Jack Dunlevy Might Belong In The Sitcom Curmudgeon Hall Of Fame

As long as you ignore Dads, and I feel like we all do, Fox has been evincing some pretty great taste in the sitcom department lately. Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Ben & Kate (R.I.P.), and Enlisted all came to air feeling unusually lived-in and assured; The Mindy Project had some early hiccups, but is settling in nicely in its second season. And even though I know it seems crazy to do this after only two episodes, I have to: Surviving Jack has, in the titular Jack, given us a world-class dick, and I am in love with him already.

At first, I couldn't explain -- not even to myself -- why I was reacting so strongly to a character after spending only forty-some-odd minutes with him. Of course, a big part of it is that he's played by the great Christopher Meloni, a funny-in-his-bones actor forced during the seventy seasons of his best-known role -- Law & Order: Special Victims Unit's Elliot Stabler -- to repress his natural wit, allowed only bitter sarcasm, and that pretty rarely. He got to play a character with considerable satiric potential on True Blood, but...True Blood. Maybe it's just that I wanted to see Meloni being funny in a funny sitcom more than I ever realized.

But then, I figured out the truth: it's not only that Meloni's Jack gets to be funny on purpose. It's that he's playing one of my favourite sitcom types: the super-curmudgeon. He's joining a TV tradition that includes such beloved characters as Dr. Cox (Scrubs), Jack Donaghy (30 Rock), Ron Swanson (Parks & Recreation), and relatively recent additions Danny Castellano (The Mindy Project) and Captain Holt (Andre Braugher). These are characters who are generally dissatisfied with modern life, disappointed in those around them, and grouchy almost all the time; even if events on the shows they're on lead to hugging and learning, super-curmudgeons are almost never involved, because they refuse to learn anything and they hate to be touched, whether because hugging shows weakness (Ron) or because it's off-puttingly ethnic (Donaghy). (Are there female super-curmudgeons? Sooooooooooort of. They tend to be more giddy than gruff in their failure to hug or learn, but let's say Karen Walker of Will & Grace and Selina Meyer of Veep fall into this category.)

It's not just that sitcom curmudgeons don't learn, though. It's that they refuse to learn, in fact, and most of the time they don't need to: their confidence -- usually earned, but sometimes not -- is exactly what makes them so much fun to watch. The ostensible premise of Surviving Jack, for instance, is that this kid, Frankie, is hideously embarrassed/getting his life routinely ruined by his overbearing dad. But any adult watching really has no choice but to be on Jack's side -- not just because the kid seems like such a baby, but because Jack is clearly awesome at life. He's still crazy in love with his smart, salty, accomplished wife; he's a goddamn oncologist, and he looks like Christopher Meloni. And when this week's episode found Frankie and his little buddies thinking about trying out for the baseball team, we could probably have all heard the bell on this reveal.

Even though it's early days, I can confidently give Jack Dunlevy my most heartfelt endorsement: he makes me want to be him. Or...maybe that's an overstatement. But he makes me want to have a dumb teenager around to whom I could be mean for no reason and with no consequences.