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The Mick

Credits

Cast

Network

Reviewer

Paul Asay
Kristin Smith

TV Series Review

Awful can come in many forms, which makes the degree of awfulness a difficult thing to judge.

A casserole made from liver, Fruit Loops and ketchup would be awful. But is it empirically more awful than, say, a neighbor who scatters tacks across your driveway? Is that, in turn, more awful than an abscessed tooth? Or the national debt? Or the guy who walks by your restaurant table and sticks his whole hand in your linguini? We may agree that all these things are awful. But what, of all these things, is the awfullest?

Take another example: Mackenzie Murphy, the title character for Fox’s new comedy The Mick.

Mackenzie, or Mick for short, is awful. This is not a subjective judgment, by the way: I think we can state this fairly empirically. She’s the sort of person who really might stick her hand in your linguini if she didn’t like the cut of your jib. She might scatter tacks across your driveway for a little giggle. She drinks frequently and excessively. She hides in the bushes whenever she hears a siren. She’s the last person that most of us would ever want watching our children.

And yet, here she is: watching children.

When one of those children, teen Sabrina, frets over the fate of a caged owl at school, she facetiously asks Mick how she’d like it if someone pulled her off her favorite barstool and locked her up.

“I cannot count the number of times I’ve been ripped off a barstool and thrown in a cage,” Mick responds.

Just in the Mick of Time

What sort of parents would entrust their progeny to such a woman? Awful ones. Mick’s sister (we know her only as Poodle) married a high-society millionaire who’s now on the run from the FBI for fraud. They couldn’t take their three children with them, of course, so they’ve left them in the care of their wholly unwilling, unsuitable and mostly un-sober aunt. And now that the kids and Mick have been joined by Mick’s dysfunctional, live-in boyfriend, Jimmy, it’s about like entrusting the care of your dog to, say, a couple of those robotic vacuum cleaners: Both sets of caretakers may move, make noise and consume a lot of trash, but that doesn’t make them suitable for the gig.

Granted, it’s not like Poodle and her hubby were exactly doing a bang-up job of raising their kids to begin with. Indeed, they’re developing some fairly awful traits of their own. (Which, really, is not surprising here.) Sabrina is a stuck-up snob who drinks a fair share herself. Middle son Chip believes there are few problems that a healthy trust fund and an aggressive lawyer can’t fix. And Ben—well, Ben’s young yet. He’s not developed a litany of horrible character traits. But give the kid time.

Is it possible that one type of awful person raising other, differently awful people might turn into a curious sort of math equation? When you add two awfuls together, do you get something … positive? Fox hasn’t yet given us an answer to that. But one thing’s for sure: All these awfuls do equal a pretty awful show.

Mick Your Poison

The Mick does have moments of wicked humor, of course. Star Kaitlin Olson, best known as Dee Reynolds on the foul, mean-spirited and completely unapologetic FXX show It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, knows how to pull laughs from inappropriate, horrific situations.
*
Sunny* is explicitly about awful people doing awful things: That’s the whole point. But there’s a different vibe in play when children are in the picture, and doing their horrible misdeeds on a heavily promoted Fox show. And while I’d guess that the network eventually wants Mick and the kids to help each other find better paths, there’s little evidence that day will be coming any time soon.

The content here is as bad as I’ve ever seen on any network television show. Alcohol is as plentiful as the chlorine water in the children’s pool. Substance abuse is laughed at and, in a way, encouraged. Sexual content (mostly of the verbal variety) is rife. In the pilot episode, for example, Mick offers sex advice to prepubescent Chip. And while no one actually utters any f- or s-words, euphemisms for such profanities—along with a bevy of milder, un-euphemized, network-approved curse words—proliferate.

So even if Mick does accidentally impart a positive lesson or two to her young wards, she’ll also likely teach them how to con, bully and shoplift their way to a living, all without doing a lick of work

Episode Reviews

The Mick: Feb. 6, 2018 “The Church” Season 2, Episode 14

When Alba tries to kick her drug and alchohol habit Mick, Jimmy and the kids tell Alba that church would be a much better alternative than going to rehab, and they even promise to attend with her.

