I’ve never seen a show hate its own characters more than in the pilot episode of Fox’s “I Hate My Teenage Daughter.” Jaime Pressly and Katie Finneran play two middle-aged moms who, as the title of the show suggests, hate their adolescent daughters, Sophie (Kristi Lauren) and Mackenzie (Aisha Dee).
Basing a show around two thirty-something, previously unpopular moms living vicariously through their younger, hotter offspring isn’t a totally awful idea, and Pressly and Finnernan do their best with the material they were given, but the writing is embarrassingly bad. Pressly’s character was raised in a super religious household and Finneran’s was borderline-obese as a teenager, and the show wrings every last possible joke out of those moldy towels. We’re supposed to find it amusing that one of them doesn’t know what Little House on the Prairie is and that when things get difficult, the other eats pie with her hands, “like a bear,” according to one of the show’s three women-do-be-shoppin’ males, including Cutty from “The Wire.” The women are exaggerated, the men exasperated, and no one looks happy, especially the manipulative, snotty daughters.
The writers seem to think that humor comes from shrill caricatures, hyperbolic facial reactions, and women eating food and drinking to solve their problems, rather than, y’know, interesting characters and well thought-out jokes. “I Hate My Teenage Daughter” is maybe the worst sitcom I’ve ever seen, and this coming from someone who’s watched “Emily’s Reasons Why Not” and every episode of “2 Broke Girls.” Your move, “Work It.”
After the jump, some of the show’s worst out-of-context quotes and most obnoxious facial expressions.
“And then you know what she said to me? ‘You don’t know how to dress.’ Who says that?”
“I’ll tell you who says that: a bitch.”
(That’s our introduction to the show – “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins,” it’s not.)
“It’s unfortunate you have to resort to name calling.”
“It’s unfortunate that you’re such a friggin’ dumb ass.”
“I want Mackenzie to go to her first high school dance in a limo, and Gary won’t pay for it.”
“I don’t want to be a working mom. Those women are pathetic. No offense, hun.”
“None taken, you lazy stay-at-home whore.”
“I did not eat my cat!”
“Your daughters locked a boy in the girl’s bathroom. He was in there for two hours before someone found him.”
“That just sounds like typical boy-girl stuff.”
“The boy they locked in the bathroom was Gerard Thompson.”
“The kid in the wheelchair?”
“I’m going to do my very best to keep this on the down-low, but if they serve wine at the PTA meeting, no guarantees.”
“Great news, my band got offered to tour with Sheryl Crow. I know it’s my weekend to take Sophie, but I’m kind of hoping you could cover it for me.”
“She’s up in her room, blogging about how much she hates her mother.”
“I can’t believe what you did to that handicapped boy.”
“Mom, Gerard is the meanest kid in school. He doesn’t like black people.”
That’s it. Once Jaime brings out Serious Face, I’m done.
