Tag: Kaitlin Olson

The Mick: The Country Club – Caddyshack Poop Attack (Review)

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It is all too tempting to call foul on this episode of The Mick. However…This is not, as it first appears, a rip off of Caddyshack. It is instead a gleeful homage that turns that iconic Baby Ruth scene into a poop attack on not just one but two characters in the show.

This episode reveals that the Pemberton’s may have 30 percent of their funds frozen but they have plenty of money left. They are also still members of the country club and have a luxury apartment on ice.  Money manager Barry explains that he knew nothing about the tax issue and Chip tells about Sabrina’s poop in the pool story.

They also learn about gossip columnist Oliver Fishburn’s article about the Pemberton’s problems and the kids decide to take the writer on. Mickey is excited to learn that they are members of a country club, which Chip hastens to explain that his aunt is not a part of.

The action shifts to the club where Sabrina makes things worse and Chip discovers that in the golf competition he has been “demoted” to playing with the local concrete tycoon.

“The Country Club” follows the Pemberton family attack on the gossip columnist.  Operation Poop is meant to humiliate the writer and despite Mickey’s intricate plan, the whole thing falls apart upon its execution.

By the end of the episode, Sabrina ends up with a “roll” of fudge that everyone believes is her poop and Mickey assaults Fishburn with hot sauce. Alba has passed out after drinking far too many mojitos and the only two Pemberton family members to emerge unscathed are Ben and Chip.

The plot this week has Sabrina having to become an willing ally to her aunt when the plan she starts falls apart. Mickey taking on the columnist also fails, she throws an Apple laptop into a fountain that does not belong to the writer and she has to retreat.

Alba gets wasted on mojitos and spends a fortune on a spa afternoon with Ben. Chip, who has become a personal favorite as portrayed by Thomas Barbusca (he joins Carla Jimenez and Kaitlin Olson), manages to almost eclipse the main storyline with his version of this “Caddyshack” homage.

After the golf tournament, where he and Jerry, along with their two Japanese partners, come last the concrete magnate lies and tells the club that Chip got a hole in one. In any golf club in the world this means the player must treat everyone to a drink at the 19th hole.

Chip is furious but then embellishes his “fame.” Telling  politically incorrect jokes and working the room until the club president calls him into the office with charges that he lied about the hole in one.

Jerry saves the day by bribing the two Japanese players, who pointed out the lie, and when the president apologizes about the whole thing, Chip rips into the man with a vengeance.

It is pure Chip.

The episode’s poop finale, with Sabrina rushing to push the columnist into the pool with that fudge “lookalike” fails. She re-lives her earlier humiliation  and the “pool panic” when she grabs the roll of fudge replicated the Caddyshack scene before the groundskeeper moment in the film.

Everyone in this episode got a chance to shine. This ensemble cast is meshing together perfectly and every segment of this brilliantly funny show increases the comedy quotient exponentially.

The Mick continues to push the boundaries of good taste while delivering more laughs per square inch of film than any other comedy out there at the moment. The series unapologetically goes for the jugular with whatever works.

The series airs Tuesdays on FOX and should not be missed. Who else has the brass to pay such a loving homage to a 1980’s iconic comedy. This episode, like the rest in this opening season was spot on. Go now and watch this brilliantly un-PC comedy show.

Cast:

Guest starring Paul Ben-Victor as Jerry Berlin, Jason Kravits as Barry, Sam Pancake as Oliver Fishburn, Avery Wada as Dai Yamaguchi, Toshiya Agata as Jun Yamaguchi and Thomas Crawford as club president.

The Mick: The Master – Butt Dial (Review)

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The Mick with “The Master” continues to knock it out of the comedy ballpark with more “inappropriate” humor and non-PC gags. Just when it seems that the creators, John and Dave Chernin, cannot possibly top, or at least match, the “Granny Hitler” episode along comes another noteworthy segment.

It all starts off with a horrible meal in an Italian restaurant that “smelly” Jimmy found by accident. After spilling red wine on Mickey’s dress and then choking on spaghetti bolognese, his girlfriend dumps him for the power puncher Teddy Grant.

This is followed by Chip being “butt dialed” by the missing parents and Ben watching highly inappropriate movies, starting with A Clockwork Orange, aka the annoying orange. (This long running gag ended with Jimmy, Mickey and Ben watching Aliens on a tablet together.)

The Mick this week had it all: An almost non-stop quota of more laughs per minute than any other episode so far. Mickey taking too much motion sickness medication and falling overboard, the sex butt dial, the battle for the master bedroom between Chip and Sabrina and the culmination of that fight where Teddy gets it in the eye.

