Pete Holmes just wanted to make a nice sitcom. “How We Roll” was the perfect strike.
The CBS multicam, which premiered Thursday, stars Holmes as Tom Smallwood, a small-town dad and husband who gets laid off from his job on an auto assembly line and decides to use the opportunity to pursue his dreams of being a professional bowler.
“In my real life, that’s when exciting and challenging and interesting happens: when something doesn’t go your way,” the 42-year-old comedian, who starred in HBO’s “Crashing” from 2017-19, told the Daily News.
“In ‘Crashing,’ my real-life wife left me and I got very serious about comedy. Tom’s story is different but it’s similar. He got laid off — it wasn’t a divorce — but it’s these disruptions that often embolden us and force us to change,” Holmes said. “If what you’re doing is working, why would you change? It’s the way the world works. These things that we don’t expect happen and they often catapult us to where we really needed to go. That’s certainly true in Tom’s story.”
“How We Roll” is not much more than a simple story about a simple man and his family and a few friends at the bowling alley. That’s both by design and exactly what Holmes was looking for.
During the pandemic, he and his wife binged all 11 seasons of “Frasier.” Then they watched “Cheers,” “Friends” and “How I Met Your Mother.”
“Classic multicams with a kitchen with a door that swings and a soda can that says ‘Cola’ on it,” he called them.
“I don’t want to say it’s basic in a bad way. It’s basic in a way that pizza is basic. Cheap pizza is pretty basic, but when I get pizza, I get cheap pizza. A good multicam can feel that way,” Holmes said.
“It’s not going to bog you down with stress. Stuff happens. There’s a story and there’s conflict, but it’s always in that truly classic American format that is the family sitcom.”
Bowling, at the center of “How We Roll,” is the most basic of all. For Holmes, it hearkens back to pizza and root beer at childhood birthday parties. When he got older, it was him and his buddies sitting around drinking beer at the bowling alley.
He’s still not great at bowling, but that’s besides the point.
“Bowling is the ultimate excuse to hang out with your friends because most of the time you’re sitting around waiting for your turn,” he laughed.
There’s a wholesomeness to bowling, so much so that this is the first project that his parents are excited to watch, he admitted.
“How We Roll” isn’t reinventing the wheel, but improving upon it, Holmes said. There’s a pattern to shows like this. You know the characters and the plots. But while there’s room for both “Succession” and “Abbott Elementary” in the TV landscape, there’s also room for sitcoms without nagging wives and potbellied husbands.
“I didn’t want to be always sneaking Big Macs in my car, trying to get away with my boys and drinking beer and my wife is always telling me to mow the lawn,” he told The News.
Instead, wife Jen (Katie Lowes) has her own career as a hairdresser to worry about. Son Sam has dreams of being a tap dancer.
“Isn’t this insane, it’s 2022, but finally both genders are being viewed as human people,” Holmes deadpanned.
“It’s not just about Tom making it. It’s about a family making it.”
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