TV Review - Single Parents

It's funny that this series is premiering at the same time as the reboot of Murphy Brown because it was over 25 years ago that Murphy Brown made the issue of single parenting a national issue. That show obviously wasn't the first example of a single mom being made the lead in a TV series or even a comedy series. One Day At a Time on CBS did it back in 1975. There were also tons of sitcoms about single fathers going back to the 1950's and 60's with programs like My Three Sons and The Andy Griffith Show. The past decade has given numerous shows about single mothers either widowed, divorced or due to some other reason. Usually, those single parents are among mixed company or isolated somehow. This show posits a community of lone moms and dads who all hang out together as part of a clique.

Taran Killam (Saturday Night Live and MADtv) stars as Will Cooper, a man whose wife left him five years ago. Why she left him or why they were even together is ignored, as we learn that Will obsesses over his daughter Sophie who is so precocious that she certainly doesn't need her dad to be the helicopter parent he has become. He is so wrapped up in participating at school that he's foregone a personal life. He hasn't dated or had sex in those five years since his wife left. Given that Sophie is only 7, it makes sense if his wife totally abandoned him, that most of that time had to be sacrificed to care for his child, but now it's getting to be time for him to focus on himself.

To that end, he ingratiates himself into an already established group of moms and dads who help to extricate him from his over-the-top and ridiculous forms of nurturing and school-child participation. He's too nice a guy. He's too peppy. He's too happy-go-lucky, almost to the point of being pathetic. His new circle of friends who are more jaded yet cool attempt to rein him into a sense of normalcy and calm.

Leighton Meester (Gossip Girl) also stars as Angie D'Amato. She's the one who tries to help Will the most. Her son is Graham who is the most dependent, while she's rather the opposite of Will in terms of not being a helicopter parent. In general, the other parents in the group are on that same plane.

Brad Garrett (Everybody Loves Raymond) co-stars as Douglas Fogerty, the parent in the group who's probably a little higher on that plane. He seems to care the least about being politically correct or liberal in his views. He's gruff and an almost old-school conservative. He's a curmudgeon in many ways. He was twins who are very smart and industrious, even at age 7.

Jake Choi (Front Cover) plays Miggy, an immature, slightly dense guy who's stumbled into fatherhood and Kimrie Lewis (Scandal) plays Poppy, an even-keel, black woman. Miggy and Poppy are the two other parents in the group. Poppy has a son named Rory. Miggy has a baby, which would make him not eligible to be in the group, except Poppy includes him because they're neighbors. Seeing them and all the characters bounce off each other is the source of the comedy here and the cast is mostly droll but they're juxtaposed to Killam's mirth.

The only odd thing is the character of Rory. He's the aforementioned son of Poppy. It isn't said outright, but he is perhaps coded as gay. If he isn't, that's fine, then he's just an eccentric kid. If he is, he's giving nothing but stereotype after superficial stereotype. It's a shame because Graham is given a scene where he expresses romantic feelings for a little girl, so if Rory is what he's coded to be, he should be allowed to express same-sex attraction for another little boy, which would break ground laid out by The Fosters, the series notable for the youngest same-sex male kiss.

Rated TV-PG-DLS.
Running Time: 30 mins.
Wednesdays at 9:30PM on ABC.