'Brothers,' catch
it while you can
Fox black family sitcom has little going for it
By Louisa Ada Seltzer
Sep 25, 2009
As the new season kicks off, Media Life takes a look at the buzz surrounding some of the first-year shows and how they’re expected to perform with previews and reviews.
Name of show
“Brothers”
Timeslot
Fox, Friday 8 p.m.
Plot synopsis
Michael (former NFL star Michael Strahan) plays a former NFL star who returns home to live with his parents, Coach (Carl Weathers) and Adele (CCH Pounder), as well as his sarcastic, wheelchair-bound brother, Chill (Darryl Mitchell), with whom he still has some serious sibling rivalry.
Michael's fortunes have dipped after a financial advisor ran off with the bulk of his dough; the recession took care of the rest. He comes home partly out of financial necessity and partly to help look after his father, who is exhibiting early signs of Alzheimer's.
Michael understandably struggles in readjusting to life at home. He is clearly devoted to his family but, like everyone in America, he's also driven crazy by them.
Though it's set up as a conventional family sitcom, and the laughs are derived mainly from Strahan and Mitchell's trash talking, "Brothers" also tackles serious issues like disease and disability, two subjects not often discussed in broadcast comedies.
Outlook
Odds are that this uneven family comedy will be one of the new season's first casualties.
Comedy has not thrived on broadcast on Friday night since the long-gone days of TGIF. The most recent attempt to program sitcoms on that night came when the CW moved black comedies "Everybody Hates Chris" and "The Game" to Friday last year.
They averaged less than 2 million total viewers and adults 18-49 ratings of less than 1.0, much lower than they performed the previous year on a different night.
Fox has tried and failed before to program a Friday comedy block, most recently with "Wanda at Large" and "Luis" in 2003, both of which were quickly canceled.
There's no reason to believe it will be different for "Brothers," which has received mixed reviews and was voted the new show most likely to bomb by Media Life readers in a recent poll.
The show is paired with "'Til Death," the fourth-year Fox sitcom that has performed so poorly that it was yanked at midseason last year and has been given a creative makeover since.
Even more daunting, "Brothers" faces a stable of veteran shows with proven audiences, which will make it hard for the program to find a viewership base. CBS's "Ghost Whisperer" will likely win the timeslot, with NBC's "Law & Order" pulling a small but loyal audience and families gravitating toward long-running ABC reality show "Supernanny."
"Brothers'" biggest competition may actually come from cable, where viewers look for Friday comedy these days. Disney Channel has a stable of young-skewing comedies and movies, while Nickelodeon has cartoons or "iCarly" repeats.
The buzz
"Brothers" has only one thing going for it, and that is that fact that, nearly a decade after the premiere of "The Bernie Mac Show" revitalized the genre, it's the only non-animated show on broadcast that focuses on a black family.
Diversity advocates have lauded Fox for reaching out to this audience, especially in the wake of the CW's cancellation of " Chris" and " Game," the only other African-American focused comedies. That's been the focus of most of the "Brothers" buzz.
But the negative, namely the disjointed writing, tired premise and terrible timeslot, firmly outweighs the positive for this show, leading media people to predict that "Brothers" will last only a few months, if that long.
“Fox hasn't done well on Fridays since 'The X-Files,' and its latest lineup won't change the equation,” says one media buyer.
What critics are saying
“Strahan plays himself, essentially -- a retired New York football star. He's engaging and entertaining, as he always was, but that's not the same as being a particularly good actor, which at this point he isn't.” –
David Hinckley, New York Daily News
“The balance between humor and pathos is a hard one, and this show teeters on the edge and occasionally falls flat.” –
Alessandra Stanley, New York Times
“The laughs here are all centered on a family that expresses itself mainly through riff and trash-talk ('You know what you should do with your two front teeth?' Chill snaps at gap-toothed Michael. 'Introduce them') the way Americans have been trained to think of black sitcom people talking.” –
Hank Stuever, Washington Post
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