This show isn't the Worldly New Yorker Moves to Hicksville show like its preseason publicity led us to think. Given the usual showbiz snobbery about the parts of the U.S. between the two coasts, the misdirection wasn't surprising. The conflict is more Self vs. Family than it is Sophisticate vs. Rube. For one thing, the show is set in Kansas City--hardly a one-horse town. Breckin Meyer is generally affable as the self-centered New Yorker who doesn't dislike his wife's family so much as he doesn't want his life to be centered around it. His major nemeses are his wife's bitter sister (Emily Rutherfurd) and mother (Nancy Lenehan, who could patent her uniquely cutting brand of astringent, passive-aggressive authority). Some of the minor characters need more development, and I don't find the character of the idiot son (so dysfunctional he seems brain-damaged) particularly funny. The various schemes Tom uses to thwart the attempts of his wife's family to indoctrinate him it its ways and the often surprising ways those schemes boomerang on him could make for an entertaining show if it lasts and can manage to work the kinks out.
Review of Married to the Kellys
