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Review: Why I hate FOX's 'I Hate My Teenage Daughter'

The last new show of the fall is also one of the least

By Alan Sepinwall Tuesday, Nov 29, 2011 3:00 PM

  • Critic's Rating D+
  • Readers' Rating D+
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<p>Katie Finneran and Jaime Pressly address their loathsome offspring in "I Hate My Teenage Daughter."</p>

Katie Finneran and Jaime Pressly address their loathsome offspring in "I Hate My Teenage Daughter."

Credit: FOX
There are lots of DVD review screeners floating around my house, and a few days ago, I found my daughter holding one of them, a perplexed and unhappy look on her face.
 
"Daddy, you shouldn't say this, should you?" she asked, pointing at the title on the disc: "I Hate My Teenage Daughter."
 
"No, honey, you shouldn't," I told her.
 
"So why does it say that?" she asked, still confused. "No one should say they hate their daughter, right?"
 
"Someone thought it was funny," I told her.
 
"But it isn't funny," she said, clearly worried about the idea that we might one day say it about her as a joke.
 
"No," I said, shaking my head. "It is not funny. At all."
 
What I didn't tell my daughter, because she's too young to understand the concept of dark humor, is that there probably is a funny show to be made with that title, and that concept. But the one debuting tomorrow night at 9:30 on FOX is not it.
 
Jaime Pressly and Katie Finneran play Annie and Nikki, lifelong best friends and former high school ugly ducklings grown up into beautiful but still nerdy swans. Both are divorced, and each has raised a daughter who acts exactly like the mean girls who tormented them back in the day.
 
"We have awful, terrible daughters!" Nikki laments after watching the duo – Kristi Lauren as Annie's daughter Sophie and Aisha Dee as Nikki's daughter Mackenzie – in action.
 
"Pretty, though," Annie acknowledges.
 
As Annie's ex-brother-in-law Jack (Kevin Rahm) explains, the women are so desperate to keep their daughters from being freaks like they were that they've spoiled them rotten to the core. They don't really hate the daughters; they're just desperate to live vicariously through them.
 
And I think there's a potentially good comedy there: a scathing, vicious comedy about a pair of bumbling pushovers who don't understand why their horrid offspring despise them.
 
But "I Hate My Teenage Daughter" never wants to go remotely that far. It wants you to sympathize with Annie and Nikki, even as they're so willfully pathetic. For that matter, it doesn't want you to especially hate the interchangeable Sophie and Mackenzie, as each episode builds to a phony tug for the heartstrings where we find out that, snotty as the girls act, they really do love their moms deep down, gosh darn it.
 
So you have a comedy without the nerve to be about what it says it's about, one that tiptoes close to the edge and then repeatedly backs off, and actually winds up more unpleasant as a result. I dislike all the central characters more this way than I suspect I would if they were supposed to be genuinely hateable(*).
 
(*) Then again, FOX's "Allen Gregory" treads similar territory, and is far more willing to let its horrible kid be horrible, etc., and that's unbearable in its own right. Purity of approach doesn't automatically guarantee laughs.
 
And with the show so half-hearted about its subject matter, "Teenage Daughter" has to lean on the hackiest of punchlines. Sample joke: Nikki scolds ex-husband Gary(**), asking, "Why don't you get a job instead of playing golf with your stupid buddies? – to which Gary replies, "I'm a golf pro!" Cue rim-shot and request for the audience to try the veal and tip their waitress. Pressly and Finneran, talented comediennes both, flail around, hoping that a lot of manic energy will make up for what's lacking on the page, but to no avail. (This is one where the laugh track machine is going to have to work overtime.)
 
(**) Played by Chad L. Coleman, best known as Cutty from "The Wire." I don't begrudge the guy work, but going from "The Wire" to "I Hate My Teenage Daughter" is almost as sad as Al Pacino going from "The Godfather" to "Jack & Jill." (And at least with Pacino, we had a couple of decades of hammy performances in bad movies to get us ready for it.)
 
By premiering the Wednesday after Thanksgiving, "I Hate My Teenage Daughter" is by far the last of the new network shows to debut this fall. It's also one of the least.
 
