Hilarious Dad Jokes That'll Make You Laugh (Even As You Roll Your Eyes)

The Bill Engvall Show - The Hollywood Reporter

9-9:30 p.M., Tuesday, July 17TBS

"The Bill Engvall Show" is very much a throwback to a different time, when gently making light of family issues was all a sitcom aspired to — and could carve a hit out of it. Of course, that was then and this is now: Comedy is dead, remember? Well, not really, but the kind of blue-collar domestic humor that passes for edge here feels dated on arrival. This doesn't mean that stand-up Engvall's show doesn't have some snap, crackle and pop; it does. He has nice chemistry with TV comedy vet Nancy Travis as his wife. Also, the fact that "Bill Engvall" shows up on TBS rather than CBS or NBC gives it a fighting chance, given that it only need appeal to a smaller basic cable target. All that said, the show isn't particularly funny, which should be the point, after all. We'll see just how much it matters.

"Blue Collar Comedy Tour" veteran Engvall stars here as Bill Pearson, your basic incredulous family counselor by day and put-upon husband and dad by night. Wife Susan (Travis) is vivacious and sassy in that unreal sitcom way. She's long-suffering and yet fully in charge of things, just as her husband tries to give the impression he has everything under control when in fact he's utterly clueless. But she lets him think he's running the show — again, shades of family comedies past. They live in a Denver suburb with fussbudget teenage daughter Lauren (Jennifer Lawrence), video game enthusiast son Trent (Graham Patrick Martin) and neat freak son Bryan (Skyler Gisondo). There's also Bill's crazy best pal, Paul (Tim Meadows), the kind of guy who seems to suspect conspiracies around every corner.

So let's see … in the opener, Bill winds up writing a school paper for Trent and runs afoul of his teacher because, well, he wrote it, and the teacher busts him. The usual madcap mix-ups ensue, if not exactly laughs. We also learn that Bill and Susan have developed a penchant for arguing in the nude on account of the fact that it tends to shorten the arguing time — which leads to embarrassment when daughter Lauren walks in on them in the act of … discussion.

Oh yes, and the family's pet snake gets loose, which spurs a whole other potential crisis of dysfunction. This is all part and parcel to Engvall's actual act, which the Galveston, Texas, native honed onstage and via such shows as "Blue Collar TV" and the "Blue Collar Comedy Tour." He also serves as co-writer, exec producer and creator of his namesake series, which is being hyped as sort of Jeff Foxworthy-lite. The sales pitch for "Bill Engvall" surrounds the idea that families around America will watch the show and declare, "Wow! Those people are just like us, only funnier!" More likely, they'll say, "Those people are nothing like us, like most other families on television!" Again, there is nothing inherently awful here, and it does embody a certain retro charm. But you fear somebody at TBS forgot to read the memo about how shows like this simply don't resonate anymore.

THE BILL ENGVALL SHOWTBS Welladay Inc., Parallel Entertainment and Very Funny Prods.Credits:Executive producers: Michael Leeson, Bill Engvall, J.P. WlliamsProducer: Melanie PattersonTeleplay: Bill Engvall and Michael LeesonDirector: James WiddoesDirector of photography: George MooradianProduction designer: Garvin EddyCostume designer: Emily DraperEditor: Andy ZallMusic: Jonathan FloodCasting: Sally Stiner, Barbie BlockCast:Bill Pearson: Bill EngvallSusan Pearson: Nancy TravisBob Spoonerman: Steve HytnerLauren Pearson: Jennifer LawrenceTrent Pearson: Graham Patrick MartinBryan Pearson: Skyler GisondoPaul DuFrayne: Tim Meadows

TBS's 'The Bill Engvall Show' Is A Throwback – Orange County ...

Bill Engvall, the most affable of the "Blue Collar Comedy" stand-ups, has cooked up the most retro of sitcoms. "The Bill Engvall Show" is a family sitcom the likes of which hasn't been seen since the '80s, if not the '60s, but therein lies its appeal – for certain audiences, at least.

Engvall stars as Bill Pearson, a family counselor with what seems to be the most squeaky-clean family this side of TV Land: Doting wife Susan (Nancy Travis), mildly rebellious teen daughter Lauren (Jennifer Lawrence), good-hearted slacker-in-training Trent (Graham Patrick Martin) and uber-intellect Bryan (Skyler Gisondo).

A lot – maybe too much – of the humor is of the kids-these-days! Sort, with Bill flummoxed by computer games, piercings ("When did shrapnel become a fashion accessory?"), last-minute homework assignments and low-riding jeans.

On the other hand, some of the dialogue is agreeably crisp by contemporary sitcom standards and it can be refreshing and almost revolutionary to focus on a family whose tendency is to be sweet toward one another.

Future plot lines involve Bill's obsession with Trent's dubious promotion on his high-school football team and whether to spend the family vacation money on an operation for the family dog. You can see where these episodes are going, but that doesn't make them any less satisfying from a certain nostalgic level, anyway.

No one is ever going to confuse "The Bill Engvall Show" with "Arrested Development" or "The Office." But there's a sizable audience out there that will likely be sated by this sitcom equivalent of comfort food.

The Bill Engvall Show - Variety

Hoping to tap into the lucrative "Blue Collar Comedy" vein, this sitcom featuring BCC member Bill Engvall is so relentlessly ordinary it feels designed for that audience longing for more episodes of "Still Standing." As stand-up-centered comedy goes, Engvall's married-guy shtick draws heavily from the fading echoes of Tim Allen's profitable grunts, as if the goal was to create a new show indistinguishable from the reruns surrounding it. Yet even with likable Nancy Travis as his wife, this is decidedly slim and rarely funny fare — which, admittedly, hasn't prevented "Tyler Perry's House of Payne" from being a hit for TBS.

Bill Pearson (Engvall) is a family counselor who — now brace yourself for this part — occasionally struggles to enforce order at home, whether it's controlling his teenage daughter (Jennifer Lawrence), inspiring his slacker son (Graham Patrick Martin) or finding the snake lost by his youngest (Skyler Gisondo).

In the premiere (originally the second episode, with the pilot having perhaps wisely been pushed later into the run), the daughter decides she wants a piercing, prompting Bill to say, "God gave you all the holes you're gonna ever need." His older boy gets a chance to play quarterback, hastening concerns that he might need a demonstration in how to use a condom.

Bill also has a podiatrist pal ("Seinfeld's" Steve Hytner), while Tim Meadows is scheduled to join the show, but not featured in any of the episodes previewed.

It is, quite simply, painfully flat, almost studiously old-fashioned stuff — where Bill suggests that he and his wife "argue naked" and the studio audience obligingly howls. During another installment, most of the story centers on the family's ailing dog, a cheap heart-tugger if there ever was one.

Think of Engvall as Jeff Foxworthy with a less-pronounced drawl — generally pleasant, but basically just another middle-aged stand-up weaving bits of his regular-guy act into multicamera mirth. Foremost, though, the series has the sense of being cynically pitched directly to the blue-collar crowd — a demographic that presumably hates Hollywood and will watch pretty much anything where the jokes are loud, folks drive pickup trucks and families conspicuously say grace before meals.

As a strategy that might work, but it's utterly at odds with TBS' "My Boys" — the surprisingly good comedy about a sportswriter that returns for its second season this month — fostering confusion about what the Turner-owned network wants its profile to be.

Sure, the channel's slogan is "very funny," but would that be "stupid funny" or "smart funny"? Whatever the verdict, place Engvall's show squarely in the former category, albeit mostly minus the "funny" part.

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