Occasional Laughs, but Mostly Doesn’t Work
When the 2024 fall TV season hit, I picked out a few sitcoms I wanted to try. While I found a couple of shows I wound up liking, Poppa’s House was not one of them.
The show was created as a vehicle for Damon Wayans and his son, Damon Wayans Jr. to work together. And they play father and son. Poppa is a talk show host with a show in New York City where he spouts whatever is on his mind. Things chance when the station assigns him a new cohost. Ivy (Essence Atkins) is everything Poppa isn’t, including a physiologist who better understands how people behave and how the sexes best interact.
Meanwhile, Junior lives next to Poppa with his wife, Nina (Tetona Jackson), and their two kids, Trey and Maya (Caleb Johnson and River Blossom). He works for his father-in-law, but he is trying to get a career together as a film maker, causing tension at home.
Over the course of the season Junior and Nina attempt to create a retrospective about Poppa’s career. The couple also try to get their parents to help them pay for private school for their kids. Poppa wants a family picture…without his ex-wife in it. And Junior attempts to get his sister to make up with their father.
So where did things go wrong? This is another sitcom where the writers and actors are trying so hard to be funny that it isn’t funny. The situations are so over the top and the reactions are so exaggerated, it doesn’t work. And yes, I do know sitcoms. Some of my favorite shows of all time are sitcoms. This is a trend I’ve seen with many recent shows in the genre.
Meanwhile, the show also falls into the dumb male tropes. Neither Poppa nor Junior are especially bright or aware of anyone beyond themselves. It is painful to watch.
Not that the women fare much better. Nina comes across as a shrew (if not a nag) more often than not. Ivy fairs a bit better, although her know it all attitude can wear itself out.
Now, don’t get me wrong. There are funny moments in each episode. They just aren’t enough to sustain a 22-minute episode.
The show has teased a romance between Poppa and Ivy all season, which was a bit icky to me since they are obviously very different in age. But maybe that’s just me.
I’m not blaming this on the actors, who are all fine. It’s the writing that lets them down. And I enjoyed seeing other Wayans family members show up in guest parts.
How do I know the writers were struggling? They changed a big part of the premise early on, having Pippa and Ivy getting fired from their radio show and setting up a podcast instead. I had so many questions about the hows and whys of that, both behind the scenes and the storyline. And I could never figure out if their show was pre-recorded or live. It seemed to switch to whatever the writers needed at the time. Yes, that’s a typical thing on TV shows, especially sitcoms, but this one seemed especially blatant.
The bright spot was any scene that just involved Poppa and Junior. The Wayans were allowed to riff and play off each other, and the results were often some of the best laughs of the episode. I would have watched much more of this every week.
The show consisted of 18 episodes. The series wasn’t picked up for season two a few days before the series finale aired, meaning no one knew that’s what it was when they were working on it. That means we get some relationship cliffhangers, but nothing too egregious.
Obviously, I’d already decided I wouldn’t be back if the show had returned for season two. Honestly, I couldn’t quite decide on the show for several weeks, and by the time I did decide, I figured I’d finish season one and then stop.
So if you have yet to watch Poppa’s House, you aren’t missing anything. I suggest you find a better sitcom, maybe an old favorite, to watch instead.
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