An updated version of The Brady Bunch (which was already old hat when that premiered) with construction worker Patrick Duffy and beautician Suzanne Somers as two imbeciles who spontaneously marry only to discover that their respective three children (each) despise each other already making the pitfalls of living together challenging.
Where to begin. Let's start with the good stuff. Patrika D'Arbo and Peggy Rea are both fine as Somers's sister and mother, but rarely are given anything of worth to say or do. Despite being handed some of the worst "Dude" lingo, Sasha Mitchell does have some appeal as a cousin, before his career was derailed due to false allegations of abuse from his drug addict wife.
I normally like Patrick Duffy and was a fan of Somers from her Three's Company days. They are both dreadful here. Duffy does not appear to have a comedic bone in his body and I do not believe he garners one legitimate laugh ever. Sommers also appears to have lost the knack for playing comedy and merely looks lost and blowzy. They have no chemistry together - we literally have no idea what attracted them to each other, what made them spontaneously marry, or why they stay together. As parents, they are equally disastrous. Neither really seems to know what is going on in their home or among their children. Duffy's kids are fairly good-natured. However, while Somers younger kids largely mix together, one of them seems to be a budding sociopath that no one is alarmed about (more on that below).
Unsurprisingly with these noxious types of family sitcoms, the adults take a back seat to stories involving the kids, so the shows can rise and fall on the young cast. Here. the gaggle of kids with two exceptions, largely make no impression. Brandon Call with smirk enshrined on his face really wears thin as Duffy's mischievous eldest son. He seems to have neither the charm nor the teeny bopper appeal to make the part memorable (no wonder why Mitchell was added as the cousin!).
By contrast, Staci Keanan, fresh off My Two Dads, is disturbing in every sense of the word. Not sure whether to blame the writers here, the actress, or both, but her character comes across as a psychopath. She actively seems to despise Duffy, Call and Mitchell, in fact she seems to despise every male (and a good number of females) that have the misfortune of spinning into her orbit. The scenes where she constantly goes out of her way to insult, undermine and humiliate her step-siblings are uncomfortable because not only is the writing not funny, but she plays it so seriously that we begin to worry for the safety of Duffy and his children. Keanan actually seems mentally unbalanced and certifiably hateful here. We could easily see her gleefully mixing up a bottle of arsenic into the lemonade and serving it to them all with a wicked smile. I have seen Bond supervillains less menacing than this girl. This is not a character who or a performance that should be frequenting a family comedy show.
The plots are dead on arrival, the cast largely a wash (with Keanan ostensibly auditioning for the role of a young Cruella DeVille) and the laugh track so jacked up that it would deafen a hard of hearing senior citizen. The real mystery is how this debacle skated by for 7 seasons. It makes Full House look like The Godfather.
Where to begin. Let's start with the good stuff. Patrika D'Arbo and Peggy Rea are both fine as Somers's sister and mother, but rarely are given anything of worth to say or do. Despite being handed some of the worst "Dude" lingo, Sasha Mitchell does have some appeal as a cousin, before his career was derailed due to false allegations of abuse from his drug addict wife.
I normally like Patrick Duffy and was a fan of Somers from her Three's Company days. They are both dreadful here. Duffy does not appear to have a comedic bone in his body and I do not believe he garners one legitimate laugh ever. Sommers also appears to have lost the knack for playing comedy and merely looks lost and blowzy. They have no chemistry together - we literally have no idea what attracted them to each other, what made them spontaneously marry, or why they stay together. As parents, they are equally disastrous. Neither really seems to know what is going on in their home or among their children. Duffy's kids are fairly good-natured. However, while Somers younger kids largely mix together, one of them seems to be a budding sociopath that no one is alarmed about (more on that below).
Unsurprisingly with these noxious types of family sitcoms, the adults take a back seat to stories involving the kids, so the shows can rise and fall on the young cast. Here. the gaggle of kids with two exceptions, largely make no impression. Brandon Call with smirk enshrined on his face really wears thin as Duffy's mischievous eldest son. He seems to have neither the charm nor the teeny bopper appeal to make the part memorable (no wonder why Mitchell was added as the cousin!).
By contrast, Staci Keanan, fresh off My Two Dads, is disturbing in every sense of the word. Not sure whether to blame the writers here, the actress, or both, but her character comes across as a psychopath. She actively seems to despise Duffy, Call and Mitchell, in fact she seems to despise every male (and a good number of females) that have the misfortune of spinning into her orbit. The scenes where she constantly goes out of her way to insult, undermine and humiliate her step-siblings are uncomfortable because not only is the writing not funny, but she plays it so seriously that we begin to worry for the safety of Duffy and his children. Keanan actually seems mentally unbalanced and certifiably hateful here. We could easily see her gleefully mixing up a bottle of arsenic into the lemonade and serving it to them all with a wicked smile. I have seen Bond supervillains less menacing than this girl. This is not a character who or a performance that should be frequenting a family comedy show.
The plots are dead on arrival, the cast largely a wash (with Keanan ostensibly auditioning for the role of a young Cruella DeVille) and the laugh track so jacked up that it would deafen a hard of hearing senior citizen. The real mystery is how this debacle skated by for 7 seasons. It makes Full House look like The Godfather.