Alba races to the store, trying to beat Mick’s suggested time of five minutes while facetiming her,to buy cigarettes for Mick (Even though Mick has already smoked an entire package and downed a beer), and crashes the car at top speed into the house. Once at the hospital, Mick says there’s “not a chance in h—” that Alba will go to rehab because it “sucks the zip out of you.” Alba exclaims she “huffed polish yesterday.” Mick tells the family they will all go to church with her instead, although the kids “hate it”. Mick and Jimmy tell them they’re supposed to hate it, and the point isn’t to believe in God, but to make yourself “feel better,” as you confess and drink wine to “take the edge off.” Indeed, much of the episode is consumed with dialogue about God and church, much of it irreverent and sarcastic.

When they get to church, Mick and the family meet parish priest Father Zach. Mick doesn’t like him because he seems too normal, since he drinks beer, swears and makes her feel guilty for drinking to excess. She bribes another priest (who consumes hard liquor and shares Mick’s drinking habits) with her Porsche to get rid of Zach.

Jimmy (Mick’s bf) and Sabrina (Mick’s niece) want to convince Ben that God is real. Jimmy compares God to a drug-infused rock band. Sabrina says this is only God if you’re “a drug addict,” Finally, Ben is convinced of God’s reality when Jimmy dresses up like Jesus.

Mick winds up in the hospital, high on Morphine. Ben tells everyone he wants to be the Pope. Alba promises not to attend church anymore, as do all the others who have had enough. Instead they do yoga and meditate.

Mick calls the kids “brats.” The word “d–n” is used once, as are the words “d–mit” and “b—h.” “Frickin'” and “h—‘ are used three times, and “a–” is used five times. Someone misuses God’s name. Santa is referred to as a “fatso” and “child molester.”

The Mick: Jan. 1, 2017 “Pilot”

Mick stops by a party that her sister, Poodle, and her rich husband are throwing. She plans to ask for some money. But when FBI agents arrest Poodle and hubster, Mick’s drafted into watching the couple’s three children until they can get the mess sorted out. “Just act like their aunt for one day, and I’ll get you the money that you need, all right?” Poodle says as she’s being taken away. “And don’t ruin them!”

Mick doesn’t … but it’s not for lack of trying. She steals some ice cream for youngest child Ben (to which he’s allergic). When middle child Chip complains about a bully, she encourages Chip to pull down the bully’s pants and laugh at the size of his manhood. (When Chip comes home, his face is bloodied, and he reports that the bully’s appendage is “huge.”) When rebellious teen Sabrina preps to leave home for the night, Mick encourages her to have several shots of absinthe. And when Sabrina brags that she can drink Mick under the table, Mick reveals the green beverage she’s sipping is actually “six types of sleep medication.” (Mick drank the stuff, too, but tells Sabrina that she can “handle my ‘Quil.”)

Sabrina wears bikini tops as well as a revealing outfit that puts a lot of skin on display. Chip wants to sue the school for his beat down, which humiliated him in front of a girl he likes. “You’re not going to sue your way into this girl’s pants,” Mick cautions. When Sabrina steals an owl from school and plans to release it, Mick tells her she can’t just go around stealing owls. “If you free this owl, I will murder another one!” she hollers. Ironically, Mick—covered in scratch marks—ends up serving the owl for dinner. People get Tasered and hit with dishes, knocking them unconscious.

Sabrina wants to participate in a fundraiser for Planned Parenthood. Mick says she knows all about the organization. She uses it so much she has a punch ticket for it: With every 10 visits, she says, she gets a free sub sandwich. (She clarifies that her visits weren’t for multiple abortions, but to treat various infections.) Both Sabrina and Mick smoke, and Mick steals Sabrina’s cigarettes. She also swipes food and a bevy of other items in a grocery store, eating and using them as she walks the aisles (including dumping what appears to be talcum powder or something down her pants). She takes a six-pack of beer, too, drinking one and handing the rest to a pleased homeless man. She guzzles wine while watching the kids, eventually falling off a stairway bannister and passing out for several hours. Characters say “a–,” “b–ch,” “b–tard,” “h—” and “crap” several times each, as well as use euphemisms for the f-word. Mick also refers to a nice-but-nosy neighbor as a “real ‘see you next Tuesday,'” a winking reference to the c-word.

There’s more content to catalog if I really wanted to, but hopefully you get the idea.

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paul-asay
Paul Asay

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

kristin-smith
Kristin Smith

Kristin Smith joined the Plugged In team in 2017. Formerly a Spanish and English teacher, Kristin loves reading literature and eating authentic Mexican tacos. She and her husband, Eddy, love raising their children Judah and Selah. Kristin also has a deep affection for coffee, music, her dog (Cali) and cat (Aslan).

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