It’s hard to believe, but Damon Wayans has been entertaining America for over 40 years, ever since his small but memorable role in the original Beverly Hills Cop led to a short-lived stint on SNL and a much more memorable stint with his family on In Living Color. His son, who is also Damon Wayans, has been pretty damn funny for almost 15 years, since Happy Endings premiered in 2011. Now the two of them play father and son in a new CBS sitcom.
Opening Shot: Poppa (Damon Wayans, Sr.) walks into his kitchen and is startled by a knock on his window by his son Damon (Damon Wayans, Jr.), who’s also his next-door neighbor.
The Gist: Junior wants to ask a favor of his father, but Poppa has his son wait until he’s had a sip of tea first, and he draws it out. Junior wants Poppa to watch his kids while he’s out doing a pitch to direct some music videos. Junior wants badly to direct full-time, but to make money he works for the father of his wife Nina (Tetona Jackson), who also helped him get their house, selling foam back rollers. Poppa tells Junior that he’s stealing time from his boss, all the while orgasming when he rolls on one of Junior’s samples.
Poppa has some issues at his workplace, too; he’s the host of Poppa’s House, a wildly successful morning-drive radio show in New York, dispensing his wisdom — sometimes a bit old-fashioned — and spinning tunes. The station manager has someone “call in” — podcaster Dr. Ivy Reed (Essence Atkins) — to challenge some of what Poppy says. After riling him up, the station manager introduces Ivy to Poppy, saying that “corporate” wants a female perspective on his show. He thinks he has a choice, but he doesn’t. The next day, when he sees Ivy in a seat next to him and cameras set up for a live video feed, he quits.
Junior’s directorial pitch ran long and he missed a sales meeting, prompting his father in law to fire him. Poppa tells his son about how tough things were when he first started in radio, when Junior was a baby, and how he quit a job thinking he had another one in the bag. Sometimes you have to do what you hate to do what you love, he tells his son. He helps Junior out by inviting Nina’s father (Geoffrey Owens) over to dinner to smooth things over, despite the two of them having a rivalry that dates back to high school.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Poppa’s House fits very well with The Neighborhood, which it joins on CBS’s Monday sitcom block.
Our Take: The showrunner of Poppa’s House, Dean Lorey, worked with Damon Wayans, Sr. on the long-running sitcom My Wife And Kids, so he has a good idea that the best thing to do when you have Wayans on a sitcom is to let him improvise funny voices and certain lines. He knows that Wayans can make things funnier just by saying things like “Meeeeat!” in a high-pitched voice, and that makes the series significantly funnier as a result.
But that funny is amplified by the presence of Damon Wayans, Jr. We knew he had his dad’s gift of improvisational hilarity by his years on Happy Endings and New Girl. But when the two of them start going, whether it’s dancing or exchanging impressions or clinking wine glasses to a specific rhyme, the show is at its funniest.
The rest needs a bit of work, because Junior and Nina seem to do standard sitcom married couple schtick, and Ivy just seems to be there to jab at Poppy and weave around his barbed remarks. Giving Poppy a foil is necessary, because he’s a sixty-something who still wears backwards baseball caps and has become a bit hardened towards relationships since he divorced Junior’s mother.
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: A series of outtakes that are even funnier than what made it into the final cut.
Sleeper Star: We’re actually giving this to Essence Atkins as Ivy, because she leans into Ivy’s intensity with gusto. But she needs to be more than just a scold and sparring partner for Poppy.
Most Pilot-y Line: The sets for Junior’s house and Poppa’s houses are so alike that it was hard to tell which house was which. In the second episode, the sets change to make them look more distinctive. Also, somehow Poppa conducts a radio show with his headphones around his neck and not on his ears. How does he hear the callers? That was fixed in the second episode, too.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Poppa’s House works because both Wayans Sr. and Jr. lean into what makes each of them funny, and are great together. The more standard sitcommy parts will get better the longer the show stays on the air.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.