The half-hour comedy debuted in November and was off after four episodes. A lot of people like to note the decline in viewership. What they forget to tell you is that episode four saw a huge ratings increase. And then it was off the air for two months. Not really the way you build a loyal viewing audience.
Jaime Pressly's had a following since Jack & Jill and her Emmy winning performance on My Name Is Earl. Now she's playing single-mom Annie whose best friend and next-door-neighbor is also a single mom (Katie Finneran as Nikki). Alex and Nikki have teenage daughters Sophie and Mackenzie -- both 14.
The daughters are fairly popular which is good news to the mothers who went through high school very unpopular. Nikki weighed over 300 pounds and suffered from alopecia as well as was overweight and had nasty rumors spread about her (the current high school principal was in Nikki's class and spread the rumor that Nikki was so hungry she once at her own cat). Annie's parents were religious zealots who allowed no movies, no TV, no anything. For example, when Nikki, buzzed on peach schnapps, fakes an identity to get access to Mackenzie's Facebook page, they both learn that their daughters share a lot of information with everyone except for their mothers.
Jack: It's pretty normal, isn't it? Did any of you talk to your parents when you were their age?
Annie: I tried. But when I told them I had a crush on the pastor's son, they locked me in my room until I fasted the lust from my heart. But yeah, we talked.
Jack (Kevin Rahm) is Annie's former brother-in-law and long standing crush.
The premise of the show is fairly straight-forward yet the Water Cooler Set -- especially the ones with ovaries apparently trying to pass them off as testes -- pretended to not get it.
Two women who had an awful time in school (not just high school) want to be sure their daughters don't have the same problems or the same hurts. So they over indulge them. And that's going to cause a problem, even more so when the fathers aren't involved. But at the same time, these are teenagers, new teenagers. It's a phase (hopefully).
And you have to wonder if anyone in the Water Cooler Set has parented?
Not had kids, we know many have kids, have they actually parented?
Teenagers are self-involved. Not because they're 'bad' but because they are the center of their own universe. Your body's growing and sprouting and exploding and all this as you're being asked non-stop questions: are you dating, do you know what you want to be when you grow up? On and on. Internally and externally, they're encouraged to focus on themselves. It's natural that they would be self-involved. For most, it's a phase because part of becoming an adult is grasping that you're not really the center of the world.
Along with playing dumb about the show's premise, the Water Cooler Set has treated the title of the show as if it were a mortal sin. The title was meant to be attention getting and a format that's already spawned My Mother The Car doesn't really have a high ground to cling to when it comes to titles or, for that matter, when it comes to the portrayal of mothers.
The title reflects the interesting premise Sherry Bilsing and Ellen Kreamer came up with and the series moving along just fine, a mixture of one liners, observational humor and physical comedy. We'd suggest that they go to town on the rumor of Nikki eating the dead cat throughout the first season because Finneran is comic gold when playing Nikki's discomfort. The cast is excellent and that includes Chad L. Coleman as Nikki's ex-Gary. (The 14-year-old daughters are played by 18-year-olds. Since they're playing children and they're just 18 we're going to lump into child actors and follow our rule of making no comment on the performances of child actors -- that doesn't mean that they're bad, it doesn't mean they're good, it just means we're not commenting on child actors.)
The show has everything going for it so maybe March 6th will bring a miralce and people will say, "Hey this show the Water Cooler Set warned me against is actually funny!" And maybe the ratings will do well. Not that it really matters. As the year drew to a close a show with respectable ratings and one-time Water Cooler fascination got the axe.
We've accused the Water Cooler Set of many things including bad taste and failure to do their job but now it appears they've got a few moral sins of their own. See, we know why the show got the axe. The show got the axe because of something an actor did in the fall, an interview he gave. And it was cute to watch the Water Coller Set ignore that -- the British press was all over it. It was cute because it's the one thing that kills you in the entertainment world but the entertainment press is not supposed to take marching orders from the industry on what to cover and what to ignore.
When Anne Heche, for example, went public about her involvement with Ellen, the concern wasn't over Anne or her promising career. The industry concern was over the name male actors Anne had previously been linked to and would they now be considered gay? (At least one is gay.) That's why Anne's promising film career flamed out.
So, back to today, the actor of this Water Cooler endorsed show gives an interview where he speaks a little too freely about his past. A little too freely because it's already known that a name actor, in the 90s, took a role in a film, a supporting role, just because the actor was in it, just because he hoped to hook up with the actor. (Known and laughed about and hinted at by Charlie Sheen in one of those 90s drunken interviews where he was prone to tearing apart other actors while listing the actresses he'd like to "jam.") Suddenly closeted-gay Hollywood performers could be forced out of the closet rather quickly and the industry is in a panic.
And that's why the show got the axe. And it's strange because all those Water Cooler Critics who praised it in years prior somehow just knew not to mention it during its final seasons. Somehow, they just knew the industry didn't want it or its passing even noted. So remarks go public in print and the industry responds by axing and erasing the actor's show and the Water Cooler Set really wasn't involved?
Seems to us the Water Cooler Set's failures go beyond running with the pack and they're now collaborating with the industry they're supposed to be covering. Suddenly it becomes very clear why they zoom in on the title of "I Hate My Teenage Daughter" -- they're so busy ignoring the things that actually matter that all they can do is wallow in the trivia. In other words, now you know why the caged hamster squeaks.