THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT

Based on the childhood of Tim Doyle, The Kids Are Alright is about the Cleary family with Mike (Michael Cudlitz) and Peggy Cleary (Mary McCormack) as the parents of their eight Irish Catholic sons with Tim Doyle narrating the sitcom. 

Set in Los Angeles in 1972, Timmy (Jack Gore) aspires to be the main lead of a play since he couldn’t exactly lead his own with his elder brother Lawrence (Sam Straley) stealing all the attention by joining the seminary. Joey (Christopher Paul Richards) unfortunately steals all of his money, and the house’s tattletale Frank (Sawyer Barth) rushes off to tell their mother about Timmy’s audition for which he gets rewarded, of course. “We don’t have the wherewithal for any of you kids in this family to be special,” she tells Timmy who had shared his dreams with her. She says something similar to Pat (Santino Barnard) when he notifies her that he might have asthma. Meanwhile, Eddie (Caleb Foote) panics when Lawrence announces that he’ll be dropping out of the seminary, not wanting to have the burden thrown over his shoulders as second eldest.

Jack Gore obviously has a lot of load to take over as the child version of Doyle. My favourite character has to Joey with his carefree attitude and insistence of taking a “chill pill”. I also appreciate how Doyle has given Santino a role fit for his age, not some ‘I’m wise beyond my age’ kind of crap others would’ve told him to portray. The cast has been perfectly chosen too, carrying their roles the best they can.

With great humor and realistic nostalgia comes The Kids Are Alright, and it couldn’t get any better. 

Rating: 4Stars

THE NEIGHBORHOOD

Dave and Gemma Johnson (played by Max Greenfield and Beth Behrs respectively) move into an American-African neighbourhood of Los Angeles along with their son Grover (Hank Greenspan). Calvin (Cedric the Entertainer), their next door neighbour who lives with his wife Tina (Tichina Arnold) and son Malcolm (Sheaun McKinney), has this nagging voice in his head telling him that his new neighbours are way too nice to not be racist. And as a fan of Dwayne Johnson, he’s quite shocked once it comes to his knowledge that the new family, despite of being The Johnsons, are white! 

The Neighbourhood helps us realise that racial discrimination against white people exists too, surprise. Greenfield portrays Dave as a conflict mediator who tries to shimmy into everyone’s hearts using his optimism that becomes tiring extremely quickly. Gemma, on the other hand, tries to give off an image of a woke wife, becoming a student of Tina who teaches her phrases such as “throwing shade” or “thirst”. 

Unfortunately, Malcolm and Marty (Calvin’s son who moves out of the neighbourhood and is played by Marcel Spears) seem to be the only stable characters in this sitcom seeing as Calvin’s persistent speeches about how white people claim they have black friends and are attracted to Rihanna as to not seem racist, and Dave’s constant accidental blubbering of racist things and his getting flustered once he realises, becomes increasingly boring at one point. 

I genuinely hope that The Neighbourhood manages to live up to the cast it has been gifted with. 

Rating: 3Stars

SINGLE PARENTS

Single Parents stars Taran Killiam as Will, the trying-to-be-perfect parent of Sophie (Marlow Barkley) who is pulled out of the “vortex” and shown that being a great parent doesn’t mean that you give up your own freedom. Helping him to achieve this are Angie (Leighton Meester) who has a son that’s more mature than he looks, Douglas (played by Brad Garett) with two twin daughters, Poppy (Kimrie Lewis) who has a gay son and Miggy (Jake Choi) who has a new born baby son. 

The sitcom is made funny with Miggy’s unfamiliarity towards parenthood, Douglas’s curios questions which makes him seem more of the usual old-white-guy-Trump-supporter and the random outbursts of Moana. Sadly though, all this gets uninteresting embarrassingly quick.

Single Parents also makes targeted jabs that are mundane now that ABC has released various shows with almost the same plot. I love how Angie says, “We’re single parents. We don’t volunteer. We just try and survive until a time in the day when it’s appropriate to open wine” in the pilot, once again hinting at the already obvious storyline. 

I’m pretty sure that parenthood comes with a lot more than expected, like you can’t go out on dates every Friday night like you used to, instead you’re stuck at home cleaning your kids’ poop or telling them bedtime stories (in Single Parents’ case, singing Moana). 

This sitcom is something whose jokes you can already identify before they are even said, same with the plot.

Rating: 3Stars