The Upshaws has been one of Netflix’s more soild hit shows because it hews to a pretty traditional formula: A family with the usual ups and downs, led by a couple consisting of a dopey but well-meaning husband and a tireless, patient wife. Yes, it feels like a million other sitcoms, but a great cast, and a good story in between all of the sitcom stuff makes it the hit that it is.
Opening Shot: At the Upshaws’ house, Lucretia (Wanda Sykes) tries to lance a zit on the ear of Kelvin (Diamond Lyons). Bennie (Mike Epps) walks in with a shirt that smells good… or at least not as bad as his other shirts.
The Gist: Lucretia has been helping around the house since Regina (Kim Fields) had a heart attack and decided she needed some time away from her family. And it hasn’t been easy. Kelvin, who is Bennie’s son with another woman, has moved in, older daughter Aaliyah (Khali Spraggins) is grumpy without her mother there, and younger daughter Maya (Journey Christine) can’t find matching shoes. “If one more kid asks for one more thing, we’re going to be on The First 48!” yells Bennie.
Regina has been staying at Lucretia’s apartment, and while Lucretia loves her sister and wants to see her recover to the point where she’s comfortable coming home, she can’t stand how Regina uses all of her bath products, gets stuff everywhere, and completely cramps her single lifestyle.
For her part, Regina has been going to therapy sessions with Dr. Edmunds (Jenifer Lewis), but feels like she’s still not ready to go home. Dr. Edmunds suggests that Bennie comes in for a talk, just to get his perspective on what led to Regina’s heart attack and desire to not be family’s caretaker full-time. As Regina predicts, Bennie balks at any sort of therapy, thinking that all of his wife’s problems are going to be pinned on him. When Regina tells him that the session will be private, and “I won’t even know you were there,” he agrees to a session — then blows it off to go with his garage buddies to a Pacers game.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? As we said when we reviewed the first set of episodes in 2021 and again when we reviewed Part 3 earlier this year, The Upshaws feels like a ’90s sitcom in a lot of ways, a cross between Martin and My Wife And Kids.
Our Take: At this point, The Upshaws, created by Sykes and Regina Y. Hicks, has a pretty good handle on what kind of show it is. There are still a lot of aspects to it that feel old-fashioned, and not in a good way, namely the bickering between Bennie and Lucretia and the idea that when Bennie has a chance to the right thing, he tends to do the opposite, like so many sitcom husbands of the ’90s and early ’00s did.
But it’s also a show whose characters are well-established, and much of the humor now comes from their personalities, and how they try to grow and change over time. Bennie’s family situation is always fluid, given the fact that Kelvin is in and out his life to different degrees, and Bernard (Jermelle Simon), whom Bennie and Regina had when they were teenagers, has also had a rocky relationship with his parents.
What we do appreciate is that the Upshaws’ lives aren’t static; Regina is truly “going through something” as the season begins, and Fields plays the character’s existential crisis well. She’s at the point where she’s a lot better, both emotionally and physically, but not quite ready to be back home full-time, and that difficulty is shown in her performance. But she’s also enjoying solo time at Lucretia’s place. Some of the funnier parts of the episode are when Lucretia tires of her sister’s presence, a sitcom plot as old as TV but well-executed here.
A lot of what we described in the “Gist” section happened during the first ten minutes of the 26-minute first episode; the rest was as sitcommy as it gets. Bennie and his garage guys land in “Basketball jail” after getting in a fight with someone in the stands over a Kiss Cam misunderstanding; there’s a lot of talk about how exhausting women are, and then Bennie finally has his once-per-episode epiphany that redeems all of the schmuckiness he’s committed to that point. That kind of repetitiveness is this series’ weakness, but it’s also embedded in its sitcom DNA. The degree to which Bennie is a schmuck is really what determines how good or bad a particular episode is. And here, he’s a complete schmuck until the very last second.
Let’s see what happens when he finally visits with Dr. Edmunds — seeing Epps and Lewis square off should be a lot of fun — and gets a little more perspective on why Regina needed some space.
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: In the funniest scene of the episode, Bennie walks in on Lucretia dancing naked to Chaka Khan — which she couldn’t do with Regina around — and dabs Scotch on his eyelids. “I need my vison to be drunk,” he says.
Sleeper Star: We are happy to see Jenifer Lewis anytime, anywhere, and she bantered really well with Fields in their scene together, as you’d expect from two comedy vets like them.
Most Pilot-y Line: The woman sitting next to Bennie at the Pacers game starts to grab him when she realizes they’re on the Kiss Cam — her boyfriend was out getting her mustard. That’s something that would never happen in real life, and is an awkward way to set up Bennie and his buddies spending half the episode in “basketball jail”.
Our Call: STREAM IT. The Upshaws knows what it is and what it isn’t. And between the tired sitcommy elements is a pretty good story of a family that has the same ups and downs we all do.
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.