Titus - Seasons 1 & 2 (2000) Review

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(More customer reviews)It truly is a shame that FOX's Titus only lasted three seasons, although, in retrospect, it's amazing that it even did last that long. The material is probably the darkest stuff I've seen on television (and this is a comedy, remember), the budget must have been tiny (there were only three main sets, and everything else looked recycled). The show survived on its merit, but fortunately, it deserved all the acclaim it got, plus much more.
The show Titus is based off of comedian Christopher Titus' one man stage show entitled Norman Rockwell Is Bleeding, which in turn was based on his real life. In fact, the members of Titus' family had to sign release forms, as the show was so close to real life. Titus plays himself, a custom car shop owner who comes from a very dysfunctional family. His father Ken Titus (Stacey Keach) is a womanizing alcoholic who takes the term "tough love" to a whole new level. His mother Juanita (Julie Wagner/Frances Fisher) is a manic-depressive schizophrenic who, on many occasions, tried to kill Ken. Half-brother Dave (Zack Ward) is a marijuana-smoking, unintelligent man-boy. Titus' "normal" friend Tommy Shafter (David Shatraw) is sensitive and effeminante, which leads to him being at the butt of a lot of Ken's jokes. Erin Fitzpatrick (Cynthia Watros) is Titus' loving (but equally screwed up) girlfriend. She also comes from a dysfunctional family, but she does everything she can to forget about it.
The stories are told in a very interesting way; as everything is going on, there are frequent asides from Titus in a black and white "neutral space" where he narrates, comments, and sets up jokes. A lot of the dialogue in the neutral space comes directly from Norman Rockwell Is Bleeding. The plot of the episodes range from the group fearing that Ken is dead because he hasn't left his room in four days... not even to get a beer, to Titus and Erin breaking up, and having both of them hook up with other people within 10 minutes, only to want to get back together.
As you can see, this isn't Ozzie and Harriet. The plots are extremely dark and twisted. One episode deals with the group having an intervention so that Ken can START drinking again. In the featurette Hard Laughs on the DVD, Titus confirms what I had pretty much known since I had seen the show; many of the plots barely got network approval. Chris had to coax them into the episodes by explaining how funny they could be, and believe me, this is one of the funniest shows I have ever seen. Very few shows on network television have ventured this far in terms of the kinds of stories they do (sure, there's Family Guy, but that's a different kind of edgy). The people in this show are dysfunctional and real. There is no weekly reconcilliation at the end of each episode. In fact, it's lucky if the characters' situations aren't worse off by the end than they were at the beginning.
As I said earlier, this show had a tiny budget. Aside from the three main sets (Titus' house, Ken's house, and the Titus High Performance garage), most of the others were definitely recycled, and it doesn't take too much of a trained eye to see old sets refurbished to look like something new (I'm pretty sure that the police station and the hospital were the same set). Furthermore, it seemed like they just couldn't hold on to the actors who played recurring characters. One character was in three episodes, and was played by someone new each time. Juanita Titus was played by a different actress in each season (although they go into that in Hard Laughs, and it does make a kind of sense if you watch the show). I'm surprised that they were able to get guest stars like David Hyde Pierce and Jay Leno to appear (although I'm guessing that they enjoyed the material and were willing to take a cut in their normal pay, just like Gary Oldman on Greg the Bunny). A good number of the episodes dealt only with the main five characters, and didn't have guests at all.
As I said earlier, even though this show deserved more than just three seasons, I'm surprised that it got that many. This is not a show with a big middle ground; most people either love it or hate it, and I'm guessing that there are more people who hate it than love it (although I'm guessing that most people haven't even seen it). In Hard Laughs, Titus was saying how FOX got numerous angry letters protesting the show, and that a lot of people came up to him to insult him (although, he also said that people come up to him and are angry that the show was cancelled). Despite everything that this show had going against it though, it did a great job with what it had. It was hilarious and it was able to remain on the air for three great years. It really is too bad that it wasn't on longer, with it on DVD now, I hope that more people will appreciate the genius behind this amazing show.

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Christopher Titus guides us through his world, whichincludes a drunken father, a dimwitted brother, agoody-goody best friend and a surprisingly "normal"girlfriend.

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