One of our lost threads was about will there ever be a sitcom based on a group of Spanish descent. The Nickelodeon one didn’t count but now there will be one. It’s from the producers of the Drew Carey show and features George Lopez and his family.
The George Lopez Show
The George Lopez Show
Let’s hope it does better then “All American Girl.”
I was the OP in that thread.
“This gritty comedy draws inspiration from Lopez’ own experience as a Los Angeles Latino and comes from the executive producers of The Drew Carey Show.”
As I said in that thread, I was asking out of curiosity, not because I felt there was a pressing need for a Latino sitcom. But since this is set in LA, I’ll give it a shot.
What no one remembers “Chico and the Man”, and “A.K.A. Pablo”? And there was a show with a guy named Greg Giraldo a few years back. Other than ‘Chico’, none lasted more than a few episodes I think.
The only sitcom with a Hispanic character I ever liked was Barney Miller. I think that show is no longer in production, but its been a while since I’ve seen prime time TV. Anyway, I hope the show is well rounded, and not stereotypical like the crap that goes on the WB and so on.
Been a while since you watched prime time TV? That’s an understatement. They stopped making Barney Miller more than twenty years ago!
I never saw “Chico & the Man.” I was too young. But Rilch had a specific way of opening his thread which may disqualify this one since it was only half Latino with Jack Albertson (Grandpa Joe from Willie Wonka) as the other half. But again I never saw it so I can’t comment. Yet he did shoot down my “CHiPs” suggestion, one cause it wasn’t a sitcom and 2 cause it was only half Latino. I suppose it would fall in the same category as “I Love Lucy.”
"a.k.a. Pablo would certainly qualify. But I guess since they only aired 5 shows as a midseason replacement in 1984 it didn’t last long enough to make an impact in most peoples minds. An article complaining about lack of Latino sitcoms also mentioned “Trial and Error” a 1988 show which it said was mostly Latino. But again I never heard of it.
But if 20 years of TV history yields 2 dismal failures …
I remember a/k/a Pablo. Not well, but I remember it. I remember it being advertised as the next revolution in television, a show that everyone would be talking about. It was from Normal Lear, if I recall correctly. The main guy (Paul Rodriguez) was a stand-up comic who traded on his hispanic heritage (just as in real life). The commercials showed the same bit from his stand-up routine over and over, him doing a parody of the American Express ‘do you know me?’ commercials which ended with him carrying the “Mexican Express Card” which was a big knife.
There’s a reason it only lasted five episodes. It was awful. I distinctly remember TV Guide and elsewhere just savaging it because it was incredibly non-funny. Latinos weren’t thrilled with it either.
I remember the “A.K.A. Pablo” knife flap well, even though I was 8 at the time.
Part of the reason why I think there hasn’t been much Latino TV is because “Latino” covers about 23 or 24 national origins, several different “racial” subcategories (mestizo, afro-caribbean, creole, indigenous, etc.), and even within a distinct group - there are different attitudes and beliefs. Good luck trying to whittle all that into one sitcom or image without offending or leaving aside a lot of people.
I’m sure the same would be true of an attempt to produce “The Jewish Sitcom” , or “The Black Sitcom” as well.
On ‘CHiPS’ didn’t Eric Estrada play a Hispanic guy? I don’t think his character was ever clearly Hispanic, just vaguely ‘ethnic’ with an Italian sounding name. A lot of Hispanic actors often play non-Hispanics, Hector Elizondo, Jimmy Smits, Raquel Welch (half Bolivian), Cameron Diaz (half Cuban) and so on. In the case of a really ‘white’ or ‘black’ looking Hispanic actor, they won’t even be promoted as Hispanic.
On the other hand, many Hispanics are played by Italian or other “ethnic” type people (John Turturro, Al Pacino, Alan Arkin). So it gets complicated when we assign ethnic identity to television programs. And is Seinfeld “Jewish”, The Jeffersons “black”, Everybody Loves Raymond “Italian-American”?
Two attempts leading to two dismal failures is really too small of a sample size to make a generalization - especially when the failure rate for TV is so high. How many sitcoms with young, edgy, hip people in urban settings have failed (or sucked even without failing) in the past 5 years? But they keep trying… and trying… and trying in the hopes of another “Friends.” That those two attempts failed might say more about the shows than about the potential for the genre. (Of course, it also might not).
Well said, amarinth.
Osiris, I’m a woman.
**
Good point. What I’m really saying is that I like the current trend towards setting sitcoms in LA, or at least California. Titus is set somewhere in California; I’m not sure it’s LA, but the main character has cited “California public schools” as one of the reasons for his brother’s dumbness. Bernie Mac is definitely LA, and one thing I noticed is that one of Bernie’s poker buddies is named Chui, and is apparently Latino. No big deal, not “Here’s Bernie’s token not-black-but-not-white-either pal”, just that he lives in LA, and therefore knows at least one such person. So why not another LA sitcom which features Latinos?
[hijack]
While I haven’t seen enough episodes of ‘Titus’ to know its setting, I do know that Christopher Titus grew up in Newark, California (in the East Bay). Since the show is semi-autobiographical, I would guess the setting to be vaguely Bay Area suburbia. This might be the closest San Jose[sup]*[/sup] gets to having a TV show set in it.
[/hijack]
[sup]*[/sup]There was a thread about this, but I’ll be darned if I can get it by searching.
Oops, sorry. All those Mr. Rilchiams messed me up. Well not several of him, but your mentions of him.
amarinth, I wouldn’t say I was generalizing because I was not commenting on the success rate but rather on the attempt rate. How many sitcoms have they brought to the small screen between 1980 and now on broadcast TV? At least 200 and perhaps as much as 500. And if you have only 1 attempt on average every 10 years then it might be a century or so before you find a successful formula.
Well, I finally got to see the first episode. (I had Friend record it while I was away, but didn’t actually watch until this afternoon.)
I liked it. Lopez has good comic timing, except I think he should leave off that eye-bugging thing. It was paced well, and none of the gags were dumb. There were two strictly Latino references: I can’t remember the second one, but the first was brought off well. “Why should [daughter] learn to swim? [beat] We’re already here!” I liked that the daughter was just a kid, and the mom just a sweet lady, neither of them bimbos or abrasive. The MIL will probably be a dominant character: she was dead-on like many Latino women I’ve known out here, without being a stereotype.
I can’t say if it’ll be a hit, but it definitely doesn’t suck.
Also like the choice of the theme song.
Does anyone remember a PBS show called “Que Pasa
USA?”?(Sorry-I’m not set up to do the upsidedown ? before’Que’.)
It was about a Cuban family in Miami. The cool thing about it was that the characters switched back & forth between English & Spanish. I think it was designed to help Spanish speakers learn English,but it helped me with high school Spanish.