The Bernie Mac Show: Difference between revisions
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|'''Bernie Mac''' (on a good day)}}
Parenting is hard. When ''The Bernie Mac Show'' debuted on November
The sitcom is loosely based off Bernie Mac's real life experiences (something [[Everybody Hates Chris]] also benefited from years later), and was also inspired by a ''Kings of Comedy'' routine he performed a year earlier. Ratings for the show were initially mediocre, but it gained a solid following during its debut season. Critics and viewers connected with the comedian's cruder, more honest perspective on parenting and appreciated the subversions of several tried-and-true sitcom devices along the way. These subversions include the lack of a [[Laugh Track]], the episodes are more narrowly focused on a singular theme instead of balancing several storylines, and the comedian addresses the audience in [[Breaking the Fourth Wall|fourth wall breaking]] discussions when he deals with his frustrations, woes and epiphanies. In a TV environment that restricted many black comedies onto UPN (and mostly derivative ones at that), this was a breath of fresh air.
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* [[Creator Breakdown]]: Even if Fox didn't cripple the show by the fall of 2004, Bernie Mac's now publicly known pneumonia hampered production during the fourth season. This forced Fox to place the remaining episodes on hiatus until the star recovered. Eventually, the show returned in the spring of 2005, but was given the [[Friday Night Death Slot]] for the rest of that season and the next one, its final season. Ouch.
* [[A Date with Rosie Palms]]: Bernie Mac thought Jordan was acting weirder than usual on one episode, and thought puberty raised more than his acne count. It turns out that after the obligatory [[The Talk]], Bernie realized his fears were misguided, since Jordan was acting strangely for other reasons. Still, by the end of the episode, Jordan happily went into the bathroom to relieve himself anyway, since he thought Bernie said it was A-okay, much to Wanda's dismay.
* [[Dueling Shows]]: This show and ''[[My Wife and Kids]]'' had the dilemma of sharing the same audience with the same time slot on two opposite networks (Fox and ABC). As the main description states, this became detrimental for
* [[Follow the Leader]]: An in-show example, with Chris Rock admitting to Bernie Mac that he's his biggest inspiration for getting into comedy, in order to kill animosity Mac's accusation against Rock for stealing a joke. Nowadays, this episode moment becomes [[Hilarious in Hindsight]] with the existence of [[Everybody Hates Chris]], a sitcom loosely based on Chris Rock's life (even more so with the reruns of both sitcoms airing concurrently on BET). [[Everybody Hates Chris]] launched right around the time
* [[Getting Crap Past the Radar]]: Bernie Mac's more colorful swearing gets reduced, though it's easy to imagine what he really wanted to say after his "that's bull!" statements.
* [[Gone Horribly Right]]: In the few moments that Bernie Mac's plans come into fruition, the consequences are more lethal than he intended. For example, when Bernie Mac used surveillance technology to spy on the kids, he got to know every dirty detail on his family. Including a few that he didn't expect to hear, like how Wanda admitted to a friend about how much she hated one anniversary gift he gave her, and promptly sold it back. Bernie Mac didn't take this too well.
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