ABC’s new American Housewife is betting that if you put enough quirky comic elements together, you will get a mashup that comes out funny.
And sometimes it does. But more often American Housewife, which premieres Tuesday at 8:30 p.m. ET, feels like a series of quirky comic elements in search of a satisfying show.
Katy Mixon (top), whom fans will remember fondly from Mike & Molly and Eastbound and Down, plays Katie Otto, a housewife raising three kids in Westport, Conn.
Katie’s challenges start at home. Her husband Greg (Diedrich Bader, bottom, with Mixon and Butters) is a decent enough guy who, like a thousand sitcom husbands before him, can be a little slow and intractable. Katie’s price to have sex, for instance, is that he has to watch two episodes of Castle with her.
This season, of course, that would mean reruns.
Her older daughter Taylor (Meg Donnelly, right), in an interesting twist for a teenager, is crazier about sports than boys. Her son Oliver (Daniel DiMaggio, right) is a young capitalist, pretty much a slightly younger clone of Michael J. Fox’s character on Family Ties.
Her young daughter Anna-Kat (Julia Butters, right) has a case of OCD that’s slightly less than debilitating, but that Katie knows will not serve her well when she has to fit in with her new schoolmates.
The real socialization issue, though, is Katie’s, because she has to fit in with a town full of fellow school mothers who have all the slightly admirable and massively annoying traits of suburban wealth and privilege.
Our first overview of Westport, narrated by Katie, is that all the other Moms have flat stomachs and tight butts. They all drink bottles of green stuff instead of real beverages like coffee. They all go to the gym and wear Fitbits. One woman wears two Fitbits.
In a sitcom tradition that well predates all these current trendy irritations, they also have a clear air of condescension toward Katie, who has some old-school habits about food and discipline and looks like, well, a normal person rather than a perfect specimen designed by a personal trainer and nutritionist.
Katie’s immediate concern is that the one woman in Westport who is “fatter than me” may be moving out.
However, Katie has a secret weapon that’s designed to win the hearts of viewers if not her Westport neighbors. Katie has a generous and tolerant view of the world, one in which people help others rather than judging them.
The implication, clearly, is that many of her “perfect” fellow Westport residents pay only passing lip service to those concepts because they are so absorbed in their own immaculate and comfortable lives.
Presumably, we will find out down the line that many of those lives really aren’t very perfect. But since American Housewife is a sitcom, maintaining the caricatures should serve the writers well.
In any case, we feel like we know pretty much all the characters on this show. Katie herself carries around a lot of DNA from Roseanne, though she’s overtly kinder, and annoying rich white suburban housewives aren’t exactly a recent discovery.
Perhaps at some point, this could all come together into a fresh new show. But much as we like Katie and sympathize with someone who’s just normal in a world that rewards superficial perfection, the pieces here feel scattered.