ShareThisBy SHELLEY ANDERSON
Friday, November 03, 2006
When it showed up on my desk, I thought it might be a mistake.
A package from cable station TBS was hawking a new original comedy series called, "My Boys."
Just as I was about to send it on to the proper department, a little bit of eagle-eyed reporting turned up a sports connection.
The sitcom revolves around a female sports writer named PJ who covers the Chicago Cubs for the Sun-Times.
I decided I'd watch the DVD containing two episodes because, um, well, I thought I might like to see some shots of Wrigley Field.
They were there, including a few press box and locker room scenes.
But there were a lot more bar and poker night scenes.
Like people who work in other professions, it's always interesting to see how the entertainment industry portrays reporters.
Too often, they show up in single-minded, breath-stealing packs. Or worse, the line is blurred between journalists and paparazzi.
As for fictional sports writers, my favorite has always been Jack Klugman's Oscar Madison, whose portrayal, while caricature-like, is probably as close to reality as anyone's.
Now comes "My Boys," and its female sports writer, played by Jordana Spiro. Could someone get it halfway right and be funny?
I let myself get my hopes up a little when I read that the sitcom, which premieres Nov. 28 at 10:30 p.m., was created, written and produced by a woman, Betsy Thomas, whose press clippings say her husband turned her into a die-hard Cubs fan.
Alas, it turns out there's a difference between a sitcom about a sports reporter and a sitcom that happens to have sports reporting as a backdrop.
The Sun-Times, where PJ works, is a real newspaper, one of two major papers in Chicago, along with the Tribune.
But it became clear that "My Boys" was not only 100 percent fiction but also stretched, when, in both episodes, PJ is never shown writing, but has plenty of time to go out for beer, have the guys in her social circle over for poker and beer, or just talk about drinking and going out.
It's not that sports writers don't like beer or going out. It's just that no beat writer covering a big-league team for a major metro paper would have the kind of free time this woman does in the middle of the season.
But if they didn't give her that free time, they couldn't play up her friendships with and attempts at dating various guys _ which apparently is supposed to be a big deal because, you know, she's a woman who likes sports and beer.
To underscore that PJ knows sports, her character can be heard in frequent voice-overs, offering baseball analogies applied to life and dating.
Many of her lines also pound home the fact that she's a female sports writer, but mostly it's only to set up the conflict and turmoil that it is supposed to produce in her personal life.
"I'm the only woman," the character laments. "I can't have a personal life at work. They will rip me to shreds."
Wow. Tough workplace.
That workplace includes, at least in one episode, a tough, veteran Sun-Times columnist who inspires both reverence and jeers from the lowly beat writers when he decides to show up in the locker room when the Cubs sign a superstar player.
That superstar player, a Latin veteran, is every cliche of an ill-liked baseball player rolled into one. At one point, the player is standing at his stall with his back to a group of reporters who are calling out questions in a begging tone. He eventually makes a point of taking the remote control and raising the volume on a television that seems to be set up just for him near his personal lounge chair.
You have to wonder whether Barry Bonds was one of the consultants for the show.
PJ eventually gets the scoop when she uses the connection of a groupie she met to get an interview with the prima donna _ but she sullies sports writers' images in her voice-over when she says that when they are in the presence of superstars, they get to feel like one, too. Yuck.
PJ met the groupie because she hangs out with guys who are your typical frat-boys-but-older types.
It's too bad TBS had to go the safe route of filling the show with overgrown college guys instead of really exploring the sports writer angle as the main gist. Surely there's some humor to be found there.
At least PJ seems more Oscar Madison than the female TV reporter on ESPN's "Playmakers" who purred, hit on the athletes and was a bit conniving.
Maybe I was being optimistic given the track record of most sitcoms, but I so hoped "My Boys" would be more about sports reporting.
Was it funny?
I guess I forgot to watch for that.
(E-mail Shelly Anderson at shanderson(at)post-gazette.com)
