Freddie And George Unfunny Regardless Of Heritage
Let's get one thing straight: No matter how ABC decides to sell its back-to-back "Latin hour" programming block of The George Lopez Show and Freddie, Lopez's hacky Mexican jokes and Prinze's housecoat-wearing, voodoo-Catholic grandmother stereotype should be judged unfunny on their own merits:
Let's get one thing straight: Just because George Lopez and Freddie Prinze Jr. are Latino men with their own sitcoms on ABC, and their shows just happen to be scheduled consecutively on Wednesday nights, doesn't mean there's a new "Latin hour" on prime-time television. [...]
"Shows should just be able to be shows without hyphenating their lead characters," Lopez said. "[With] us, they feel like they need to somehow label it to say, 'All right, this is what you're going to be watching, so are you sure you want to watch?' But they don't do it to people who are Jewish or African American. Because we have the muscle but we need the voice to say you can't do that to us. Just watch because you think the shows are funny. Don't watch because we're a couple of Latino guys." [...]
McPherson has joked that instead of the "Latin hour," the pairing of the two sitcoms should be called "The Bruce Helford Hour" since the producer runs both shows.
And in three weeks, after Freddie's Nielsen mercy-killing, they can just call the Wednesday night period "The George Lopez Show and According To Jim Rerun Hour." It's kind of catchy, in a slyly knowing way.