Gone South
by Curt Holman
During an appearance on The Late Show With David Letterman, Jeff Foxworthy, hyping his eponymous sitcom, told a funny routine about traveling with his family. Using the same “You might a be redneck if...” shtick that’s made him famous, he explained how, when his rustic kinfolk traveled, they used coolers and grocery bags instead of actual luggage: “Are these your Samsonites, Mr. Foxworthy?” “Naw, we got the Igloo with the duct tape on top and the Piggly Wiggly bags!”
It was a moment funnier than any you’ll ever see on The Jeff Foxworthy Show, which airs 7:30 p.m. Saturday on ABC. Most of Foxworthy’s appeal, I suspect, lies in the gentle affection he uses to poke fun at bumpkins. Like the best of Lewis Grizzard, he laughs with country folk, not at them.
But The Jeff Foxworthy Show cuts the comic off from the source of his comedy by transplanting him to the boring Midwest. The manager of a heating-and-air-conditioning business, Foxworthy is surrounded by such cookie-cutter characters as a Waspy wife; a too cute son; his wife’s single, wisecracking pal; a disapproving father-in-law; and the blue-collar joes who work for him. Being a good old boy, Foxworthy is supposedly an odd man out in Middle America.
The show’s only memorable moments occur when Foxworthy plays up the white-trash act to annoy his snooty neighbors. He often harks back to his countrified kin in the South—in fact, he calls himself a redneck so much, it makes me wonder if Jeff the character has an inferiority complex.
Since the redneck routines are Foxworthy’s calling card, it would make more sense to set The Jeff Foxworthy Show in the South: It could milk more laughs if the comic’s famed “fambly” were part of the program, making him the most “normal” one by comparison. True, the show would run a greater risk of pushing the hillbilly stereotypes Foxworthy gently tweaks in his stand-up routine, but that would be a small price for a bigger comic payoff. At it is now, instead of a bare-knuckled working-class comedy like or Grace Under Fire, The Jeff Foxworthy Show simply puts a likable, uncompelling face on a tediously familiar situation.
Unsavory Clientele
As a resident of Atlanta, I’m in the fortunate position of being able to judge the accuracy of John Grisham’s The Client, which is supposedly set in the Georgian capital. I say “fortunate” because The Client would vanish from my memory if I didn’t at least have the pleasure of comparing the fictional Atlanta with the real Atlanta.
Airing 7 p.m. Tuesdays on CBS, the show is filmed mostly in Hollywood studios, with a few exteriors shot each week in Atlanta for verisimilitude and local color. This is the same approach taken by Matlock and The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo, which were also set in Atlanta. In each case, the Georgia locales merely emphasize the show’s lack of authenticity.
The Client, we get little details like a terminal at Hartsfield International Airport that looks like a small-town bus station, or plot points like riverboat gambling on the Chattahoochee—which is barely deep enough to float an inner tube. Certainly no self-respecting fortyish attorney in a big Southern city would work in skirts as short as the ones Regina Love (Jobeth Williams) wears regularly.
Created by Judith Paige Mitchell from the film adaptation of Grisham’s book, The Client has been relocated from Memphis with Williams cast in the Susan Sarandon role. Reggie Love is a recovering alcoholic lawyer who, denied custody of her own children, specializes in representing kids in court.
Thankfully, Williams doesn’t try to talk too Southern, but it’s absolutely painful to hear John Heard, a wonderful character actor in films like Cutter’s Way, sport a drawl like Boss Hogg wearing nose plugs. Less annoying are Ossie Davis as a typically avuncular judge and Polly Holliday as Reggie’s mother.
Inexplicably for a network show, The Client lacks phony suspense scenes or nose-to-nose courtroom brawls—it just gets by on low-key mysteries and oh-so-sensitive dialogue. The only viewers I can imaging finding enjoyment in this show would be those who make a drinking game of it: For every Hee Haw accent or blatant incongruity, take a drink. Regina Love wouldn’t approve, true, but getting liquored up is preferable to enduring The Client with a clear head.
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