their bilingual daughter – and by greeting her in-laws in broken Spanish – but we know little about Marina outside of her heritage and her apparent. drinking problem. (As the episodes go on, Marina’s one call card becomes the endless parade of wine glasses in her hand – a tired herd that quickly thins.) Hopefully Souza will have more interesting work to do in future episodes.
Sarah and Denise’s siblings can also fall under a complicated light. Although many of the jokes feel organic at the expense of them – like Sarah insisting that she does not like astrology, while Denise says, ‘It’s a very’ Capricorn ‘thing to say “- like others when they have children a cousin asks what pronouns her dolls use, feels a little more punctual, but overall, the two make the most convincing couple in the series, and McGee and Zamata bounce back with amazing ease – especially because their characters value the cultural value of Say Yes to the dress.
It is impossible for now to see if this charming sitcom is the fame of predecessors such as the Modern family. But exploring the class’s soft focus feels like a fertile ground for a broadcast sitcom in 2021 – and the drastic cast, specific but flexible premise and focus on the heart feels right on the money.