‘Mike & Molly’ Finale Review: Melissa McCarthy, Free At Last
Mike & Molly was never in the top rank of sitcoms, but there was no denying the charm and talent of stars Melissa McCarthy and Billy Gardell, qualities that are on full display during Monday night’s two-episode series finale.
The show closes out its sixth and final season by paying off on its Mike-and-Molly-want-a-baby subplot. If you’ve been following the show — I freely admit I haven’t — you know the couple has been wanting a child, and there are the usual sitcom jokes about adoption and the nervousness of first-time parents. Look for a lot of slapstick as Mike and Molly try to install a baby’s car seat — hey, I’ve been there; it’s very nearly not a joke but more of a documentary of what I went through.
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It’s interesting to think about McCarthy’s rise during the existence of M&M. The show premiered in 2010, at which point she was best known as Sookie on Gilmore Girls. The next year, in 2011, the movie Bridesmaids made her an instant industry sensation — someone who was suddenly recognized by big time show biz as a tremendously talented and charismatic comic actor. (We Gilmore fans knew this, of course.) Since then, McCarthy has only become a bigger and bigger star, to the point where you had to wonder: Was her contract with M&M becoming a millstone around her neck, something she had to endure until she could be freed to take movie roles full time? If so, McCarthy certainly handled the situation with grace.
Mike & Molly had a good supporting cast that wasn’t often handed top-notch material. In the two mothers, played by Swoosie Kurtz and Rondi Reed, M&M had some high-caliber actors — not that you’d always know it by the one-note characters they were hired to play. Kurtz is a two-time Tony winner; Reed has been a member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago and starred in the original cast of August: Osage County. Reno Wilson, playing Mike’s cop buddy Carl, is a deft performer, and Katy Mixon, as Molly’s party-loving sister, found a way to parlay her excellent performance in Danny McBride’s terrific HBO show Eastbound & Down into a bigger paycheck role here. As the series progressed, it kind of split in half: the characters of Mike and Molly remained adorable lovebirds, while Kurtz’s Joyce and Mixon’s Victoria ventured ever further into bawdy sex-drugs-and-rock-and-roll humor.
McCarthy directed the first of tonight’s episodes, “The Curse of the Bambino,” and James Burrows, who directed all of the first two seasons’ episodes, returns to helm the finale, “I See Love.” I’m not going to give away the surprise you can see coming a mile away in the very last episode. Mike & Molly lives on in syndication for anyone who wants to kill a half-hour with some light, bawdy chuckles. It’s not going out a classic, but Mike & Molly, under the guidance of Burrows, departs with a conclusion that will be satisfying for its fans.
Mike & Molly airs two episodes Monday night starting at 8 p.m. on CBS.