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Mickey in too deep…

The main storyline runs parallel with the master bedroom battle. Mickey zeroes in on the man with the money; Teddy, while at home the group find themselves focussing on the luxurious boudoir.

Everyone in this episode just killed it. Olson with her OTT behavior with her latest “man.” Jimenez giving that seduction scene her all, including the savage teeth chomping, was spot on.

Major kudos to both Black-D’Elia and Barbusca and their epic bedroom fight. Headbutting, with Sabrina hurting her forehead, leaping through windows, Chip and that falsetto scream, “I killed her,” and that shoe shot all took this episode to insane heights of physical comedy.

The pinnacle of the entire episode had to be Teddy getting that high-heeled shoe skewered into his left eye. As the entire group react in horror, Ben, who has been immunized against grotesque scenes of violence with his steady diet of inappropriate films, pulls the heel from Grant’s eye.

“Cool,” says Ben as Chip passes out. This was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the comedy highpoint in this series thus far. Even funnier than Mickey’s drunken high dive off of Grant’s yacht earlier.

The Mick also manages to give us a touching moment at the end of this episode. After Chip tries so hard to decipher the butt dialed messages left on his phone, he finally realizes, with some help from Sabrina, that their parents do not care about any of them.

Chip takes his phone out to the police who are watching the house and gives it to the two men. He has decided to help the cops catch his “unloving” parents. Seconds after handing the phone over, Chip’s father calls and explains why they have not called before and to say that he and Poodle love them and miss them.

FOX have given us a family that are shallow, supercilious and comically unlikeable. (With the exception of Alba who is absolutely lovable.) This show is full of comic genius and one can only hope that Mickey and the kids stick together for a long time.

The Mick airs Tuesdays on FOX.

Cast:

Guest starring Dave Annable as Teddy Grant.

The Mick: The Fire – Smoking Irreverence (Review)

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Is is wrong to find The Mick funny when its humor is so irreverent that it makes a joke out of a terminally ill man taking the fall for the fire that burned down the neighbor’s guest house? (At least one viewer was offended at Sunday’s “special” episode, where the theme of a  “druggy” clown was bandied about – although Sully turned out to be a diabetic.)

This begs the question of just what is “too far.” Thus far Mickey has doped up her niece, with a concoction of sleep inducing cold medication and promoted the same kid’s sexual activity as “a minor.” This was pointed out in last night’s episode. Sabrina is, apparently, underage – and smoking like a chimney…

Sunday’s episode also had Mickey burying two fingers into Ben’s throat in an effort make him throw up the mystery balloon, which is clearly full of something, but we never learn what.

The previous episode, “The Grandparents” allowed Granny Pemberton to slap Sabrina not once, but twice and turned the “hero” veteran Grandpa Pemberton into a slack jawed paraplegic stroke victim. While not on par with the tastelessness of the new TV version of “roasting,” The Mick is not highbrow comedy.

“The Fire” has Chip “teaching” Ben how to ride a bike; allowing the kid to crash and then covering his open wounds with nicotine patches. Wrong? Oh yes, all kinds of wrong, but it is funny.

It is the very “incorrectness” of Mickey, Chip, Sabrina, Alba and Jimmy that makes the show so incredibly funny. Similar to the poorly received “Uncle Buck” over on ABC last year, this sitcom has characters who are outside the pale.

In other words, these people, despite the trappings of money, the class system (of which Mickey, Alba and Jimmy fall into a different structure than the sister’s kids) and education, are all pretty outlandish. They are impolite, believe the rest of the world is beneath them and do not think rules apply to their family.

Sort of like Donald Trump and his family…

All the characters are unpleasant, but funny with it. Sabrina is headstrong, chain-smokes, is having “underage” sex and drinks alcohol.  Chip is self absorbed, self aggrandizing and narcissistic. (That Trump comparison seems pretty apt now, does it not?) Ben is just lost in the shuffle here.

It seems odd that anyone would get upset at the comic misunderstanding that Sully the clown was a heroine addict and not diabetic.

“The Fire” was full of comic moments. Alba telling the almost fully bonded Sabrina and Mickey that she was given cigarettes as a child, “like candy,” and then later smoking in the bathroom with the two Pemberton females.

The entire family believing that the guttural talking Ben was going round the twist with his “imaginary” friend. The two Pemberton women covering up and hiding in the bathroom to smoke and getting busted by Alba was funny, but even funnier was Sabrina’s assertion that smoking with nicotine patches was a “game changer.”

