Sitcom Review: George Lopez

Sitcom Review:  George Lopez
by: pageian

George Lopez was an American sitcom which ran for six seasons between March 2002 and May 2007.  The Show featured comedian George Lopez, an outspoken Mexican American comedian.  The show was losely based on Lopez's comedy similar to how other comedians shows were premised, such as Seinfeld and Everybody Loves Raymond.  The show revolves around George's family, his wife Angie, played by Constance Marie, his daughter Carmen, played by Masiela Lusha, his son Max, played by Luis Armand Garcia, his father-in-law Vic, played by Emiliano Díez, his mother Benny, played by Belita Moreno and his friend Ernie, played by Valente Rodriguez.  Another major set piece of the show revolves around George's job as manager of a factory that produces aircraft landing gear.

Major themes throughout the show are George's adversarial relationship and poor upbringing by his mother Benny, who is a heavy drinker and smoker and often goes out of her way to not show affection.  George also has a learning disability, dyslexia, that has been passed on to his son Max which makes it difficult for him to succeed in school and also causes problems for George at his job.  Other themes revolve around Carmen's behavior, boyfriends and private school, Angie's job as a cosmetics sales woman and later as a wedding planner and George's dimwitted friend Ernie being taken advantage of by women and his parents.  Multiple episodes are also devoted to Georges search for his biological father and later on his relationship with his fathers family.

There's nothing groundbreaking or earth shattering about the show.  Most of the episode plots have been done before, and perhaps better, by other sitcoms.  The show tries very hard to appeal to the sentiments of the working man by portraying George as a hard working person who's climbed his way up the corporate ladder to become manager.  The characters seem to always be afraid of losing their jobs, of the plant closing or moving, being bought and taken over by another, large company or having to take pay cuts so that the company can continue to operate without having to sacrifice any jobs.  It's a bit too much and often trite how the aircraft landing gear plant is run, it seemed like every season of the show had two or three episodes that revolved around at least one of the main characters job security or the plants ability to stay in business.  It's done in a manner derivative of '90's sitcoms like "Roseann" and "Grace Under Fire" which tended to focus on the adversity that the common working man goes through trying to stay afloat during hard times.  Those plot devices are hard to buy into at times when the economy is doing well which was the case for all three of the mentioned shows.  Job security and economic hardship would seem to be an easy script to fall back on and implies a lack of creativity from the writers.

You'll rarely find yourself laughing out loud at the jokes in the show.  Most of them are telegraphed well in advance so you know what's coming and aren't very well written to begin with.  Again, it's all been done before.  Most of the characters are over-acted, particularly Benny, Ernie and Vic.  Ernie is the dimwitted comic straight man who's not actually very funny, Benny is a mean spirited firebrand and Vic is a hotblooded Cuban heart surgeon.  All three characters can become particularly annoying if you watch the episodes one after another and see them acted so poorly and to such bad writing.  It all comes off rather amateurish with poorly developed characters and all-to-convenient plot devices.  While watching the show you can't help but think that had the show been better written and directed it could have been so much more than it was.

George Lopez lasted six years and that was perhaps a couple years too long.  The ratings dropped every year it was in production yet Lopez himself was surprised and upset when ABC finally pulled the plug in 2007.  To it's credit the show never seemed to "Jump the Shark", a termed used to indicate when a show starts an obvious decline and usually starts attempting unrealistic plots and episodes that don't work without the viewer having to suspend reality in order to buy into what's going on.  It's possible that the show didn't jump the shark simply because the characters were so one dimensional and poorly developed that the unrealistic and convenient plots and episodes where always there from the start. 

In all George Lopez is mildly entertaining if for no other reason than watching it to see how badly written and conceived the show is.  Don't expect many laughs and don't expect to be awed by the acting or writing.  It's pretty safe to go ahead and delete the episodes off of your DVR after you've watched them once without fear that you'll want to go back and watch any of them a second time.