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Chemistry Found Among 'My Boys'

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BY DAVID KRONKE

Los Angeles Daily News

Published: June 11, 2008

Call TBS' sitcom "My Boys" what you will to explain it to neophytes — "Sex and the Cubbies"; a kinder, gentler "Seinfeld" — but the result is the same: It's a light, sprightly comedy about bonded friends that boasts equal appeal for both male and female viewers.

As the series enters its second season on Thursday, it promises to make a star of Jordana Spiro, who leads an ensemble cast as P.J. Franklin, a beat writer for the Chicago Cubs who seems to be unlucky at love, even though most of her best friends are guys.
Spiro won the role even though she readily admits she was anything but a sports fan when she was cast.

"My friends were cracking up that I got this part," she concedes.

"I went to one of my first baseball games since I was a kid, a Dodgers game, and I asked what time 'the show' started."

But, she says her research has made her into a sports geek. Going to games is "not hard homework," she says.

The appeal of Spiro's P.J. lies in the fact that she's normal, which in TV terms seems an almost revolutionary feat.

The actress recalls, "Last year, I started to lose a little weight and (series creator Betsy Thomas, who based the show on her own life as a sports fan who hosted poker games for her male pals) came up and said, 'I don't want this to be another skinny girl on TV. I don't want you to go down that road.' She wanted her to be a grounded person and I thought that was really cool, in light of all the Hollywood crap you deal with."

Like so many sitcoms before it, "My Boys" features plenty of clever quips and buffoonish behavior, but what elevates it is its seemingly inherent chemistry among the cast. Viewers buy that these people are good friends, not just actors collecting paychecks for swapping one-liners.

"That has a lot to do with Betsy keeping the tone on the set really light," Spiro says. "If anybody started to get kind of uppity, she would have a few things to say about that."

Jim Gaffigan, a comic who plays P.J.'s older brother Andy, a henpecked husband who this season enjoys great leaps in career success — "I helped a company rape a rain forest today," he boasts in the season opener — elaborates on the cast's chemistry.

"Hopefully, some of it has to do with us being good actors, too," he says. "There's some of it where you get lucky. You come on the job and there are people with you where there's a chemistry there.

"It helps that we're doing things like drinking beer (in the cast's scenes together)," he adds wryly. "But I spend more time with these people than anybody, so the chemistry should be there."

If you spend some time with the cast members hanging out together, it's easy to see where that chemistry comes from.

Example No. 1: Ask Michael Bunin (who plays the nebbishy Kenny) and Jamie Kaler (who plays clueless womanizer Mike) about how their own life stories get incorporated into the show's plotlines.

Kaler: "I do stand-up and used to talk about how I once lived in a tiny little apartment down by the beach, so of course, they make my apartment (on the show) just a chair and a television."

Bunin: "That's his apartment. (To Kaler) How much silverware do you have? Let's say you want to eat cereal. How many people can eat cereal at the same time?"

Kaler: "Now, I have some silverware."

Bunin: "Oh, now you do."

Kaler: "For years, I literally had one bowl and one spoon. It was romantic if a girl came over, but if a dude came over it was weird."

Example No. 2: Listen to Kyle Howard and Reid Scott, who play Bobby and Brendan, respectively — guys who have both dated P.J. on the show — as they describe the day the production shot on the hallowed grounds of Chicago's Wrigley Field:

Howard: "Mike (Bunin) was doing a scene where he catches a ball against the ivy, and there were these guards telling everybody what to do, and he got in trouble for bouncing off the ivy. He said, 'I'm sorry — we're doing it for the show,' and the guy was like, 'Yeah, but you can't hit it that hard.' It's literally like a museum."

Reid: "I tried to steal third base and they jumped all over me."

Howard: "The other fun thing that we did there — there's a secret urinal in the dugout, when you go down the tunnel from the dugout to the locker room, there's a little cubby with a urinal, which makes total sense: Even if it's the middle of a game, if you gotta go, you gotta go. So we all took turns peeing in the urinal and taking each other's pictures. I have pictures of us peeing in the dugout. It's pretty awesome."

Reid: "Anyone want copies?"

review
MY BOYS
What: Comedy about a female Chicago Cubs beat writer and her coterie of mainly guy friends.
Where: TBS.
When: 9:30 p.m. Thursday.

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