2 Broke Girls, 1 Average Show

2 Broke Girls was one of the most buzzed about new shows of the season and has proven to be arguably the biggest breakthrough hit of the year. Created by Michael Patrick King and Whitney Cummings, the series revolves around Kat Denning’s Max and Beth Behrs’ Caroline. Max is a street-wise New Yorker who has had the typical bad childhood – absent father, bad mother, and numerous references to her chequered sexual past. Caroline on the other hand, was an heiress who lost everything when her father was sent to jail. The series follows their quest to set up a cupcake business.

One of the show’s strongest points in Dennings and Behrs. The duo have a great chemistry. Dennings in particular has done a great job in her portrayal of Max. While many of her one-liners are predictable and borderline racist/homophobic, she brings a certain humanity to the character at times that makes the audience really root for her. Despite Caroline’s sense of entitlement, Behrs also succeeds in her portrayal of her. Jennifer Coolidge, who has appeared in a recurring capacity during the latter half of the season has brought different energy to the sitcom. Coolidge portrays Max and Caroline’s Polish upstairs neighbor. One of the best episodes of the season involved Max and Caroline assuming that Sophie was a madam who was looking to hire them as prostitutes. In reality, she wanted them to work as cleaners in her cleaning company.

While female cast is the strong point of the series, the male cast members let the show down. It’s not that Matthew Moy or Jonathan Kite are poor actors, it’s that the writing simply isn’t good enough for them. The owner of the diner, Han, is nothing short of an Asian stereotype whose only real purpose on the show is to allow for Max to dish out a few amusing insults. Similarly, the diner’s chef Oleg is a sleazy Ukrainian who pops up two or three times throughout an episode to say a few sex jokes (“Once you go Ukraine, you scream in sex pain”). These characters were funny for the first few episodes but I feel their schtick is getting old as the writers haven’t attempted to make them anything but one-dimensional stereotypes. They have done a better job with the diner’s host, Earl (Garrett Morris). Although he was a tired stereotype at first, a recent episode in which he was hospitalised allowed us to see the sweet nature of his and Max’s relationship.

Another problem I have with this series is that there’s no real sense of progression. Not only are most of the secondary characters consistently one-note, but Max and Caroline have made little progress with their cupcake business. The episodes are a little too predictable – the show opens in the diner with an Asian joke and a sexual innuendo, then Max or Caroline get into trouble and the other girl gets them out of it and they use a little of the ‘cupcake fund’ in the process.Obviously every sitcom on the air has a formula that works for them and the ratings of the show proves that if it’s not broken, don’t fix it.

Overall, 2 Broke Girls is an enjoyable show but it’s far from perfect. It was picked up for a second season a few months back, so I hope the writers address some of the show’s issues. I’d like to see some more recurring characters introduced but not at the expense of humanizing the existing supporting characters.