SELFIE SHTICK
NBC’s ‘Marlon’ fishing for real laughs
‘MARLON” is an amiably silly summer burnoff meant to showcase the talents of Marlon Wayans — a funny, clever guy who seems constrained by the trappings of the sitcom format.
As a result, the comedy doesn’t take off as it might have were it not trying too hard to be a family comedy.
Wayans, a member of one of America’s funniest families, is playing one of those TV dads who, like Phil Dunphy (Ty Burrell) on “Modern Family,” has childlike qualities that endear him to his son and daughter, Zack (Amir O’Neal) and Marley (Notlim Taylor). He’s having a hard time being divorced from his ex, Ashley (Essence Atkins), though. When she comes home, she sees that Marlon has built a fort for the kids in their former living room. And then he stays for dinner.
Poor guy — he doesn’t seem to have much of a life without his family, a source of comedy mined by the show’s writers. When Marlon’s daughter reveals she’s been bullied by some classmates at a primarily white private school, Marlon embarrasses his wife by telling the child “If you black up, they’ll back up,” demonstrating how to play on racial stereotypes to get people to leave you alone. When his daughter invites a cute boy home for a study date, he tells wife Ashley that Marley is too nerdy: “Have you seen her Snapchat? I unfollowed her four months ago.”
Such scenes give Wayans — who also has a new movie, “Naked,” out on Netflix — a chance to display his fearless manic energy, but “Marlon” doesn’t give the supporting characters much to do; they might as well be in the audience watching him do stand-up. Both Marlon and Ashley have the requisite best friends who merely serve as sounding boards and they hardly jump off the screen — Yvette (Bresha Webb) in particular comes across like a watereddown version of Cookie Lyon (Taraji P. Henson) on “Empire.”
By contrast, the much smarter “Black-ish” on ABC has a lowerkey main character (Anthony Anderson) but overall welldeveloped supporting characters, including a second banana (Tracee Ellis Ross) with an actual career and scenes of her own.
And speaking of family comedy, “Marlon’s” third episode — in which the two exes see if they can have sex without emotion — has a funny premise, but contains some lines that push the boundaries of the format in uncomfortably raunchy ways. Did Wayans really mean to include dialogue like “Uber or lube-r” for the families tuning in at 9 p.m.? When “Marlon” is carrying on like this, it’s easy to see why the wife wanted him out of the house.