Burning down the next door neighbor’s guesthouse by not extinguishing their butts was also funny, and (here we enter completely and thoroughly into un-PC territory) allowing the man with lung cancer to take the rap for it.

This is, admittedly, one step below “banana peel” humour.  In this show, the gag is not slipping on the item. It is setting up a “crippled” victim by placing the peel in front of them. In fact, The Mick would go so far as to put the banana peel in the path of a blind person with severe arthritis.

They would do so, however, with a straight face and then, as they did in “The Fire” towards the end, look shocked when their victim hit the ground. The Mick is the modern-day equivalent, intellectually at least, of The Three Stooges.

The boinking of eyes and other physically violent comedy has been updated to include victims who would normally be left alone.

The Mick airs Tuesdays on FOX. Tune in if you are not afraid of that “horrified laughter” associated with the old “Hamster in a micro-wave” gag (“Pop goes the weasel” and extra points to any who can remember this one) and prepare to fall in love with the incorrectness of it all.

Cast:

Guest starring Rodney J. Hobbs as Lt. Brody, Susan Park as Liz

The Mick: The Buffer – The Last Plot With Planned Parenthood (Review)

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This episode of The Mick “The Buffer” has Mickey actually losing one for a change. Thus far the “Aunty Buck” character has been 2 and 0. Now however, Sabrina goes for the win with a little help from Kai.

Granted it is a somewhat of a “backdoor” win but it is, nonetheless, a victory over Mickey. The episode centers around the eldest Pemberton child having a relationship with “found” word worker Kai. The two have a seriously sexual thing going on.

After a very noisy sexual liaison, which drives Chip around the bend, Mickey has a talk with Sabrina and recommends using condoms. Sabrina refuses which causes her aunt to go into overdrive and recommending a slew of different birth control options.

At one point, she comes into the room with a bag full of various things that she picked up at the  “free clinic.” The show’s creators Todd Biermann and Randall Einhorn, along with the writer of the episode; Laura Chinn, manage to artfully hide the name of the free clinic.

It is clearly the Planned Parenthood free clinic; something that, if the president elect and his newly chosen cabinet have anything to do with it, will disappear. With the republican party’s rabid “right to life” mantra that rules birth control as “murder,” this non-specific reference to PP clinics, that also provide for women’s non sexual health issues, may be the last time it can be used in a show’s storyline in a comedic sense.

Heading back to the storyline: Mickey also tries “selling” Sabrina on using birth control pills. The younger woman claims that they poison women’s bodies and refuses to consider taking them. The youngest Pemberton, however, is clearly impressed by Mickey’s description of these “magic pills.”

The kid hijacks the tablets and begins ingesting the hormone laden things as fast as he can. There are several shots of Ben force-feeding himself  enough estrogen to change his personality drastically.

(Sidenote. Points off for lack of originality here guys and gals. This gag has been done before. Most notably in John Tucker Must Die where  Jesse Metcalfe’s massively hormonal character complains that his “boobs hurt.” Little Ben Pemberton does not have this problem and his swift mood changes and crying jags are hysterically funny, but…It has been done before…a number of times.)

The Mick has Mickey acting as a “human condom” and interrupting Kai and Sabrina until they finally give in and agree to use a condom. Meanwhile, Chip, with his over-inflated sense of self, is on a mission to have girls make out with him.

Kudos for the decision to do the “human condom” montage with K7’s 1993 “Come Baby Come” as the backdrop. Very funny.

Jimmy, manages to make the middle child paranoid enough that he wants to get a vasectomy.  As Chip goes from humiliating himself to having a homemade vasectomy, a girl kicks him in the family jewels hard enough that he has to see a doctor, Jimmy is there to provide stupid advice.

Mickey decides to cool things down between Sabrina and Kai initially by having sex with the artisan. Alba volunteers to take the fall but Mickey angrily tells her to back off. The plan does not work as Kai is clearly  not into “older women.”

The next step is to trick Sabrina into thinking she is pregnant. Alba slips the girl some ipecac and she is violently ill. Next Mickey finds some fake pregnancy tests and at last the girl believes she is pregnant with Kai’s child.

Kai, who clearly loves his little gravy train, proposes and Sabrina accepts. The whole plan falls apart when Mickey angrily explains their subterfuge. Sabrina is overjoyed that Kai loved her enough to propose when he thought she was pregnant.

