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By Corrine Hicks
 Cast of Some of My Best Friends on CBS |
Sitcoms—with only a few exceptions—have never been this reviewer's favorite fare.
The canned laughter and exaggerated acting have—through the decades—
worn too noticeably thin. Now that the networks are weaving lesbian and gay characters into
such programming, it should come as no surprise, perhaps, that some of their characters
wear even thinner. |
If you're wondering where to find a cast of annoying stereotypes, CBS' Some of My Best Friends beckons. The Boston Globe calls it “a sitcom that only a laugh track could love” filled
with “shallow characters who yell out dumb, obvious jokes.”
The New York Times reviewer rightly charges that that Some of My Best Friends
“brazenly reduces gay people, Italian people, Asian people and aging married people to
caricatures in the interests of good ratings and corporate profits.”
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Its encouraging when the Times critiques the profit motive as a conduit to bad art.
Yup, the Italians portrayed, like Frankie Zito (Danny Nucci) are truly thick-headed and the gays
like Warren Fairbanks (Jason Bateman) are denizens of effeminacy row. Frankie,
searching for a roommate in the ads thinks GWM means "Guy with Money" while
Warren, who's also Jewish, adorns his walls with Barbra Streisand posters and owns
an autographed portrait of Bette Midler. By the time Frankie discovers Warren's a lavender
lad, his stymied cash-flow disallows a flight from the premises.
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Related Sites:
Some of My Best Friends
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It's conceivable, maybe, that Some of My Best Friends' writers eventually hope
to make light of conventional macho rulings and effeminate posturings. To do this,
they think, they must overemphasize whatever humor, ad nauseum, exists in this dimension. Since
most people remain unaware that their poses and postures are, in fact, culturally-ingrained roles,
Frankie, attempting to behave effeminately, may serve somehow to remind them. Better yet, there's
Frankie's macho buddy Pino (Michael DeLuise) whose stupidity, hopefully, emphasizes just how stupid
macho males can be.
 Jason Bateman |
A Washington Post reviewer says:
“Some of My Best Friends isn't terrible enough to hate, but it's
not promising either. The premise is restricting, narrow and, oddly or
not, inhibiting. One can hardly expect an audience to want to spend time
with these people each week when they act as if they have no desire to
spend time with one another.” |
Bingo.
Some of My Best Friends is based on Kiss Me, Guido, a 1997 film described that year
by GayToday's reviewer, Leo Skir, as “a chow mein one-hour-later-you're-hungry again comedy with one Joke. One.”
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Well, there are a few good lines, perhaps, but not enough of them to make do. Frankie's mom,
discovering he aspires to be a star says: "An actor? Couldn't you just be gay?"
His dad, a font of Italian wisdom, adds: "You know, people are born gay, but acting--that's a
choice." |
 Danny Nucci |
Amos and Andy, an early 1950s TV offering was one of the first of the black sitcom genre
to bite the dust. Today, there isn't a network anywhere that would host it in re-runs. Let's
hope that much the same can someday be said of Some of My Best Friends.
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