User reviews

Show was funny for a few years then just tanked.Molly or Melissa what ever her name is think she could act on her own and do movies and screwed over the whole cast.But all her movies sucked and tanked.Bet she is wishing show was still on so she could collect a paycheck.I think she is just garbage now.

Weight jokes are excessive and in poor taste many times in the first two episodes. I love to poke fun at the gravity challenged when it is not hurtful. The stereotypical black guy with a zinger every other line is tiresome as well. Too bad because the concept is good. The dumb blond sister bit is overdone as is the mother's dysfunction. All in all the show is hard to watch because the actors have been given little chance to succeed due to poor writing. There should be more opportunities to identify with the weight struggle since it is something many can appreciate. It's almost as if the character's struggle with their weight is nothing more than fodder for the poor one liners.

Loved the first few seasons, when it started off as an ensemble comedy with funny characters. The Chicago neighborhood angle and the extended family living in a tight but cute house were appealing. (If you can get past the premise of the main couple meeting in Overeaters Anonymous (OA). What happened to the 12-step foundation of anonymity and non-promotion? Why could the writers not make up a fictional support group? Going to OA for compulsive eating is no laughing matter.) I felt Billy Gardell was the heart of this show--amiable, good-natured, bumbling along in ways I feel are believable for a regular guy like him. I thought he did well with the material he was given. His cop partner on the beat and best friend, Carl, has his moments, but had a nasty, b**chy edge a lot of the time. Samuel (immigrant and restaurant worker) was excellent. In sum, I feel each character was made a "type." There really wasn't any development of each character or stepping out of their box. This prevented the show from being better. The pothead sister is always the pothead (and nonstop weed jokes got old); the hard-ass divorcee (Peggy) is always the hard-ass divorcee (and her verbal abuse gets old). The Mom who's a lush is always a lush (how many jokes can you write about an adult who drinks and takes potshots all day, with no job?) The Mom's boyfriend/eventual fiancé is a vulgar, shady caricature, and the Black grandma is a loud, abrasive stereotype. Jokes center around toilet, sex, fatty, and nudity "humor." Typical joke: two men are walking a dog and one says oh look, the dog did eat tinsel off the Christmas tree. Lots of jokes about Mike or or Vince stinking up the bathrooms. A loud, obnoxious laugh track screams throughout.

I didn't watch much of season 4 onward, when the focus was more on Molly (whose character became less likable), the plot lines weren't credible, and slapstick rules. An extra star for the laughs I had in the early seasons and the caliber of the actors; too bad tha often they didn't have better material to work with.