“The Buffer” ends at Mickey 2 – Sabrina 1. The Mick is firing on all cylinders. Even their use of a gag that has been done before takes nothing away from this comic ensemble

The chemistry is spot on. Olsen may be the conductor, or MVP (take your pick) but the entire cast bring it in this show. Scott MacArthur as the “luncheon meat” boyfriend, Carla Jimenez as the “sort-of” faithful housekeeper, Thomas Barbusca as the “love to hate him” middle kid, D’Elia as the snooty eldest child and Jack Stanton as the impressionable and so funny youngest all equal comedy gold.

The humor may be quite “incorrect” but it works brilliantly.  This episode, with Olson’s character getting turned on by Sabrina’s boyfriend, was a perfect example of the gags being a little “un-PC” or “child friendly. This is just fine as the series is not for kids.

The Mick Tuesdays on FOX but in a disturbing move by the network, the series is moving to Sunday.

Cast:

Guest starring Andy Favreau as Kai and Suzanne Whang as female doctor.

The Mick: Pilot – A Better Version of “Uncle Buck” (Review)

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Perhaps the only grumble about the “early” season premiere of The Mick could be that most of the gags had been telegraphed quite clearly with all those hysterical teasers. Looking at the pilot objectionably, however,  it was still very, very funny. This  female “Uncle Buck” version is much better than the awkward ABC iteration where Mike Epps played the title character.

The opening segment, where the aunty goes through the supermarket using products directly from the shelf, up to and including shaving cream and a razor for her “pits,” ends with a liberal helping of Johnson’s Baby Powder on the old nethers. As she leaves the store, a homeless chap with a trolley is handed five beers from a six pack.

The self satisfied smirk on her face says it all as Kaitlin Olson walks out of the camera’s view.  Olson proves that she is not afraid to suffer for her art. In all reality those leaps over the vegetation at her sister’s mansion  was done by a stuntwoman. However, indulging in slapstick comedy, which includes those painful pratfalls, ain’t, as they say, easy.

Just ask Chevy Chase.

The Mick  manages to do something that the ABC Uncle Buck remix could not. It removes the parents completely and allows full interaction between the aunt and those snotty rich kids.  The pilot tells us that we were always right about those overly privileged “spoon in the mouth” children.

Entitled and with loads of attitude, two of the three youngsters are annoying and full of themselves.  Sabrina (Sofia Black-D’Elia) is the Kendall Jenner “lookalike” who takes on her aunty and loses the first two rounds. 

Thomas Barbusca is Chip, the middle kid with an exaggerated sense of self, who wants to sue everyone. Jack Stanton plays Ben, the youngest of the three and, thus far, the nicest of the bunch.

Sabrina has her cigarettes stolen by her aunt and later is slipped a mickey to keep her from going to a party.  The gal who can handle her liquor caves in after being given “five different sleeping medications.”  The scene ends with her being carried to her room.

Chip is given the world’s worst advice on how to handle his nemesis at school. This scene is one that anyone watching the teasers will remember. It is still funny, regardless of the spoilers, and this says something for the quality of the script and the actors.

The housekeeper, Alba (Played by Carla Jimenez.) gets her fair share of comic moments and the interaction between the housekeeper and Olson’s character is spot on.

The Mick promises to be one heck of a funny show.  Olson is brilliant and clearly not afraid of making herself look less than attractive. Those wine-stained and swollen lips, with eyes to match, are incredibly funny. Especially when combined with the whole straighter than straight delivery.

A lot more of the story was revealed in the pilot. We get a better idea of who Olson’s character is and this does look to be a splendid take on the Uncle Buck formula, sans John Candy.

FOX have given us a show that is not afraid to have the “grownup” drug her teenage charge to keep her at home. (The implication was that the “absinthe” was in fact NyQuill.) The same woman gives the younger brother incredibly bad advice on how to handle his bully.

Telling the youngster to pull the other boy’s pants down and point out his tiny “pecker” is wildly inappropriate. It is, however, damned funny. The punch line is that the bully is not “tiny” and not the least intimidated by Chip’s attempt at humiliation.

The rich kid’s lament that he is lucky not to have been beaten by the bully’s member is also funny to the extreme. The young actor’s delivery is spot on.

The Mick is full of that brand of irreverent humor that is so funny when applied properly.  Olson and her co-stars look set to deliver a show that will keep the audience in stitches.

The show premieres on Sunday, 1 January in the new year. Stop by and check this one out. You will be glad you did as Olson and the rest of the cast rock.

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