Screen: Fox
It's so very unlike me to get hooked by a family sitcom, but this week I figured out why I'm so delighted by Surviving Jack. It's not just that the titular Jack is mean to his kids all the time, though he is and I love it. It's also that he and his wife, Joanne, have been married for a couple of decades and are super-into each other.
Sitcom episodes can't exist without conflict, which is why most of the time when you see couples (married or not, but...usually married), they're having the dumb, contrived fights that provide the situation around which an episode plotline is based. We all know why it happens, but that doesn't make it any less depressingly predictable. But Joanne and Jack are part of a tiny group of TV couples who like each other. The conflict in their show's episodes generally comes from one or both of them being disgusted by one or both of their children -- which is fine by me; their kids are duds and they're right to be disgusted.
But it's not just that Jack and Joanne like each other: they love each other. As the series begins, Joanne's just embarking on a new venture, starting law school now that their (dud) kids are both in high school, and not only is Jack okay with it, but he does everything in his power to clear her path to success, taking over primary parenting duties from her (much to the kids' chagrin) and trying to keep their petty crap away from her. This might also be partly for his own entertainment, or so I must surmise from the joy he derives in such punishments as throwing the kids into the pool, rigging plates of snacks to blow up on them, and shaving off his son's friends' eyebrows. TRUST ME, THEY HAVE IT COMING.
In addition to loving each other, they loooooooove each other. Two weeks ago, an episode revolved around Jack and Joanne's struggle to find time alone together to Do Sex, which has been harder not just because their kids are all up in their business all the time but also because their new schedules require them to make adjustments. Frankie gets horribly embarrassed, in the next episode, when his girlfriend finds Jack's condoms in the back seat of the family car, and Jack explains that he and Joanne have been forced into this suboptimal location because Frankie doesn't go out enough. And in the latest episode, Joanne and Jack prove Frankie's assertion is true: they really have had sex in every room of the house, and will continue to do so. Kitchen countertop? Sure, why not: the caramel apples are safely in the fridge!
Jack is the catch-iest catch there is -- a doctor with 3% body fat, as he will be the first to tell you (and did, a couple of episodes ago). Of course Joanne is still crazy in love with him, not least because he agreed to have two kids with her even though he was so against the idea that he offered to get a vasectomy on their honeymoon which even if he were terrible otherwise would automatically make him my favourite character. But Joanne is also in the top tier of fun and interesting TV moms -- a tiny sorority, to be sure -- and her relationship with Jack is one of the show's great successes. They keep mentioning that the kids are almost out of the house, and the only person anticipating their departure more hotly than Jack is me. "But there won't be a show without the kids!" I say let's try it and see!