What do you get when you mix Carrie Bradshaw with, er ... a man? Betsy Thomas, the creator of the new TBS comedy "My Boys," would probably say you get her show's main character, PJ Franklin (Jordana Spiro).
PJ is a writer who mostly seems to hang out with her best friends. But instead of a pun-ridden sex column (? la "Sex and the City"'s Bradshaw), PJ covers Cubs games for the Chicago Sun-Times, and instead of having brunch and making allusions to all things phallic, PJ drinks beer and watches sports with four guys.
But "My Boys" is still very much centered around relationships, as PJ struggles to better understand men. Things get complicated for PJ when she meets Bobby (Kyle Howard), a newcomer to the area and to PJ's baseball team. It's clear the two are attracted to each other, but PJ has trouble deciphering Bobby's mixed signals.
Oh, if only men were as easy to understand as sports! This is the show's mantra, as it repeatedly compares the two through tired baseball metaphors. PJ even starts to write a piece on the subject which the audience hears in a voiceover as she types away at her laptop. Sound familiar?
The "Sex and the City" business doesn't stop there. "Sex" created and defined terms that became part of the American consciousness: the idea of the "frenemy," for example, or the adage, "He's just not that into you." The "My Boys" writers clearly try to channel some of that show's energy with their discussion of the "girl booty call," which is when a woman calls a man over to talk. PJ goes into a spiel about the dreaded GBC as if it's a widely known phenomenon that all women (excluding PJ, of course) take part in.
This is not only untrue, of course, but pretty indicative of the show's feelings towards women. There is PJ's one female friend (and the only black person on the show) named Stephanie (Kellee Stewart), who is described as "girly" on numerous occasions. She tries to play games with men and withhold sex to get them to like her, and it seems that, as a result, her relationships will never work out. (To keep the "Sex" comparisons alive, she's the sexually reserved Charlotte character of this show.)
One of PJ's poker buddies, her brother Andy (Jim Gaffigan), is constantly vexed by his "drag" of a wife who constantly forces him to come home. In an extension of PJ's long-winded baseball metaphor, Andy is the group's "relief pitcher," because he's in and out sporadically due to his horrible wife. How many times has the needy, nagging wife been played up for laughs, as if all men who marry automatically start to hate their lives and wives? It's an old stereotype and not even funny. But maybe one needs to be married to an irritating woman to truly understand the humor.
Then, there is PJ. The writers make it really, really, mind-numbingly easy to understand that PJ is a tomboy. She can't cook, she watches sports, she hangs out with guys, she plays poker, she wants to have a one-night stand, and she doesn't like to dress up - the list never ends.
The result of all this is a one-dimensional character who even the finest actress would have difficulty giving much depth to. That being said, however, Spiro's acting is good and believable in this role, bringing a laidback appeal to PJ's intonation and mannerisms.
PJ is different from the other women depicted in the show because she acts as the aggressor in her relations with Bobby. She wants to have sex with him, and, as all men would when a hot girl wants to have sex, Bobby gets freaked out by her forward, manly ways and puts an immediate stop to the whole thing.
However unbelievable that particular scenario may be, it serves to undermine what seems to have been the point of the rest of the show: Women who act in traditional ways are the butts of the jokes, but they can at least get a man (however miserable he is). The moral of the story seems to be that, passive or aggressive, traditional or not, women cannot win in the big ol' baseball game of love.
The humor on "My Boys" is hit-or-miss. (The baseball jokes just keep coming.) Viewers may express the occasional chuckle at a funny quip, but many of the attempts at humor just fall flat. An example: One of PJ's friends rhetorically questions, "Were you born in a barn?" and another friend responds, "I don't remember!" Hilarious!
Whatever badly written jokes and gnawing ideas about gender relations "My Boys" contains, it is not wholly without merit. The relationship between Bobby and PJ is somewhat compelling, and in a guilty pleasure kind of way, viewers want to know when and how these two will get together. (Odds are, it won't be for quite a while, as they tend to drag these things out.)
But if you're looking for commentary on relationships, just watch "Sex and the City," because at least Carrie actually got to have sex. And she had some damn fine shoes.
