Dads

Oh dear, does the talented cast of Dads deserve better material to work with. For every joke that lands, such as when the always charming Seth-Green-as-Eli asks a video game voice actor to try reading a line again with "a more wizardlike quality," there is a joke that will make most wince, such as when Eli demonstrates to a female employee how he wants her to cover her mouth and giggle when she dresses up as a "sexy Asian schoolgirl" for a pair of Chinese clients. Said clients later send the female employee a picture of his "tiny China penis" and the whole cast bonds by gathering around the computer and offering up deeply unfunny jokes about said penis: "It looks like something you'd pick out of a salad," says David, while Crawford offers "I see an inchworm in a little tiny fireman's hat."

Worst of all, unlike other shows that offer up less cringeworthy racist/sexist/homophobic/ageist humor, none of the characters onscreen object to the jokes. Veronica, the character who dresses up as Sailor Moon in Dads' pilot, makes a joke about her (presumably Asian) dad beating her "with a math book." Ha ha, racist jokes about Asian people are funny, you see, because she's Asian. That makes it okay! Not so much. All in the Family made that old racist Archie Bunker acceptable because everyone else onscreen argued with his offensive tirades. Having the characters on Dads not just accepting the casual racism and sexism, but also playing along with it, renders this show positively painful to watch.