‘The Mick’ Is Drunk TGIF

“An unlikely and totally unprepared adult is suddenly put in charge of wily and precocious kids.” A billion sitcoms have followed that formulaic — and incredibly potent — log line. This sitcom subgenre, which prioritizes rascally yet family-friendly fun over innovation,  was perfected in the late ’80s and early ’90s by ABC’s iconic (or ironically iconic) TGIF lineup.

The two-hour sitcom block brought laughs and lessons to kids and their captive parents every Friday night from 1989 to 2000. Plenty of those shows —Mr. Belvedere, Full House and Hangin’ with Mr. Cooper — riffed on the aforementioned setup by pairing harried adults (a butler, a brother-in-law, a stand-up comic, a gym teacher) with adorable moppets and sweet teens. Even Perfect Strangers — a show about two full-grown men — kinda fits into that category, with straight-laced Larry having to take care of his relentlessly goofy cousin Balki Bartokomous. This specific strain of all-smiles family sitcom has been mostly replaced since the end of TGIF. Current family shows (Black-ish, Modern Family, Fresh Off the Boat) feature sharp writing as well as a deft execution of topical, sometimes even political, stories.

The tried-and-true TGIF formula has made a comeback, though, in a totally unexpected place. The Mick is a modern day TGIF show — albeit one that smokes, drinks, curses and refuses to learn lessons.

The Fox series, led by the comedy tornado that is Kaitlin Olson, features a straight-up TGIF premise: an unlikely and totally unprepared adult is suddenly put in charge of wily and precocious kids. The big difference is that instead of a Cousin Larry or Uncle Jesse, The Mick has aunt Mickey, a hard-drinking and perpetually slumming con artist. Instead of the Tanner sisters, The Mick has vicious social-climber Sabrina (Sofia Black-D’Elia), MRA sociopath in the making Chip (Thomas Barbusca) and the alternatively cute/unsettling Ben (Jack Stanton). Since the endlessly reckless Mickey is the show’s moral center, her partners-in-child-rearing are proportionally askew. There’s Scott MacArthur’s Jimmy, Mickey’s unlabeled sexual cohort who answers the question “What if Joey Gladstone did hard drugs?” There’s also Carla Jimenez’s maid-turned-equal Alba, the only character that noticeably grows over the first season. In true Mick fashion, Alba grows from being the emotionally harassed help to an empowered woman — one willing to chloroform anyone that dares threaten her newfound independence.

The TGIF connection goes deeper than the show’s basic premise and cast of characters. The show itself respects sitcom tradition about as much as the Pemberton kids respect Mickey. Every episode of the show’s first season, which is currently streaming on Hulu, starts with a surface-level wholesome premise (a forgotten birthday party, a new boyfriend, a new imaginary friend, an argument about chores, a sleepover with the cool kid).

The show then takes that premise out to a bar, gets it drunk, and steals all its money.

Birthday boy Ben swallows a balloon stuffed with heroin, Mickey tricks Sabrina into thinking she’s pregnant so she’ll use birth control, the imaginary friend turns out to be a vagrant, the battle over chores leads to Mickey getting thrown from a car (again), and the sleepover concludes with the cool kid finding out firsthand that his mom’s having an affair. This show deliberately goes where Mr. Belvedere would fear to tread. Instead of guest stars teaching the family a lesson and leaving with a smile, it shouldn’t be a surprise that multiple episodes of The Mick end with the guest star on a gurney or in a body bag.

Sometimes the show seems to be directly commenting on the very shows it’s stealthily parodying. The lead storyline in “The Bully” could have happened to D.J. Tanner. Sabrina’s journal falls into the hand of a former underling, who then blasts her moody musings to the entire school. Mickey and Alba jump to defend Sabrina — not because it’s the right thing to do, but because Sabrina’s amped up her at-home anger since the bullying started. The adults cyberbully a high schooler and then encourage Sabrina to retaliate. The same episode sees Jimmy go through a nearly beat-for-beat Perfect Strangers plot when he takes the kids to a dentist and ends up needing dental work himself. Instead of getting into goofy laughing-gas-induced hijinks like Larry and Balki did, Jimmy takes matters into his own hand and extracts his black tooth with the nitrous from whipped cream cans, vodka and pliers. The episode, like many episodes, ends with Jimmy bruised and bloodied.

There’s one moment that directly compares and contrasts The Mick with TGIF. In “The Implant,” Jimmy makes coffee by stuffing his mouth with coffee grounds, adding hot water and swishing it around. If you grew up watching TGIF’s Step By Step, that should bring back memories of Cody (a.k.a. “The Codeman”) making chocolate milk in-mouth. Step By Step’s version is wholesome and literally syrupy; The Mick’s is a scalding feat that should never be replicated.

Those old TGIF shows always ended with a lesson, accompanied by sentimental music, and The Mick…kinda does too. Well, the characters learn…things, albeit in a roundabout way, and not always the right things. In the excellent episode “The New Girl,” Ben gets in trouble at his elementary school for wearing high heels (and also public urination). Mickey seizes the opportunity to enroll Ben (who’s also started wearing dresses at home) in an all-girls school — mostly because it’s conveniently across the street from their mansion. When a father complains that he and his wife don’t want their daughter sharing a bathroom with a boy, Mickey goes off on him. “It does not take a little boy in a dress to molest your daughter. I use the girls room, I could easily molest her any time I want.” A crude way to frame it, but point made. At the end of the episode, Ben says he’s not happy at the all-girls school and wants to return to his old school — as long as they’ll let him wear skirts when he wants to. Mickey, in maybe the most poignant moment all season, says “You do whatever you want, okay?” They even hug.

That’s an outlier, though, because the lessons are rarely so clear. “The Heater” parodies those pat TGIF conclusions with an exchange set in a limo Mickey paid for using profits from her gambling addiction. “I’m a bit confused by what they’re supposed to take away from all this,” asks Jimmy, sitting in the limo. “Gambling is…good?”

“That does not feel right,” says Alba. “Maybe it is… never give up?”

“Or play ’til you win?” guesses Chip. Sabrina comes back with, “It just kinda seems like she shouldn’t have won.”

“Maybe the lesson is there is no lesson,” concludes Mickey. “It’s just life. It just sorta happens.”

Still, there’s one lesson The Mick reinforces with every episode: it may be a family sitcom, but it’s definitely not one you should watch with your family.

Where to watch The Mick