Wednesday, September 08, 1999
Fox should 'Get Real' about teen's 'sleepover'
BY JOHN KIESEWETTER
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Get real. That's not just a TV show title. It's my reaction to TV's newest family drama, Fox style, that network's first fall premiere (9 p.m. today, Channels 19, 45).
In the first five minutes of Get Real, a mother wakes up her 16-year-old son only to discover he's curled up under the covers with his naked girlfriend.
Minutes later, the girl joins the family for breakfast.
No yelling. No screaming.
No grounding for life. No punishment whatsoever.
Get real!
When mom (Debrah Farentino from Equal Justice) asks her husband (Jon Tenney from Brooklyn South) to discipline the boy, he says: “I have a meeting. I'll talk to him later.”
In the car ride to school, mom finally broaches the subject to son Cameron (Eric Olsen). His response: “I know how hyper you get about kids and sex and stuff like that, so I had Gabby stay over — for you. We were going to do it at her house.”
Get real!
Half-way through the show, the Green family — the parents and their three teens — sit down for dinner with a long-time friend and business partner who's having an affair with a well-endowed Los Angeles Lakers' dancer.
In bursts the man's jilted wife, who rips open her dress and exposes her breasts to her husband — and everyone else around the dinner table.
Get real!
In the coming weeks, Fox viewers also will meet a Hollywood movie producer whose foul mouth is “bleeped” out on Action (9 p.m. Sept. 16)); a prep school coed who tries to seduce her stepbrother on Manchester Prep (debuting in November); and a mother who likes to do housework topless in front of her three kids, and sometimes answers the doorbell that way, in Malcolm in the Middle (delayed until January).
Fox's so-called reality bites. And I don't think I'm overly sensitive just because I have a 16-year-old son in the house (who still sleeps alone).
Of course, Fox Entertainment President Doug Herzog, the man who put South Park on Comedy Central, disagrees.
“Quite frankly, I think that's what the audience expects from us — something a little different,” says Mr. Herzog, who was hired by Fox in January.
“Get Real is a real great example of where Fox is going. Get Real is a family drama, but it's done in a Fox style.
“It feels real to me. It feels like this is how families are in the '90s, how they interact in the '90s, how they talk to each other and how they feel. In that regard, it's kind of a perfect Fox show.”
There are some perfectly entertaining elements of Get Real, if you can get past the Fox morality.
• Get Real is packed with comedic Ally McBeal-style video fantasies to break up the tension.
• Jesse Eisenberg is wonderful as Kenny, 15, the youngest child endlessly picked on by his selfish brother and school bully. (He's the brother of Hallie Eisenberg, the little girl from the Pepsi “Joy of Cola” commercials).
• Anne Hathaway shines as Meghan, 18, a straight-A student who wants to toss away a full ride to college and decide what she wants to be when she grows up. This upsets her mom, who got pregnant with her at 18.
Meghan delivers the best lines in the show, directly to the camera, snippy remarks about Dawson's Creek, 7th Heaven and other TV shows. When Cameron is hurt in a car wreck, she says: “You think we were going to kill off my brother in the first episode?”
• Ms. Farentino convincingly portrays a modern mother juggling a career, parenting and housework while distressed over no spark in her marriage. Her arguments with her husband cut close to the bone.
Creator Clyde Phillips (Parker Lewis Can't Lose) calls the controversial sleep-over scene “entertainment (and) fiction,” a way to illustrate the parents' problems.
“They can't come to an agreement on who's going to deal with it,” he says. “They can't even find time to talk to each other.”
The way Cameron ignores his parents' about his sexcapades is realistic, Mr. Olsen says.
“It's an honest portrayal of a 16-year-old boy,” says Mr. Olsen, a pre-med student at Pepperdine University. “It isn't The Cosby Show. He's got problems, and he does things that are wrong. And we're delusional at 16, and we think certain things are right, and we do them. And certain things are wrong, and we still do them.”
If Theo Huxtable would have been caught in bed with his girlfriend, you could bet that Dr. Cliff Huxtable would have handled the situation head-on. Millions of The Cosby Show viewers possibly could have learned how to deal with a similar occurance in our own lives, if that time came.
At Fox, a 16-year-old having sex in his bedroom with the family at home is just entertainment.
Get real.
John Kiesewetter is Enquirer TV/radio critic. His column appears Monday and Wednesday. Write: 312 Elm St., Cincinnati 45202; fax: 768-8330.
