By Curt Schleier



MY BOYS was last season’s highest-rated comedy on an advertiser supported cable network.   Does that mean there’s actually a future for warm and fuzzy comedies?  Let’s hope so.

Can men and women be platonic friends, buddies who never think about sex with each other?  It’s a question that has plagued the ancient philosophers at least since the time of WHEN HARRY MET SALLY.  MY BOYS, which began its second season (TBS, Mondays at 10 p.m.) with back-to-back episodes, also asks that rhetorical question.  It just doesn’t answer it.

The show is centered on PJ Franklin (Jordana Spiro), who is cute, smart, a life-long Cubs fan, a sports writer for the Sun-Times, a provider of a crash pad for the needy and, most important, a poker-playing, beer-drinking buddy to an assorted crew of ragamuffins.

Last year, PJ consummated a relationship with one of them, Bobby (Kyle Howard), a reporter for the rival Tribune, which made both of them feel awkward.  They are now friends.  But at the end of last year, PJ and Brendan (Reid Scott) kissed. They clearly like each other, but don’t act on it, partly in fear of destroying the group dynamic.  But of course not acting on it has its affects, too.  Will they get together?  The answer to that probably depends upon the ratings.

I know what I just described makes it appear as though MY BOYS is a 1950s-era soap.  You can just imagine PJ plucking daisy’s petals:  he loves me, he loves me not.  He loves me… But this is a good thing.  There’s a warmth about the show missing from so much of today’s sex-obsessed broadcasts.  I know it’s a bit corny and old fashioned, but I am corny and old-fashioned and it’s much too late for me to change.

MY BOYS reminded me a lot of three others set in Chicago, all starring Bonnie Hunt.  THE BUILDING, THE BONNIE HUNT SHOW and LIFE WITH BONNIE.  If you missed them you’re not alone.  Even the last, the longest-lived of the shows, disappeared far too soon.  Hunt is one of the funniest actors in the business, but in each series she tempered her sharp wit with a kind of fairy tale warmth that enveloped her friends and business associates and of course her TV family.

It’s the same with MY BOYS.  There are genuine laugh-out-loud moments, particularly those involving PJ’s brother Andy (the always hilarious Jim Gaffigan) who has just moved to the suburbs.  The long commute wrecks havoc with his ability to play poker with the group.  Acting drunk when he calls his wife to get permission to stay in town plays out much funnier in fact than it does in print.

But it wasn’t the laughs that most appealed to me.  It was the affection members of PJ’s group shared for each other.  On Off Day, PJ gets a guest shot on a cable sports show.  She is terrible.  And the way she gets and accepts the news is indicative of their friendship.

No group is really made up of people so nice, so funny, and so giving.  But if there really was one, I’d really want to be part of it.  But, getting back to that question, the reality is if it ever happened, there’s no way I wouldn’t take a shot at PJ.