‘I hate kids! That’s why I keep a cellphone next to my balls — so I’ll be less likely to ever make one,” exclaims Rob Schneider’s character, Rob, to his new wife’s young nephew in CBS’s new show, “Rob.”
Too bad that cellphone trick doesn’t work the same way for sitcoms — or Schneider and the suits at CBS would never have made “Rob.”
Unfortunately, “Rob” is a slapstick shtick-fest that strains to be “Modern Family,” but isn’t even close.
The series revolves around a landscape architect (Schneider) who has spontaneously married a much younger, gorgeous Mexican-American woman named Maggie (Claudia Bassols) in Las Vegas.
Of course, marrying this beauty means marrying her large and boisterous (is there any other kind?) Mexican family, as well.
There’s her judgemental dad, Fernando (Cheech Marin), overprotective mom (Diana Maria Riva), her constantly-in-mourning grandmother (Lupe Ontiveros) and her ne’er-do-well uncle (Eugenio Derbez).
Rob is a clumsy putz who wears bad shirts, is short and is constantly putting his foot in his mouth, or, in the case of Grandma, putting his crotch to her butt (don’t ask).
This, of course, begs the question, “What did Maggie see in Rob in the first place, and why does she stay with him?” Good questions for which the show provides no answers. Or even any tangible hints.
What is clear is that the formula — which works so well for Ed O’Neill and Sofía Vergara on “Modern Family” — just doesn’t equate here.
In all fairness, “Rob” has a giant negative going, and that’s the aggravating conceit of naming a series after the creator and lead star.
But no. Every comic now has to have their own sitcom not just named after them, but inspired by their hilarious off-camera lives. Right.
Seriously, have you ever met a comic? Some of them are the most depressed, lonely people on the planet. Hilarious onstage often comes from depressed at home.
If their lives were really that hilarious, they’d have reality show cameras following them around to capture the laughs — no?
Instead, they attempt to make mundane home lives funny by acting them out.
Take “Whitney,” for example. It’s strained and flat-out unwatchable, while “Are You There, Chelsea?” is a grim and depressing “sitcom” about a drunk.
Clearly, the whole idea of self-named shows based on somebody’s real life — which was popularized with the great “I Love Lucy” — should have been killed off when the equally-as-great “Seinfeld” went off the air.
Shows like “Rob,” “Whitney” and “Chelsea” sully the sophisticated silly history.