Rick Lucas (
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Nathan Hall (
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Sean Kent (
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Stone Slade (
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Move over, Real Housewives. There’s a new group of stay-at-home spouses on reality TV. Of course, these guys prefer Sesame Street to Rodeo Drive, know more about plastic sippy cups than plastic surgery — and would only overturn a table as part of a home improvement project.
Debuting on Aug. 21 at 10:30 p.m., A&E’s “Modern Dads” details the chaotic, cluttered, kid-dominated lives of Stone Slade, 42, Nathan Hall, 38, Rick Lucas, 43 and Sean Kent, 39 — a tight-knit group of real-life buddies from Austin, Texas, who all also happen to be devoted stay-at-home fathers.
Down-to-earth, budget-conscious and relatively drama-free, these guys are a far cry from the reality stars we’ve come to know and love/hate. And they wouldn’t have it any other way.
“I like to think that what we’re missing in drama, we make up for in funny,” says Slade, the show’s one single father and resident heartthrob. “The ‘Housewives’ shows are fine for other people, and I guess they’re entertainment. But I really didn’t want to be part of a train wreck.”
Luckily for him, the producers of “Modern Dads” share that vision. “We weren’t interested in doing a show about people who are special because they’re rich, or larger than life,” says A&E’s Lily Neumeyer, who serves as executive producer on the show (which is produced for the network by Sirens Media). “These people are special because they’re in a happy family and are funny. What we hope is that other families will watch and say, ‘Oh my God, that happened to me!’ ”
And indeed, these guys are nothing if not relatable. First-time dad Hall is a bundle of nerves. In the first episode, he makes one of his pals jump into a moving car for fear that if he stops it, he’ll wake baby Cormac, who is (finally) sleeping in the back seat. Honest-to-a-fault Lucas sports a real, world-style gut and complains to the cameras that his 1-year-old twins, Katherine and Elizabeth, “have done for my sex life what Godzilla did to Japan.” Self-deprecating stepdad Kent tackles woodworking projects with alarming ineptitude.
And despite his porn-star name and way with the ladies, Slade proves just as fallible — and human. His precocious 5-year-old daughter, Danica, has him wrapped around her little finger. His pals tease him mercilessly about his habit of trolling for babes. And the first episode’s most intimate plot point (by far) involves a visibly nervous Slade seeing a doctor about a vasectomy.
“That was a very uncomfortable day for me,” recalls Slade, who looked as though he had a major case of dry mouth as the doctor described the procedure in agonizing detail.
As for the camera crew in the doctor’s office, filming his every wince, Slade says with a laugh, “They didn’t help things — I’ll tell you that!”
In the episode, Slade’s friends give him quite a ribbing about the doctor visit — but rest assured, they know him well enough to tease. Like everything else about “Modern Dads,” the friendship between the four fathers is the real deal. “Sean and I have known each other since high school,” Slade says. “We had some wild days back then.” Kent then met Hall as a student at the University of Texas, introduced him to his self-described “slacker” buddy back home, and the three have been friends for decades. “Sean met Rick four years ago at a dads’ meet-up group and introduced him to us,” Slade says.
They’ve been entertaining each other ever since. “I love the guys, their wives, their kids, and I love their friendship,” says Neumeyer, who discovered the foursome after hearing of a “huge community of stay-at-home dads in Austin” and interviewing candidates. “It’s fun to watch them because they have such a great rapport.”
But beyond all that, the most unexpectedly touching aspect of “Modern Dads” is this: These guys genuinely try to be good fathers. Unlike certain reality dads, Slade, Hall, Kent and Lucas know their way around a diaper changing station — and they aren’t afraid to show it. Sure, Slade’s fond of bragging that his little Danica is a “chick magnet,” but that’s just guy-talk. The reality is, Slade’s family is his world — and the other dads feel the same.
The first episode features a princess-themed party for Lucas’s twins’ first birthday, with the father and his friends moving heaven and Earth in order to, as he puts it, make it “the most princessy party ever.” Despite snafus ranging from Kent’s hapless attempt to build a medieval stock for the event to Slade hitting on a young woman during a cake-shopping expedition, the guys wind up creating a party that would do any family proud. And for these modern dads, it’s those accomplishments that are most rewarding — with or without cameras. “At the end of the day, whether the show succeeds or not, I’m still me, and I still have a kid,” Slade says. “That’s the real important thing.”
MODERN DADS
Wednesday, 10:30 p.m., A&E