‘The Mick’ blog: Co-creator John Chernin explains that naked motorcycle getaway
Every week, the cast and crew of Fox’s The Mick — the new comedy series that follows Kaitlin Olson’s reckless Mackenzie, a.k.a. “Mickey,” who’s tasked with caring for her on-the-lam sister’s three children — is taking EW behind the scenes of the latest episode. This week, co-creator John Chernin takes us inside the tenth episode, “The Baggage,” where Mickey dates a seemingly perfect man named Dante before she ultimately leaves him in the dust in a very memorable way.
Originally, this episode was going to end with Mickey simply driving off into the sunset on a motorcycle, leaving her many male suitors (and her nieces and nephews) behind. But that wasn’t enough for the Mick team, so executive producer Scott Marder thought up something to make her getaway a little extra special: her robe would fly off as she sped away.
“We landed on that around 2:30 in the morning like two days before we shot it,” Chernin tells EW. “When Scott Marder came up with that idea, we all just fell to the floor laughing. We were so relieved we finally had a way to end the episode.”
Luckily, it wasn’t hard to put into action. Someone attached a rope to Mickey’s robe and simply pulled it off from off-camera in what Chernin calls a “very sophisticated system.” “Everybody’s standing by the monitors, and the general consensus was just like, ‘Bye, Hollywood! Our careers are over. This is insane.'”
That turned out to be far from true: The Mick was renewed for a second season the same day “The Baggage” aired, timing that Chernin is “especially happy” about. The episode also features an especially dark, especially hilarious story line that reveals Ben (Jack Stanton) has a habit of killing his pet rabbits… which Alba (Carla Jimenez) then replaces with new rabbits without telling him so she doesn’t have to explain death to little, innocent Ben.
“I think that’s when our show is at its best, is when we can tackle something real and serious but do it in this outrageous way and we’re able to hang a lot of comedy on it,” Chernin says. “What we realized ultimately is that it’s really hard to make that kid seem cruel or unlikeable or anything like that because Jack is the sweetest guy in the world, and the character he plays is also so sweet and naïve. That gives us a lot of room to push things into crazy places with him.”
And don’t worry: Ben’s rabbits might have it rough, but the real-life critters that play them are just fine. “No bunnies were harmed in the making of that episode,” Chernin laughs.
The Mick airs Tuesdays at 8:30 p.m. ET on Fox.
