As part of Fox's new summer season, Quintuplets (Sunday, 9:30e, 8:30c) delves into the real world of multiples. It's a sitcom, not a documentary, but living with multiples often devolves into a sitcom. I have twins less than a month from 13, and we're close friends with a family including 13-year-old triplets. It's tempting to write-up the tale of when I talked everyone into a weekend on a houseboat and send it off to Fox. But I digress.
Fox's best move was to limit the introduction into the quintuplets' early years to a few minutes at the beginning. Baby multiples hold little potential. Parents without sleep have limited range. The show instead joins the family when the 15-year-old quints return with their parents from a shopping spree, fighting over nothing, and setting up the ostensible plot -- that their mother wants nothing more than for her miracle babies to stop being so annoying and get along.
The rest of the show plays on the challenges faced by many parents of multiples. Gone are the cutesy twins played by the likes of Mary-Kate and Ashley and Tia and Tamara. Instead we have five teenagers, only two of whom are "cool" and, of course, the least interesting. None display the severe disabilities that often occur in higher order multiples but one is short (and played by a real-life short 15-year-old) and another is just weird enough on the social scale that it can only be explained by a slight birth defect. Warning: Not completely able to give up cutesy, they all have names starting with P -- Pearce, Penny, Patton, Parker, and Paige. While that may happen with some overly happy parents of multiples, it makes watching a television show difficult.
Most of the first show's humor drew from situations more frequent in parents of multiples. Overwhelmed by the cost of five children, the father, played by Andy Richter, bemoans the fact that they are no longer getting the free stuff sent to baby multiples and they didn’t grow up cute enough to get television commercials. The mother has a huge wall schedule to track the children, including whether each has enough quality time with each parent (no turning quality time into a father-son nap). In the end, the mother is thrilled by sneaky, disobedient children because at least they are working together. Been there, done that. I laugh in recognition. With luck, the rest of the world will find it funny too.
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