by Jim Grimsley
Charley: Your hair sure looks bright, honey.
Ann: Oh Dad, you’re so lame.
Carmine: Charley, you moron. I thought you would be furious.
Charley: It’ll grow out.
Ann: It looks like a cherry Jolly Rancher.
Carmine: Look at it. Red as my lipstick. And you just sit there and that’s all you have to say, Gee Ann, your hair sure looks bright. You’d let her get away with anything. You spoil her.
Charley: What, you want me to slap the kid around because she dyed her hair?
Ann: Mom said it would be all right.
Carmine: Of course I don’t want you to slap her around.
Charley: You want me to slap you around?
Following this comes an hilarious, uproarious slapstick teleplay in which Ann wonders whether I pay any attention to her. As part of the story she is baking a disastrous series of pies with her weird friend Vera Tucker from next door, the other next door. They invite zany Rosie over and Mom comes home and finds them busily, industriously at work. Ann asks Mom whether she thinks I even notice her or love her at all. Oh honey, Mom says, your dad’s just busy at work, that’s all. He’s got to make money to take care of us. The episode ends with a terrific pie fight in the kitchen with Rosie and Mom on one side and Ann and Vera on the other. Mom is a dead shot with a tin pie plate and Vera keeps hitting herself in the face. The laugh track cracks me up.
Among my very favorites is one of the “Mom is redecorating the house” episodes, from just after the pie fight, in fact. Mom has bought a very expensive Ch’ing Dynasty vase and has to sneak it into a prominent position in the house without my noticing it, because I’m sure to declare it a lump of useless glass that sits on the carpet, for which a dime store knockoff would have served just as well. In a turn from my usual oblivious state, I notice the vase right away and blow my stack at the price tag in an hilariously predictable way. We’ll add a rider on our house insurance, says Mom, in case somebody breaks it, and I grip the top of my head like I’m going to explode. Zany Rosie and Ann are doing their homework in the dining room and have a hard time keeping from laughing. Mom reconciles me to the purchase by fixing me a big gin martini with special cocktail onions from Spain and the whole evening passes splendidly.
Charley: Man. What a good martini.
Carmine: I made it just like you like, stirred, not shaken.
Charley: You put a lot of gin in it, that’s the main thing.
Carmine: I wish you would switch to vodka. Everybody in the neighborhood drinks vodka martinis.
Charley: I’m not everybody. I’m my own man. Marching to the tune of a different drummer.
Carmine: Because you drink gin.
Charley: Because I drink gin in a vodka-crazy age.
Carmine: Gin makes a person mean.
Charley: Not Charley.
Carmine: My grandfather was a gin drinker. He was a complete son-of-a-bitch.
“Mom buys a sexy outfit” follows after the one about the vase. Mom is still trying to get back into my good graces. She buys a slinky nightie from Victoria’s Secret and shows it to weird Vera and Ann. To Ann it is the most beautiful thing she has ever seen and she insists that Mom model it now. Vera makes snide remarks about Mom’s large breasts. Mom puts on the nightie and I come home early by accident. I get a look at Mom without her seeing me and hurry out of the house. We have caller ID at home so I drive back to work and call from there and say I’m going to have to work late. When I get home the nightie is on the closet door and she’s in her usual regular sack, asleep. Relieved, I crawl into bed beside her.
Carmine: You’re afraid of me sexually.
Charley: It’s because you drive me out of my mind with desire.
Carmine: Fuck you. Fuck you, Charley.
Charley: You know we were never a hot couple like that. You refused to let me touch you below the waist forever. Do you remember? It was always, ‘Charley, no touching down there. You know what Mama says.’
Carmine: I buy a nice piece of lingerie hoping it will improve my husband’s life and this is the thanks I get. I try to keep myself young and desirable for my miserable stinkpot of a husband and this is the kind of treatment I get.
Charley: Wear it next time the plumber comes over.
Carmine: A man like you does not deserve a woman like me.
Stories around Dad and Mom and Dad not liking sex very much are often featured, but the most poignant is my therapy episode, with Calista Flockhart as my radiant, emaciated therapist, reprising her role as Ally McBeal, who gave up her career as a lawyer to become a psychotherapist. I tell her I think sex is not so great. I tell her I never wanted to have a lot of affairs or one-night stands. She asks if I think this is normal. I tell her I think there are a lot of people who feel like I do, not much interested, but nobody listens to us; in fact, people shove sexual images at us nearly every moment of the day. By the time the episode is over we are talking about her sexual problems and she has begun to conclude that sex is maybe not all its cracked up to be. This episode, now that I think about it, was never very funny.
Ally: Is your wife interested in sex?
Charley: I don’t think so. I don’t see how she could be. I’m not very good at it.
Many older episodes from back in our black-and-white era are about Frank as a strange kind of son. There’s the farcical episode where Frank collects fish tanks and fish and fills his room with them, every sort of fish imaginable, koi, sharks, goldfish, and a tank of piranha, his pride and joy. He feeds them strips of beef he buys himself from his part-time job helping people in the neighborhood with their computers. His prices are not cheap but this is the early era of the internet and he is in demand. He spends all his time taking care of the fish and working on people’s computers. The fish episode was one of our experiments with new forms of the sitcom, very surreal, not a big hit with the audience.
