"Mike and Molly" and "Outsourced" and Redefining Normal

Premiere week is over, but I'm still catching up on new shows. I don't watch many sitcoms, but there were two that I was curious about this year - "Mike and Molly" and "Outsourced". Both do their best to distinguish themselves from the norm, by focusing on characters we don't often see in leading roles in the television landscape.

Having decided to drop "The Event," this week I had a chance to look in on CBS's very well-reviewed "Mike and Molly," about two members of an Overeaters Anonymous group who are in the early stages of a new relationship. Police officer Mike Biggs (Billy Gardell) and grade school teacher Molly Flynn (Melissa McCarthy) both have noticeably larger physiques than just about everyone else on television right now. They weather fat jokes and other body image concerns with a good-natured, weary patience that makes them immediately relatable and sympathetic. Like all sitcom creatures, their universe it small. Mike is frequently seen discussing his love like with his partner Carl (Reno Wilson). Molly lives with her sister Victoria (Katy Mixon) and mother Joyce (Swoosie Kurtz), neither of whom share her weight issues. A nice touch is that Victoria, the skinny sister, would be the big girl on any other show. My biggest concern about "Mike and Molly" was that it put the focus so squarely on the size of its title couple. One of my favorite shows growing up was "Roseanne," where the Connors were also plus-sized, but didn't draw much attention to it, which I always appreciated. By singling out weight as an issue, doesn't this reinforce it as stigma?

I'm still not sure about the approach the show is taking. The "Mike and Molly" episode I watched was rife with fat jokes that I really could have done without, but to be fair both Mike and Molly are sizable to the point where their weight would realistically affect their social interactions. Also, they live in a very different culture at a different point in their lives than the blue-collar, middle-aged Connors. Acknowledging the pressure of social expectations may not be such a bad thing depending on how the show handles it in the future. So far, I'm ambivalent. The episode followed Mike and Molly on a disastrous first date. Both had jitters leading up to the big night, leading Mike to a regrettable change in wardrobe and Molly to overdose on cold medicine, inciting cartoonishly loopy behavior. None of the supporting characters was much help, though they all tried to be supportive. I winced that the most egregious fat jokes cam from the boozy mother, Joyce - I love Swoosie Kurtz to bits, so it was doubly painful - but I laughed at the same time. The show's creators meant for the audience to feel uncomfortable even as they were tickled, so points to them. We also got a little romantic fluff in just the right amounts, enough to lure me back for more in the future.

Now let's move on to NBC's "Outsourced." The pilot episode was excoriated for being inaccurate, culturally insensitive, infantile and not funny. So I didn't watch the pilot. I tuned in for last night's episode instead and found a decent workplace comedy that happened to take place in India. Todd (Ben Rappaport) is an idealistic young Caucasian-American go-getter who comes to Mumbai to run a call center for a company that sells novelty items. Aside from dealing with the culture clash, the different workplace dynamics also take some getting used to. His second in command is Rajiiv (Rizwan Manji), a weaselly caricature of all the middle managers we all know and hate. However Todd quickly becomes friendly with some of the employees, such as the ladies man Manmeet (Sacha Dhawan) and "the pretty one" Asha (Rebecca Hazlewood). Other regulars include Gupta (Parvesh Cheena) and Madhuri (Anisha Nagarajan), less assertive employees, and Charlie (Diedrich Bader) a fellow transplant from the United States, who runs another call center and wears his insensitivity on his sleeve. There were moments that felt a bit too close to "The Office," but it's early yet.

I was ready to tally up the obvious ethnic jokes and insensitivities in "Outsourced," but I found relatively few. I'm sure Indians and those with more experience with the culture could find plenty of problems with the portrayal of life in a call center, but as someone unfamiliar with Mumbai I couldn't identify much to justify the outpourings of disdain I've run across online. Instead, a funny thing happened about halfway through the episode. I never forgot that the show took place in India, but I stopped identifying the Indian characters as foreigners. Every single one of them came off as very Westernized, well-educated, personable, and articulate - though some were more reticent than others. Indian culture wasn't put on display for us to gawk at or made the center of the story, but rather incorporated into the show organically. The plot of the episode was about Todd discovering that Manmeet was spending the bulk of his time making personal calls. I expect all the worst jokes about funny names, funny clothes, and funny accents were burned off in the first episode. Instead we had a discussions about where to find a hamburger, Todd trying to decode what a certain head gesture meant, and Manmeet daydreaming about exotic American cities - like Fresno.

Are "Mike and Molly" and "Outsourced" great shows? No, but I can see a lot of potential for them to grow into something interesting. I like that the creators are taking risks and trying to give us something different after decades of looking at the same narrow character types recycled over and over again ad nauseum. Sure, these sitcoms are still pretty typical variations on the old romantic comedy and workplace formulas, but they're pushing in new directions too. The ensembles of both shows are good, and I have already developed a fondness for Parvesh Cheena's sad-sack Gupta. More importantly, I like the thought that characters who seem like such outliers now will become familiar over time, thus expanding American TV's worldview. It doesn't happen enough, and I'm glad to see the opportunity for some broadening horizons. Today, Indian call center employees and the overweight. Tomorrow, who knows?