The title characters in "Dads," played by Peter Riegert (l.) and Martin Mull. The cast also includes Giovanni Ribisi, Seth Green and Brenda Song.
Seth MacFarlane's new Fox sitcom, “Dads,” doesn’t need to be less offensive. It needs to be funnier.
Martin Mull and Peter Riegert play crotchety, self-absorbed dads, around Social Security age, who move back in with their sons and immediately resume the annoying behavior that made the sons so happy to be on their own.
They’re the male version of the quirky, meddling, impossible mothers who are a staple of dramas from “Rizzoli & Isles” to “Castle.” While those mothers eventually become oddly endearing, this is MacFarlane. So we’ll see.
Riegert plays David, father to Eli (Seth Green). Mull is Crawford, father to Warner (Giovanni Ribisi). Warner and Eli are partners in a video-game business.
David starts out as a selfish lout. Crawford obliviously insults Warner's wife and says random things like, “What’s that game called? ‘Punch the Puerto Rican’?”
As the real-life Mull points out, this is a setup, a way to show these are idiotic things to say. That’s how MacFarlane has always rolled with his animated hits.
But this isn’t animation, and what might work if the Riegert and Mull characters were ’toons too often feels clumsy and awkward when spoken by people.
While there’s the potential for a nice, relatable human situation here, almost all the dialogue feels like setups for punch lines.
Too often this leaves the actors, even skilled veterans Riegert and Mull, stranded. It leaves Brenda Song, who works in the video-game office, with little to offset her “little Asian girl-toy” scene.
There’s a show here. In the first episode, MacFarlane and company haven’t found it.
dhinckley@nydailynews.com
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