A Blue Collar Cable Comedy

At first glance, The Bill Engvall Show might seem to be about as family friendly as cable gets.

The new TBS sitcom, starring the popular comedian from the Blue Collar Comedy troupe, features an actual family, after all—a full, traditional nuclear family, albeit with the standard-issue silly sitcom dad, lovely-and-longsuffering mom and brood of wacky wee ones. Dad works as a family counselor. Mom stays home. They all eat dinner together at the table. They even say, um, grace.

"Good bread, good meat," prays older son Trent. "Good god let's eat!"

Oooh, let's try again, Dad says, throwing the honors to younger son Bryan.

"Dear God—assuming You really exist—please don't let our vegetables be genetically altered ..."

Strike two. Finally, Mom says a simple prayer and punctuates it with an exasperated "Amen."

The scene is a window into the soul of Engvall—a show that says it wants to be about families and for families, but often gets it wrong in favor of the easy (but not very funny) joke.

Dad Tells a Veggie Tale
In some ways, the series feels old-fashioned, its cadence dictated by the regular set-up-and-drop-the-hammer rhythm that's been powering sitcoms since The Honeymooners. It rejects hard-core cable crass (Nip/Tuck and South Park, for example) and is, instead, a show that might land comfortably on any one of today's broadcast television networks.

"I just want to do a show that the whole family can watch together," Engvall told Zap2it. "I don't want a dysfunctional family. I don't want some weird thing."

But being good enough for network TV doesn't give you much to crow about these days. The Cosby Show, this is not.

In the series premiere, Susan (Nancy Travis) pushes hubby Bill (Engvall's character) to talk to Trent about sexual "protection." He does, using various vegetables—carrots, cucumbers, string beans—as visual aids. "Now, which of these would you say you are?" Bill asks the boy. Trent, who's about 15, tells his pops that he's not planning on having sex anytime soon, and he promises to come to Bill for more of his sage advice when he's ready. Right.

As it turns out, sex is a big theme in Engvall, and it is almost always treated as a laughing matter. Bill's work buddies ask him to go to strip clubs or buy boats, because that's where the "girls go wild" and get "naked." He turns them down, but when Trent confesses to holding onto a Playboy magazine for a "friend," Bill hands out an "attaboy."

Brian plays chaperone to Trent and a potential girlfriend in order to discourage any kissing and/or unplanned pregnancies. And Susan decides to start selling baked goods to earn some spending money, whereupon references to her "selling her muffins" draw snickers from the studio audience.

Mom Confesses a Crush
It's Bill and Susan's marriage relationship that provides the most onscreen heat, though. When Susan comes clean to Bill about sleeping with singer Chris Isaak in college, Bill retorts with the fact that he slept with Julia Roberts. No, make that Julie Roberts, he says. After seeing Isaak backstage at his concert, Bill and Susan make sure everybody knows that bygones are bygones by steaming up their SUV's windows in the parking lot.

Elsewhere, the two decide to argue naked. So the camera watches Susan's back as she slips off her bra; it also peers at Bill's equally bare waistline. The rimshot remark? A sly reference to Bill's middle-aged arousal.

The Kids Catch a Skunk?
There are other problem spots, too. God's name is not only mocked in prayer, it's also used as an interjection. Family members occasionally trot out such vulgarities as "a--" and "b--ch." And Bill essentially does Trent's homework for him.

Engvall's good moments? These guys really care about one another, and sometimes an episode will land nicely with, say, Susan and Bill forgiving each other their foibles, or family members deciding to forego a trip to Hawaii to fund a life-saving operation for their cancer-laden mutt.

Curiously—considering the amount of negativity already reported here—some episodes are almost completely free of content issues. But that's both a blessing and a curse. In the six episodes I reviewed, I never knew exactly what to expect. One would offer clean humor and a good moral takeaway. Another would be loaded with sex-driven slush. One week it's I Love Lucy. The next: Two and a Half Men.

Sorry, Blue Collar Comedy Guy. A show that's only "sometimes" family friendly is like a skunk that "sometimes" sprays: Nobody wants to be in the room with it.