Alan Sepinwall may be reached at sepinwall@hitfix.com

 

Alan-sepinwall-sm
Alan Sepinwall
Sr. Editor, What's Alan Watching
Alan Sepinwall has been reviewing television since the mid-'90s, first for Tony Soprano's hometown paper, The Star-Ledger, and now for HitFix. His new book, "The Revolution Was Televised," about the last 15 years of TV drama, is for sale at Amazon. He can be reached at sepinwall@hitfix.com
Related Searches: I Hate My Teenage Daughter, Katie Finneran, Chad L. Coleman, Kevin Rahm, Jaime Pressly

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  • Default-avatar

    Joe

    Does Coleman at least raise the game of the scenes he's in? Sticking to your Pacino analogy, reviews of 'Jack and Jill' indicate that the only tolerable thing about the movie is Pacino's odd parody of himself.

    November 29, 2011 at 4:05PM EST Reply to Comment
    • Lrg-170-dust_free_but_still_pouty_talkback_profile

      anthonystrand Hopefully he eventually realizes that the only way to approach this show is with his solemn left and sanctified right.

      November 29, 2011 at 5:48PM EST
  • Default-avatar

    knifoon

    Later episodes don't get better after the dreadful pilot then? I was hoping, since I want to support Katie Finneran.

    November 29, 2011 at 4:17PM EST Reply to Comment
    • Midnight_run_mca255950_talkback_profile

      sepinwall If anything, the second episode is even more watered-down and stupid.

      November 29, 2011 at 4:20PM EST
    • Default-avatar

      John Sounds like the best way to support Finneran (whom I also love) is to help her get free to pursue better work.

      November 30, 2011 at 9:03PM EST
  • 9yearsold_talkback_profile

    klg19

    I saw the promos and could tell this was not going to be on my schedule, but I'm relieved to learn just how right I was. What a shame. Pressly was SO good in "My Name is Earl," and has so much potential. I'm sad that she hasn't gotten a better vehicle.

    I can't even address the Coleman thing. Gack.

    November 29, 2011 at 4:23PM EST Reply to Comment
  • Default-avatar

    Jobin2

    Chad L. Coleman seems to be showing up more and more as whatever the next level up from an extra is. He had like 3 lines in a few Always Sunny episodes, and he was in Horrible Bosses and Green Hornet for a combined 10 seconds.

    Glad to see him as a cast regular, even though I won't watch a single second of this horrible sounding show.

    November 29, 2011 at 4:45PM EST Reply to Comment
  • Default-avatar

    Jeremy

    Between this & Nerd 2.0, I kind of feel like the Hitfix staff is traumatizing their kids by leaving DVDs around the house.

    November 29, 2011 at 6:02PM EST Reply to Comment
  • Default-avatar

    Jeff

    I'm looking forward to this one, the preview clips on Fox.com have been hilarious!

    November 29, 2011 at 7:05PM EST Reply to Comment
    • Default-avatar

      Nick I'm starting to worry about myself since I too actually laughed at the preview clips and this is despite the fact that I haven't been able to stand a comedy with a laugh track since Seinfeld. That is no exaggeration. So not sure what I saw in this but given the venom people seem to have for it, could not have been all there at the time. Yikes.

      November 29, 2011 at 7:56PM EST
  • Default-avatar

    Col Bat Guano

    This makes Two and a Half Men look like it was written by David Mamet.

    November 29, 2011 at 9:05PM EST Reply to Comment
  • Default-avatar

    Nigel

    Sounds like a spin-off show of the 2 mean moms from New Adventures of Christine.

    November 29, 2011 at 10:02PM EST Reply to Comment
  • Default-avatar

    sara

    Apparently someone in North Carolina agrees with your daughter. All of the commercials for this show announce it as "My Teenage Daughter".

    November 30, 2011 at 10:28AM EST Reply to Comment
  • Default-avatar

    Kevin

    Jamie Pressly plays a former nerd girl? Might be the worst casting in the history of television.

    November 30, 2011 at 1:43PM EST Reply to Comment
  • Default-avatar

    Roderick

    I actually hate their teenage daughters too.

    June 24, 2012 at 10:12AM EST Reply to Comment

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