Funny as a Crutch

I don’t like the new Michael J. Fox Show on NBC.  There, I’ve said it.  Does this make me a bad person?  I would like to think not, yet I feel a vague sense of shame in owning up to it.  We’re supposed to like the show, right?  Because it stars Michael J. Fox, whom we’re supposed to like because he’s so darned likable, and because the show represents his personal triumph over Parkinson’s disease; and because it is, in fact, a show about a guy with Parkinson’s, whom, by definition, we’re supposed to be rooting for.  Or something like that.  Right?

So I’ve been trying to figure out why I really just can’t stand watching it.

First, there’s Michael J. Fox.  I have nothing against the man, but I’ve really never cared for him as an actor, nor have I liked most of the stuff he’s been in.  Family Ties?  His character, Alex Keaton, was an annoying little precocious capitalist in a syrupy sitcom.  I don’t much like syrupy sitcoms (hmm, that may be reason #2 for not liking the Michael J. Fox Show.)  Back to the Future (1, 2, or 3)?  Nonsensical science fiction comedies (I’m not big on science fiction or comedies, generally) the popularity of which I’ve never understood – with the lone exception of the DeLorean car, which was extremely cool.  The fact that the DeLorean functioned as a time machine, not so much.

But my dislike of the Michael J. Fox Show runs deeper - a fact that has bothered me, leading me to question why; and here we get into some dicey territory.  Various sources have stated that it’s not intended to be autobiographical; that it is intended to be autobiographical; and that it’s semi-autobiographical.  Well, the plot involves a guy who returns to an on-air TV job as a news reporter following a hiatus, having been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.  You be the judge.  Whatever.

The sitcom family in the show lives in a huge New York City brownstone that, in the real world, would cost several million dollars.  Not bad for a television news reporter facing huge medical bills.  But OK, all of the fictional families on TV seem to live large, so I’m willing to suspend disbelief.  So this character, Mike Henry, surrounded by his too-perfect, loving family in his amazing New York mansion, manages to soldier on despite his disabilities.  You’ve got to respect that.

But then the jokes start.  The Parkinson’s jokes.  He plays the disease for laughs.  Drops ketchup or something into his perfect son’s lap, accidentally-on-purpose, and says something to the effect of “oops, it’s the Parkinson’s.” Am I the only one who fails to find that funny?

So maybe I’m not grasping the edginess of this particular brand of self-deprecating humor; or perhaps in coming out as one who dislikes the show, I’ll be seen as bigoted against the disabled in some way.  Nothing could be further from the truth. 

As for self-deprecating humor, I’ve been an active practitioner for most of my life.  It’s a defense mechanism that has enabled me to survive countless stressful, untenable situations. This may strike a chord with those who know me well.

And as for my street cred with the disabled world: while I have never personally experienced having a disability, I have been extremely close to two immediate family members who have. 

When I was a child, my father lost his ability to walk following a botched spinal surgery.  This was during the 1960s, prehistoric times in terms of disability awareness.  He had one of those ancient, huge hospital wheelchairs (think Betty Draper being wheeled into the maternity ward) that he hated, and chose instead to struggle with walking, leaning on canes for balance, most of the time.  I vividly remember, as a little kid, Dad calling ahead to restaurants and asking whether they had more than a couple of steps – these were days long before wheelchair ramps and such. He’d explain his reason for asking by saying “I’m a little crippled up.”  If the answer was yes, we simply didn’t go to that restaurant.  End of story.  He accepted such things with dignity and grace.  It was simply how the world was, and it was his reality.  Although Dad was able to laugh at himself in general ways, I don’t recall him ever joking about his physical limitations. He certainly didn’t find humor there – none of us did.  He had an expression that he’d use to describe a joke that had bombed: it was “funny as a crutch.”  This was just an old saying, a colloquialism as far as I could gather, not specific to his circumstances, but it certainly seemed to apply.

When my daughter was very young, she acquired several disabilities as a result of a freak accident. But times had changed since the sixties; society had made significant progress in addressing the needs of the disabled, and the disabled had, in turn, become much more integrated into the mainstream.  You can bet that my wife and I became strident advocates for our daughter, working closely with our school system to ensure that she had every appropriate accommodation to allow her to succeed.  The experience was exhausting, often highly emotional, and to my recollection, almost never humorous.

Which brings me back to the Michael J. Fox Show. Here the writers (and, presumably, Mr. Fox) have chosen to put Parkinson’s disease out there, front and center, as a comedic foil.  A small part of me applauds the bravery of that choice: take THAT, Parkinson’s, you won’t defeat me, you’re nothing more than a joke.  But a larger part of me objects.  I simply don’t find very much of the show to be funny.  The sophomorically obvious attempts at self-deprecating humor just aren’t doing it for me. It doesn’t help that every episode ends with a homey little parable, delivered by Mr. Fox as a voice-over, summing up the inevitable life-lesson-learned. I half expect him to close with “Good-night, John-Boy.”

If the writers are going for hipster-ironic edginess, they’ve fallen far short.  They might have gotten there with the chronic-neurological-disorder-as-comedic-device if they hadn’t been constrained by the limitations of NBC prime-time broadcasting standards, or by Michael J. Fox himself.  Let’s face it, he’s Alex Keaton, he's Marty McFly, he’s Mike Henry, but an edgy, ironic hipster he is not.

If you’d like to see an example of this concept – a disability worked for laughs – that actually works, I encourage you to check out one of my favorite blogs, Smart Ass Cripple.  It’s real, and the writer, Mike Ervin, is funny as hell.