I have confess that before he died Bernie Mac was just a name to me. Sure, I had heard of him, but I had never caught a performance, tv or otherwise. A friend recently made the observation that a sitcom in syndication has crossed a threshold and probably had some quality that put it above the run-of-the-mill sitcom. So when when Bernie Mac died I decided to check out the reruns. So, does someone have to die in order to show up on my radar? Let's not even go there, okay? It's a funny show.
FX and CW both show the reruns at odd hours. And the other day I think I stumbled on the first episode. Bernie Mac plays himself, and he likes to sit in his den and talk to us. He talks directly to the camera a few times in each episode carefully explaining his side of the issues that plague him. Here's how the first episode begins:
"Damn! That's a good cigar. You can tell a good cigar by the way it feels. And this feels like a good cigar. [takes a big drag and blows out smoke] Look at that smoke. That's cigar smoke there boy.
"But I ain't here to talk about cigars. I'm here to tell you, that, uh, [takes a big drag, blows it out] I'm gonna kill one of them kids.
"Oh don't get me wrong. I love 'em -- they my blood. I give 'em the shirt off my back.
"Ya ever see a chicken with his neck wrung, laying to the side all lazy and weak?
"Talk like that to me one more time, SNAP! I'm gonna snap they necks off! Eh! They too sassy! They too grown up! They talk back too much!
"Eh, I know what you're saying to Mac. I don't care what you're talking about. 'Bernie Mac cruel. Bernie Mac beats his kids.' I don't care. That's your opinion. Cause you don't know the whole story. You don't know what went down. And they ain't my kids!"
The story goes on to tell us that his sister has a drug problem, and she got caught stealing something. So soft hearted Bernie and his wife move her three children into his house, and don't worry, he'll keep reminding us how nice a guy he is for doing that. But in each episode they present him with some problem, a problem that interferes significantly with the lifestyle this wealthy comedian would like to live.
Oh, did I say the show is really funny? Check it out, it's worth a look.
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