‘Extended Family’ Review: Jon Cryer, Abigail Spencer and Donald Faison in NBC’s Amiable Low-Stakes Sitcom
In the aftermath of Must-See TV, there was a stretch of time when it seemed like NBC was doing comedy outreach for TV critics, constantly renewing shows like Parks and Recreation and The Good Place and Superstore not because they had huge audiences, but because the audiences they possessed were fervent and vocal.
With the initial success of the Night Court reboot and the cancelation of the ostensibly edgier or more niche — some, like me, might say “better,” but to each their own — American Auto and Grand Crew, it wouldn’t be unreasonable for NBC to think that the way forward is broader and more traditional comedies.
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If NBC’s new Extended Family is an example of that way forward, there are, at least, worse fates. This is a multi-camera family sitcom of the most traditional type, with a premise so thin it’s barely a premise at all. In terms of topical or thematic aspirations, the creative team appears to be saving those for after the three episodes sent to critics.
However limited its reach may be, what Extended Family has in its grasp is easy to itemize as well. With Jon Cryer, Abigail Spencer and Donald Faison out front, the series has three leads with ample charm and equal proficiency with the format, while series creator Mike O’Malley makes the writing a notch smarter and a step more verbose than your typical broadcast multi-cam.
Jim (Cryer) and Julia (Spencer) were married for 17 years. When they come to an agreement that the only way for them to get along is to divorce, they decide, in the most elaborate and celebratory way possible, to show how cool they are with the next phase of their life. They even throw a party.
One of the choices Jim and Julia make is a classic on TV shows that I’ve never experienced firsthand in the real world — they decide to have their two kids (Sofia Capanna’s Grace and Finn Sweeney’s Jimmy Jr.) remain in the family house (or apartment or whatever), while Jim and Julia get their own places and rotate in and out in alternate weeks. It’s a situation that already points to a heap of economic privilege, and that’s before Julia starts dating tech mogul Trey (Donald Faison), who owns the Boston Celtics. Jim wants to dislike Julia’s relationship, but Trey is an amiable guy and Jim loves the Celtics.
Over the three episodes I’ve seen, 90 percent of the action has taken place at the family’s main, shared residence and even the show itself doesn’t quite seem to know what its hook is. For the pilot, I thought it was simply that Jim and Julia were enthusiastically friendly divorced parents, plus the Boston Celtics thing, featuring Rick Fox in a background role as the team’s general manager, a character who doesn’t return in the next two episodes. I barely noticed the whole “The parents are shuttling in and out of the apartment/home where the kids live” aspect.
Then in the second and third episodes, the Celtics thing stops mattering and the shared domicile becomes everything, especially once Julia and Trey are engaged. So episodic plots involve Trey wanting to make small changes to the residence in violation of the laminated family divorce constitution and Jim’s stress exhaustion after having to do two consecutive weeks of dad duty while Julia was off working or partying with Pitbull. (Julia’s a fancy crisis manager. I’m sure Jim has a job.)
Extended Family is a small and simple show, and it may reflect a new TV reality. As many shows are cutting down on regular cast members and keeping parts that would be integral to a traditional ensemble as “recurring,” Extended Family has almost no ensemble at all.
Episodes barely have time for an A-story, much less secondary threads, and Lenny Clarke, playing Jim’s no-nonsense Boston dad, is the only recurring part of the cast. The two kids are generally negligible — worrying about a goldfish or playing a violent video game count as plotlines — though they play a key role in probably my favorite scene of the series thus far, a perfectly brief guest-starring appearance from Stephen McKinley Henderson.
With all three key components in this non-sexual thruple determined to keep things civil and all three characters defined as generally amiable, there are no stakes, dramatically or comedically. No potent social issues are explored and no important lessons are learned from episode to episode, other than “lying is bad” and “important parenting lessons will probably backfire, but only in an innocuous and non-serialized way.”
It would be easy for the dozen fans of Starz’s excellent Survivor’s Remorse to remember how well O’Malley handled fairly edgy topical humor in that show and to miss anything similar here. But that would be blaming Extended Family for aspirations it just doesn’t have.
O’Malley’s experiences writing on a premium cable single-cam — whether Survivor’s Remorse was really a “comedy” is a different question — are evident in a series whose rhythms evade the familiar setup-punchline cadences of the multi-cam. Or maybe O’Malley and company are just trying to pack more words into each punchline. The result, one that’s appealingly manic for the most part, is that especially Cryer and Faison feel like they’re trying to outrun the audience — or “audience” — laughter.
There are still punchlines, and few actors know how to hit them with Cryer’s nerdy glee or Faison’s general enthusiasm. But they don’t necessarily come when you expect them to, making the whole thing a lot more naturalistic and less stage-bound in a show that’s completely stage-bound. (The show’s sensibility is broad, but not as broad as the picture accompanying this review might suggest.)
Spencer’s great gift (not to be confused with the great Spencer Gifts) has always been landing organic humor within ostensibly dramatic roles — her work in Rectify is a big part of why that extremely serious show is, at the same time, extremely funny — and that makes her the perfect choice playing off of Cryer and Faison. They’re “TV funny” and she’s “real-life funny” and though that often doesn’t mesh well, it does in this case. Even Clarke, whose role could be non-stop blue-collar schtick even in that actor’s capable hands, comes across as relatively natural and light on Boston affectations.
Extended Family has the bones to be a memorable sitcom, but only the desire to be something generally relatable — even for divorced families with, perish the thought, only the finances to have a maximum of two residences — and likable. There’s enough here to possibly check back in on Extended Family in the future, but I probably won’t remember to.
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