TV Review: Mike and Molly

The first time I read the premise of Mike & Molly, I had to admit to feeling more than a little wary. A sitcom centered on the romance of two plus-sized Chicagoans who meet at an Overeaters Anonymous meeting? Given the present day sitcom’s propensity for put-down humor, how could that go wrong?

Too, as the co-author of a plus-sized soap opera set in the same city as this show, I can’t help feeling just a twinge possessive about the use of the Windy City as the site for a sparkling romance. When this week’s episode — "Mike's New Boots" — featured a secondary character joking about taking his date out on a carriage ride, I found myself mentally contrasting the moment to a romantic scene in our own book. The sitcom joke was played for crass humor, and I let out a very loud sigh when I heard it.

But let’s put authorial comparisons aside and focus on the series before us, okay? As a character comedy, Mike & Molly veers wildly between the appealing and the cringe worthy. On the debit side, there’s the show’s character defining set-up. From the onset, our overeating twelve-steppers define themselves as out-of-control gorgers: a stereotype, to be sure, and one that lends itself to the kind of self-deprecating comedy that fat comedians have overused for ages (Totie Fields, anyone?) Every food-related scene — and since one of the show’s sets is a city diner, you know you’re gonna get at least one per ep — features a gluttony joke. Because that’s all every fat person does is think about food all the time, right?

Then, of course, there are the inevitable fat jokes, which have admittedly lessened as the show has progressed but still provide fallback punch lines for the writers. I’m not automatically opposed to fat jokes on a show like this — in this culture, it’d be outlandish to act as if a character like Billy Gardell’s policeman Mike Biggs wouldn’t hear such cracks over the course of a working day — but I wish the ones we got were better written. When Mike tries on a pair of cowboy boots and recalls how the kids used to call him “Belly the Kid,” I couldn’t tell if it was meant to be a riff on the childishness of young boys’ insults or a straight-up joke. Either way I didn’t laugh.

Article Author: Bill Sherman

Bill Sherman is a Books editor for Blogcritics. With his lovely wife Rebecca Fox, he has recently co-authored a sudsy comic fat acceptance novel entitled Measure By Measure.

Visit Bill Sherman's author page — Bill Sherman's Blog