“Frank Gains Thirty Pounds” is one of my favorite shows we ever did. One day I turn around and there he is, twelve years old and thirty pounds heavier. Mom says I should leave him alone, it’s baby fat, it will go away. All the men in her family are big men, except for her gay brother, who is gaunt. I put Frank on a diet and we exercise together. Hilarious slapstick on the exercise equipment as the two of us get trapped on a treadmill, runaway exercise bike, one of those old fashioned steam boxes, etcetera.
Carmine: Why can’t you leave my poor baby alone?
Charley: Because your poor baby is now the size of Orca the killer whale.
Carmine: Shut your mouth. What a thing to say about your own son.
Charley: To say a fact is wrong? Look at your son, Lauren.
Carmine: You know that’s not my name.
Charley: (after a heavy sigh) Look at your son, Miss My-Real-Name-is-Lauren-no-matter-how-many-times-I-tell-you-to-call-me-something-else. Look at the size of your son. Last year he could still walk through his bedroom door.
Carmine: You still hold that against him. That was a tiny door.
Charley: Last year he could still walk through it. Last year I didn’t need to have a carpenter put in a bigger door.
Carmine: He gets his weight problems from you and your family.
Charley: That’s great. That’s incredible. Except for your brother the queer everybody in your family is the size of parade floats.
Carmine: I am not the size of a parade float.
Charley: That’s only the visible part of you you’re talking about. We’ve liposuctioned two or three extra people out of your body over the years.
Carmine: You scum.
Charley: Call me worse. What do I care? It’s your son I’m talking about and you don’t give a damn that he’s soon going to be the size of the Hindenburg.
Carmine: You’re just jealous.
Charley: I’m what?
Carmine: You’re jealous because he’s smarter than you and he’ll go to an Ivy League school when you had to settle for a cheap public university.
Charley: Where I
met you.
Carmine: Throw that in my face.
Charley: I’m jealous of Frank. That’s rich.
Carmine: You’re jealous of him because despite his size the girls are crazy over him and he’ll have his pick.
Charley: I had my pick. Look what it got me.
Carmine: What a lovely thing to say. I’ve been a good wife to you.
Charley: Yes, dear. You’ve always been an angel.
Frank and Mom have a close relationship in which she never notices that he’s swelling beyond obesity before her very eyes. She feeds him cakes and pies at Christmas and makes him sandwiches and chocolate milk when he gets home from school. Like June Cleaver, she brings her little Beaver snacks while he sits in front of his computer. He raises his prices for neighborhood computer work to the point that almost nobody hires him any more. He dresses in nothing but black and wears black eyeliner and silver earrings. Mom convinces me to buy a DSL line for the house which is really for Frank, and there’s a riotously funny set of scenes in which she and I are trying to configure parental controls on the internet browser.
“Frank Gets a Date” features his snotty little sister Ann and zany Rosie from next door. He’s convinced someone to go out with him and won’t tell anybody who it is. Ann and Rosie speculate in wild flights of teenage fancy about who it might be. At this point, Frank is sixteen and pushing three hundred fifty pounds. We’ve bought him a nice outfit of clothes that are baggy and hang off him and give him a sort of watered-down gangsta look, complete with gold chains and big, multicolored running shoes. His first date is, surprisingly, a success, but we never find out who he’s dating.
A theme of “Dad Is Just Too Busy” runs through script after script. Here’s Dad the night Frank needs help with his application to Yale:
Frank: Dad, can you read my application essay tonight? You said you would. I have to send it off.
Charley: I’m sure it’s fine.
Frank: How do you know if you haven’t read it?
Charley: You’re a smart boy. Why would you write a bad essay?
Frank: Don’t you even care that I have a chance to get into Yale?
Charley: Yes. Of course.
Frank: My school counselor says I do.
Charley: I know you do, son. But I’m busy. I have to respond to this RFP by tomorrow. We want this job if we can get it.
Frank: You’re always too busy.
Charley: It’s true I’m always busy.
Frank: Fine, then. I’ll just send the essay.
Charley: I’m sure it will be fine, Frankie. I’m not much of an essay writer anyway.
Frank: You could pretend to be a little interested.
His pet of the moment is a small boa constrictor that he keeps in his room. I found him in his room later with the snake around his arm trying to squeeze his hand to death.
Charley: Frank, what are you doing.
Frank: Playing with Pixie.
Charley: Get it off your arm like that. Right now.
Frank: It’s not hurting me, Dad.
Charley: Is it hungry?
Frank: I don’t think so. If you came in here to read the essay, it’s too late. I already walked it down to the mailbox.
Charley: That’s not why I came. I think you should apologize to me.
Frank: Apologize?
Charley: For interrupting my work, earlier.
Frank: Why should I apologize, Dad? I’m your son.
Charley: You upset me. I couldn’t concentrate on the RFP. Now its going to take me to the wee hours of the morning.
Frank: Wow. You’re serious.
