This show is a throwback to those radio-shows-with-pictures popular in the seventies: "All in the Family" and its several spin-offs, "Sanford and Son" and especially "Welcome Back, Kotter".
The target demographic for "2 Broke Girls" are too young to remember any of that old stuff, of course, so no harm done.
Like "Welcome Back, Kotter", everyone here is a "character", full of eccentricities. The normal-acting, normal-looking guest actors really stand out. There are just a few, simple sets and outdoor shots are unknown, which keeps production costs way down but certainly doesn't make use of the potentialities of television. I'd lay odds some of the actors aren't even on set when the camera cuts to them and they deliver their few lines--like the tired looking Garret Morris.
The two stars are Abbot & Costello in brassieres: the comic and the straight man, the dumb one and the smart one. The repartee between them is hit and miss, sometimes outrageously funny, other times falling flat, still others plain gross.
There are of course some differences. Unlike Carroll O'Connor or Redd Foxx, these girls are nice to look at, blonde Beth Behr, especially. She's got a great pair of legs and at least once in every episode they are shown to the limit of decency.
The material has certainly been updated to the 2010's with plenty of double entendres and references to body parts, masturbation both male and female and feminine hygiene. With off color material predominating and drab sets, this show would retain much of its character if there were only the audio portion being broadcast.
One last note: the treatment of racial minorities on "2 Broke Girls" is surprisingly, offensively stereotypical, even worse than in the 1970's. There is one regular black character, the aforementioned Garret Morris who is never seen standing up and one Asian, four feet tall with an accent not heard since the Borscht Belt comic Buddy Hackett last performed his Chinese Waiter routine, a rubber band across his eyelids.
The target demographic for "2 Broke Girls" are too young to remember any of that old stuff, of course, so no harm done.
Like "Welcome Back, Kotter", everyone here is a "character", full of eccentricities. The normal-acting, normal-looking guest actors really stand out. There are just a few, simple sets and outdoor shots are unknown, which keeps production costs way down but certainly doesn't make use of the potentialities of television. I'd lay odds some of the actors aren't even on set when the camera cuts to them and they deliver their few lines--like the tired looking Garret Morris.
The two stars are Abbot & Costello in brassieres: the comic and the straight man, the dumb one and the smart one. The repartee between them is hit and miss, sometimes outrageously funny, other times falling flat, still others plain gross.
There are of course some differences. Unlike Carroll O'Connor or Redd Foxx, these girls are nice to look at, blonde Beth Behr, especially. She's got a great pair of legs and at least once in every episode they are shown to the limit of decency.
The material has certainly been updated to the 2010's with plenty of double entendres and references to body parts, masturbation both male and female and feminine hygiene. With off color material predominating and drab sets, this show would retain much of its character if there were only the audio portion being broadcast.
One last note: the treatment of racial minorities on "2 Broke Girls" is surprisingly, offensively stereotypical, even worse than in the 1970's. There is one regular black character, the aforementioned Garret Morris who is never seen standing up and one Asian, four feet tall with an accent not heard since the Borscht Belt comic Buddy Hackett last performed his Chinese Waiter routine, a rubber band across his eyelids.