Currently, everyone is agog over the reboot of the 1990s sitcom, Roseanne. Color me unimpressed. I wasn’t a fan of the original show–the characters were largely unlikeable, the writers seemed more concerned with sending a message than telling a story, and–the real nail in the coffin–the show simply wasn’t funny.
The show from that time period that I enjoyed the most was Married with Children. It’s hard to believe now, but at the time Married with Children was considered quite controversial. The Bundys were a highly dysfunctional family and the comedy was exaggerated and transgressive. Al, the family patriarch, was a bitter man hanging on to his glory days as a star high school quarterback. Peg, the mother, was disinterested in her kids and disillusioned with her husband. Bud was their loser son and Kelly was the airhead daughter. What sold me on the series, however, was that when the chips were down, the Bundys put aside their in-fighting and banded together. Beneath all that dysfunction, there was a lot of love for one another.
For a blue collar show that speaks to my working class reality, however, you need to come forward in time to Hap and Leonard. While the show is set in 1980s Texas, it resonates with my Arnorian upbringing. I knew guys like Hap and Leonard, I grew up with them, and sometimes I’ve been them. Hap (James Purefoy) is a man destined to march to the beat of his own drummer and usually in the opposite direction that everyone else is marching in–and there’s nothing more Arnorian than that. Leonard (Michael Kenneth Williams) rages against injustice of the world and as a black man and a gay man, he sees a lot of injustice. The show itself has a largely rural setting and the characters aren’t that far removed from living off the land.
In their latest outing, the Two Bear Mambo–author Joe Lansdale comes up with the best titles–lawyer Florida Grange goes missing in the Klan-run town of Groveston and Hap and Leonard set out to find her.
If This Be Method ... 