Charley: It’s this work I try to do that puts food on our table. Yes, I am serious.
Frank: I’m not sorry.
Charley: What?
Frank: I’m not sorry. I’m your son. I shouldn’t have to be sorry for asking you a question.
Charley: That’s a pretty sad attitude.
Frank: I’m not apologizing.
I nod and walk away.
This moment is indicative of the problem we always had in our family. We could never stay true to the sitcom format. Our stories were always getting too serious. We refused to give up our problems at the end of each half hour episode. We refused to resolve our lives in quick snatches of hilarity between the waves of commercials. Viewed as programming material, we were a mess.
At about age seventeen Frank was featured in a number of scripts in which he stopped speaking to me directly and referred to me in the third person. This stratagem, if I may call it that, improved interest in our series and revived our sagging ratings through his departure for college. He became a master at disdaining everything about me while keeping his hand outstretched for Yale-sized tuition and living expenses.
Charley: If you were really gifted, you’d be at Harvard.
Carmine: Charley. Please.
Frank: Tell him I don’t care what he thinks. I never even applied to Harvard. I doubt he could afford for me to go there anyway.
Carmine: I’ll tell him.
Charley: You were afraid to apply. Yale felt safe. To be rejected by Harvard would feel like a rebuke from the universe.
Frank: I need more money than this. This check is not big enough.
Carmine: I’ll write you a check myself.
Charley: That’s a laugh. When was the last time you wrote a check? Before Reagan was elected?
Carmine: I’m sure it will come back to me. It’s like having sex. You never forget, no matter how long it’s been. (Giving me a pointed look.)
Frank: Mom. Please.
Charley: You’ll pervert his development.
Frank: Tell him to mind his own business, Mom.
Carmine: You heard your son. Mind your own business.
Charley: Does he want me to do that before or after I write him another check?
Carmine: After. Of course.
“Ann Sides with Sappho” is another classic, and the whole series that follows, while Carmine attempts to cope with her daughter’s gender identity, remains one of our enduring contributions to popular entertainment. What a reality series this would have made! For days Carmine wept into her hands over the breakfast table, her breasts seeming somehow more deflated than usual, even though I knew the exact unchanging dimensions of both her implants. She lamented the grandchildren she would never have, which was, of course, a bit odd, in that by the time Ann came out to us, Frank was already married with a child well on the way. I pointed this out. It’s not the same, she said. A mother bonds with her daughter during her daughter’s pregnancy. It’s in all the movies, she said.
Charley: Lesbians have babies.
Carmine: That’s disgusting. I don’t even want to talk about it.
Charley: They have to borrow somebody’s sperm, of course.
Carmine: You’re psycho to even talk about it. You’re perverted. She probably gets this from you.
Charley: Don’t put this off on me. The gay gene comes from your family, not from mine.
Carmine: Throw that in my face, too. Go ahead. My brother is gay but he’s a good person and he would never have children by borrowing anybody’s eggs.
Charley: Your brother would have to borrow the sperm, too.
Carmine: Oh shut up, you. You’re disgusting to talk like this.
Charley: They use a turkey baster.
Carmine: A what?
Charley: Lesbians. They use a turkey baster to get pregnant. You know.
Carmine: You’re sick. You’re as sick as they are.
Charley: It’s your daughter you’re talking about. Be careful.
Carmine: You’re making this up. You’re sick.
Charley: No, I’m not. I saw on TV. They put a turkey baster into the sperm and stick it you-know-where. It’s do-it-yourself.
Carmine: You mean they don’t even use a doctor?
Charley: No. Anybody can do it. You could do it.
Carmine: At this point, that’s practically what I would have to do. That’s disgusti
ng, Charley, why did you tell me that? Now I’ll never get it out of my head.
Charley: So Ann could give you a whole raft full of grandchildren.
Carmine: And I’d wonder where the sperm came from for the rest of my life. The sperm of some low-life in my sweet little grandchildren.
Charley: Are you thinking about having a baby yourself?
Carmine: What, me? What are you talking about?
Charley: You just said, that was practically what you would have to do.
Carmine: I was speaking hypothetically.
Charley: That’s good to know.
Carmine: Not that you would care.
Charley: Old women like you have children these days, too, you know.
Carmine: Old ladies like me? You fucking bastard.
Charley: If you could get pregnant from a vibrator you’d already have had quintuplets.
I’ve tried and considered various titles for our mutual family sitcom. I rejected “At Home with the Perfect Strangers” as being maybe too witty for the American public, though it’s got a nice ring and I keep coming back to it. At times I’ve mulled over the possibility of something more straightforward, even anthropological, like “Happy Family Life.” For a while I called it “Four’s Company,” but that seems pretty pat and there’ve been a dozen shows with similar titles over the years. The sitcom as a popular form is among the most banal and therefore likely among the most enduring, a kind of revival of the morality play centered on family values. My family’s contribution to the form, refined into the right sequence of episodes, will have room for the kind of character development that can sustain such a series for the requisite seven to ten years, while providing its base audience with a repeat of the same comic tropes and sequences with which they long ago grew familiar. We’re a sure thing, if I can ever find the time to write the scripts.
