Dads Review

There is a real show inside this premise. Two men in their thirties, a business they are failing to run, and fathers who move in and will not leave is the frame for a comedy about becoming the thing you resented. Dads never goes looking for that show. It reaches instead for whatever gets the fastest reaction from a studio audience, and in the pilot that means asking their Asian American assistant to dress as a schoolgirl to close a deal with Chinese investors, a bit the series stages, holds on, and returns to.

The trouble is not only that the joke is ugly. It is that the joke is the entire construction: a stereotype is stated, the laugh track confirms it, the scene ends, and the characters are left with nothing to play between setups. Critics rejected it more completely than any network comedy in years, and the show's own second half quietly agrees with them, softening the material without finding anything to put in its place.

The cast deserves better and mostly plays above the page. Martin Mull and Peter Riegert are seasoned enough to find a rhythm in lines that do not have one, Seth Green has genuine timing, and Brenda Song carries the pilot's worst scene with a poise it has not earned. Fox let the order finish and then let it go, and nothing across the nineteen episodes argues for a second season.