'The Family Crews,'
stick with your own
The home lives of stars can be pretty dull stuff
By Tom Conroy
Feb 19, 2010
One celebrity magazine is known for a regular column that features candid shots of celebrities under the rubric “Stars: They’re Just Like Us.” What it tends to suggest is that most of us aren’t very interesting.
The new reality show “The Family Crews” is more evidence of that sad truth. Showing the very normal home life of the actor and former football player Terry Crews, it confirms that a star can be pretty dull, especially if he’s not that big a star to begin with and if his show is debuting at a time when the family-celebreality genre has been worked to death.
In the premiere, airing on BET on Sunday, Feb. 21, at 9 p.m., Crews, who’s best known for playing the father in “Everybody Hates Chris,” asks his wife of 20 years, Rebecca, to renew their wedding vows at a ceremony that will be attended by her 22-year-old daughter and the four children they’ve had together, whose ages range from 18 to 3.
That age range could make for interesting action, but in this episode the kids have little to do. They are very cute in the re-proposal scene, in which each of them holds up a sign bearing one word in the sentence “Will you marry me again?”
Viewers will be unsurprised at how this first episode plays out. Rebecca wants a big party; Terry wants to cut corners to save money. In a transparent and lame attempt to build suspense, the producers make much of the possibility that the huge new ring that Terry orders may not arrive on time. (It doesn’t occur to anyone to seek a jeweler who already has a big ring in stock.)
Although one should always give a woman who’s raising five children the benefit of the doubt, Rebecca doesn’t come across as charming as she seems to think she is. She tells Terry that she wants to have more time for the activities she pursued before they were married. “A mother’s not all I am,” she tells him. “I was an actress and a singer and a minister.”
When Terry begins to balk at the expense of the reception she’s planning, she launches into a similar diatribe, which their caterer praises as her “Oscar-winning speech.”
It’s hardly a spoiler to report that everything falls predictably into place, with only a few entertaining moments along the way.
A “coming up” segment at the end of the premiere suggests there may be more drama in future episodes, with the children taking more of a central role. But nothing in it suggests we’re in for the sort of dysfunctional fun provided by celebrity clans like the Osbournes and the Hogans.
Tolstoy said all happy families are alike, but most differ from the Crews family in one respect: We don’t assume that other people would find our alikeness worth watching.
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