Daddy Dearest aired from September until November 1993 on FOX.
Set in New York, this loud sitcom was the story of Dr. Steven Mitchell ( Richard Lewis), a neurotic, divorced psychologist living in Manhattan with his wimpy young son, Danny ( payed by Jonathan Gibby in the pilot and Jeffrey Bomberger in the series), and his obnoxious father Al ( Don Rickles). A used car salelsman, Al had recently seperated from his wife Helen ( Renee Taylor), and Steven was trying to get them back together so that he could reduce the rather considerable amount of hostility at home. Despite their underlying love for each other, whenever Steven and Al were together the insults and put-downs flew fast and furious. Also seen were Christine (Sydney walsh), the attractive psychologist with whom Steven had a joint practice; Lisa ( Alice Carter), their sexy but somewhat eccentric secretary/receptionist; Larry (Carey Eidel), his married brother, who was more than happy to have their overpowering father living with Steven; and Pete ( Barney Martin), Al's buddy, who seemed to spend more time at Steven's home than at his own. Each episode ended with flubbed moments from takes of scenes aired behind the closing credits.
A Review from Variety
Daddy Dearest
((Sun. (5), 9:30-10 p.m., Fox))
By TONY SCOTT
Taped at Hollywood Center Studios by HBO Independent Prods., Van Zandt/Milmore Prods. and 3 Arts Entertainment. Exec producers, Billy Van Zandt, Jane Milmore, Howard Klein; co-exec producer, Richard Lewis; producer, Frank Pace; director, Linda Day; writers, Van Zandt, Milmore.
Cast: Richard Lewis, Don Rickles, Sydney Walsh, Alice Carter, Carey Eidel, Jonathan Gibby, Renee Taylor, Erick Avari, Rita McKenzie, John Medici, Angela Visser, Davin Carey, Charlie Cronin, Joseph Diorio, Wesley Leong, Jonathan D. Mack.
Richard Lewis and Don Rickles as Steven Mitchell and father Al Mitchell might have looked OK in the blueprint, but the initial full-blown script is broad and full of woe. It's sometimes rich, thanks to Rickles' caustic cracks, as dad moves into his son's house. The desperate humor soon wears thin.
Premise sets Steven up as a divorced psychologist with young son Danny and a barbed-mouth dad who's been thrown out of his own home by equally rasping wife Helen (Renee Taylor in a prize perf) because he lost their life savings. Their other son, bland Larry (Carey Eidel), gets lost amid Al's bombast and Steven's protest.
Larry inherits Helen; ex-car salesman Al stays with Steven, who waves his hands a great deal.
The boy Danny (Jonathan Gibby in this episode, but to be played from now on by Jeffrey Bomberger) is an interesting child, and Taylor knows how to lash out a vicious line with Rickles' best.
Rickles' Al is smarter than Archie Bunker, and louder. Director Linda Day keeps the action popping, but secondary characters have little chance.
Program's core is a frenzied Steven coping with a mean-spirited father and his spiteful gags; Steven's lot is not amusing, and even Rickles' trademark put-downs soon grate. A weekly half-hour with these folks could boost the sale of Mylanta.
A Review from USA TODAY
TV PREVIEW/BY MATT ROUSH
Fox finds new low in deadbeat 'Daddy'
Oedipus wrecks upon the shallows of aggressive bad taste in Daddy Dearest, Fox's latest attempt to drop the ceiling on standards of humor.
This one reaches so embarrassingly low, with its proud vulgarity blared at full volumn, that it almost makes sense of political correctness. How to argue on behalf of crud like this?
From its first gag-psychiatrist Richard Lewis complimenting a male client on his high heels-this dwells in the rancid armpit of Fox's signature sitcom Married...With Children, which at least has the wit to spoof bad sitcoms. Daddy Dearest is just one of the pack, though louder than usual.
