When we’re first introduced to Mackenzie Murphy, she is wandering through a grocery store in sweatpants, making free use of pretty much everything in the aisles – deodorant, whipped cream, cantaloupe, lipstick, and beer.
She’s on her way to Greenwich, Connecticut, to hustle some money out of an estranged sister who married rich. Then the sister is arrested for fraud, and Mackenzie is stuck taking care of her kids.
If this seems like something of a tired comedic premise, that’s part of the appeal of The Mick: with so many other comedies this year eschewing straightforward laughs in favor of complicated stories about depression, it’s nice to have a show that wants to throw out some of the most disgusting jokes it can think of, all while gleefully endangering children.
Not that star Kaitlin Olson is in any way a stranger to gross-out humor – as one of the stars of FXX’s long-running series It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, she has long had an outlet for her equal parts debauched and high-strung energy.
In theory, Mackenzie should be judged absent comparisons to Olson’s Sunny character Dee, but The Mick’s pedigree (from past Sunny writers) and the comedy it asks of Olson makes parallels inevitable. If The Mick proves anything, it’s that Olson is an extraordinarily talented comedian.
Mickey’s snotty nephews and niece aren’t Rob McElhenny, Glenn Howerton and Charlie Day but they do bring different, snivelling energy to the proceedings. Chip (Thomas Barbusca) is an angry, entitled kid who thinks he can sue his way into anything, while Sabrina (Sofia Black D’Elia) is a classic rich kid, more concerned with seeing her friends DJ in Soho than remembering siblings’ birthdays.
The best thing about The Mick is that Mackenzie, barely inhibited by feelings of affection for her charges and coming from a background of laziness and debauchery herself, is willing to do all sorts of things no parent would ever do on TV, particularly with Sabrina.
Mickey forces her into a drinking contest, tricks her into thinking she’s pregnant as a way of teaching her about sex, and turns a birthday party for the youngest child, Ben (Jack Stanton) into a competitive parenting arena.
Though It’s Always Sunny is the obvious point of comparison, Sabrina and Mickey’s barb-trading helps center The Mick’s thematic target: the ultra-wealthy. If you centrifuge out the Sunny elements, it seems awfully similar in its core concept to another Fox sitcom about a family of awful rich people dealing with fraud charges …
A few episodes in, The Mick is more than a bit too soft to cut so deeply. Like nearly all sitcoms, The Mick looks like it’s going to be about the formation of a makeshift family – including Carla Jimenez as Alba, the Pembertons’ housekeeper and Mackenzie’s friend, and Scott MacArthur as Jimmy, her not-quite-boyfriend – rather than Arrested Development’s focus on a family that really ought not to stay together.
But The Mick’s warm emotional core might be a justified response to its central premise: having all of the hijinks supported by obscenely rich criminals who also just happen to be absent. Isn’t that the dream?
