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| King (not laughing), and Broke Girls Dennings and Behr |
PASADENA, CA–If it ain’t 2 Broke Girls, don’t fix it.
That seemed to be Michael Patrick King’s take away from Wednesday’s surprisingly combative CBS press tour session. The Sex and the City creator’s hit show was hammered over what some critics see as the depiction of ethnic stereotypes.
Hitfix critic Alan Sepinwall, who challenged King during the session and got all but horsewhipped for it, has his detailed take on the brouhaha here.
2 Broke Girls is the top-rated new comedy in the U.S. (it has largely been hidden in Canada on Rogers’ OMNI stations) and King was probably expecting kudos, not cat calls. Yet the critical unease about Matthew Moy’s character Han, the cafe owner, among other characters, has been building for months.
King suggested every sitcom starts out with a cast full of stereotypes and dismissed suggestions that characters on his show are one-dimensional. Danny De Vito’s character on Taxi was short, he said. His show is fronted by the biggest TV stereotypes of all–a blond and a brunette–he said.
Yeah, but, said critics, awakened by King’s defensiveness.
King got all wound up, lashing out at the way questions were being asked, “correcting” reporters by reminding them it is 2012.
He bragged that it had been three episodes since they had made an Asian joke on the show.”We’ve only made short jokes,” he said.
Asked if this meant an end to the Asian jokes, he cried out in exasperation: “I’m gay.” So…he knows better than to pick on minorities because of his sexual orientation? “I find it comic to take everybody down,” he said by way of explanation.
He then said all the conversation about “edge” in the room “is based on extreme wit.”
He also took exception to charges his show was too raunchy, declaring, “I consider our jokes really classy dirty.”
There were a few questions about the horse on the show for stars Kat Dennings and Beth Behrs.
1 Comment
I can’t believe I still watch this show. Every episode angers me much more than it amuses me, yet I keep watching.
Racial stereotypes can be ripe for comedic fodder — if the comedy is smart and biting. Same goes for raunchy subject matter. But if the writing is lazy, it all feels like a crutch. I end up being offended not by the subject matter, but by the lack of intelligence behind it.
And yet, as I said, I have yet to miss an episode. So King still wins.