Lewis, encouaged to overplay his neurotic shtick with depressing desperation, is the divorced and undersexed father of an obnoxious child ( a tyke who's mercifully replaced after the pilot).
But more to the point, he's the mangled product of odious and newly seperated parents: Don Rickles and Renee Taylor, a vaudeville team from hell. " What will it take to get you two back together?" the good son asks. " Cancer of the liver!" shouts Mommy Dearest. Wire hangers, anyone?
" God, I'd like to give her one shot in the chops!" bellows Rickles. " God, you're such an ass!" brays Taylor. Subtile it's not, and what's God got to do with this godforsaken act.
You might think you've stumbled into some perverse spoof of dysfunction: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woof!
Later on Rickles-who moves in with his son-bursts in on group therapy and barks racist and sexist insults at an Asian, an Arab ( " 7-Elevin called. Your camels are blocking the aisles") and an overweight woman.
As his patients gap, Lewis groans, " I'm ashamed to be related to you." I'm ashamed to be reviewing this.
By next week, everyone's dealing with a schoolyard bully, so it's less offensive but no less inane. Amazingly, Lewis is heard telling his put-upon son, " We can be really proud that we didn't stoop to their level."
You can't stoop further than Daddy Dearest. Cellers don't go that deep.
A Review From National Review
Daddy Dearest. - television program reviews
National Review, Oct 4, 1993 by Matthew Scully
Frasier, an NBC spinoff of Cheers starring Kelsey Grammer, is the most hopeful entry of the new TV season and indeed a model of entertainment television at its best: devoid of serious social content, politically indifferent, and hilarious. The storyline of the premiere episode, which will have aired September 16, is almost exactly that of a new Fox comedy starring Don Rickles, Daddy Dearest, a show exhibiting the traits of TV at its worst.
Both shows begin with a family breakup. Dr. Frasier Crane has moved to Seattle, his old hornetown, to start afresh, leaving behind an unfaithful nag of a wife and his old Cheers buddies. There he finds solace in the quiet life and in a new job as talk-show psychologist. "My wife had just left me," he confides to a caller, "which was very painful. Then she came back to me, which was excruciating." An obvious enough line, but you have to imagine Gramreefs perfect delivery as the sophisticated, anguished, high-strung buffoon.
The reason Frasier will last a while is simple. The character himself is funny. Put Frasier in almost any situation and some annoyance or humiliation awaits him, in the way one felt a laugh coming the moment Ted Knight as Ted Baxter or Jack Benny as himself walked into a room. The scene with his father moving in, hauling his ratty old armchair into Frasier's finely appointed apartment-arguing that it fits the "eclectic" theme is priceless.
Daddy Dearest, by contrast, rivals Roseanne and Married... with Children in its sheer, unrelieved vulgarity. Unless I am mistaken, even the studio audience sounds a little stunned by the complete absence of wit or of a single endearing character.
Whether Rickles still keeps 'era rolling in the aisles at Vegas casinos, I have no idea, but his loud-mouth insults routine does not hold up in a sitcom, which might explain why he already has three failed ones to his credit, Still less appealing is Richard Lewis as Rickles's neurotic, recently divorced sou, who, when the folks split up, has to take in Dad. And just when! you think these are the two most unbearable people you have ever seen on TV, in walks the mother (Broadway actress Renee Taylor), bellowing her staggeringly tasteless lines about -- what else? her sexual appetites, as if trying to be heard by the
ushers outside the theater door. "Well, okay, there goes my sex life," says her swinger son after hearing one of these. "I guess I just become a priest or something."
Rickles: "That might not be a bad idea. From what I hear they've been getting a lot of action lately."
This sidesplitter, writer and producer Billy Van Zant's idea of witty social commentary, is about as funny as it gets. Lewis's credits include the HBO comedy specials I'm Doomed, I'm in Pain, and I'm Exhausted--which uncannily foretell the vieweFs range of emotions watching this frenzied, embarrassing spectacle.
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