It's been three weeks on this wasteland that is The Millers. The savages who inhabit this television wasteland have gotten worse by the minute. I have started to fear for my safety, my sanctity, and most of all my sanity. These monsters who treat each other so callously will surely eat me alive.
This week, the old one, Tom, was the subject of equal parts disgust and derision. He continues to be inexplicably bound to the loud awful woman, Carol, who insists on showing up at the house he's staying in solely to take care of him. Last I checked, divorce means that you don't have to be responsible for the other person anymore, but these mysterious awful people don't seem to understand that.
The only thing they do understand is stupidity and cruelty. These characters are rife with completely idiotic moments. Jayma is an airhead who believes that inheriting her brother's phone is the best thing in the world, and she blindly accepts his decision that out of five upgrades, only one can be used for his phones, while he saves the rest in case of emergency. In that simple story, there is extreme selfishness in the case of Nathan, and extreme naivete in the case of Jayma. We also have the case of Tom, who is shown to be the ultimate of infantile ignorance. He can't be trusted to make his own meals, dress himself, or even think for himself. Any action to have him do things on his own ends in disaster. The incompetency reaches high enough levels that I don't believe such a person could survive to adulthood, or at least not without being diagnosed with some disorder.
But in this case, it's not only accepted by the family and laughed at by the unseen audience, but is met and encouraged with acts of violence. This takes the "joke" too far. When Jayma tells her mother that she hit Tom, and the next two minutes are spent in smug approval, it's disgusting. A man so inept that he cannot even make cereal, but has to have bowls and spoons explained in a condescending voice, clearly has problems. And yet, we are supposed to laugh when he is hurt for his foolishness? What a vile interpretation of humanity.
These people are mean to each other. It's a family that doesn't like each other, that spends the entire show mugging about how awful they are, and then end the half-hour having sunk to even deeper levels of deprivation. There is no learning here, only the moray of The Millers's soul-lessness. There is no familial affection, only back-stabbing, eye-rolling disdain. Every episode ends worse than it began. And while there is the argument of over-exaggeration for the sake of humor, this is not humor. This is a glorification of a family who is everything bad in one little package.
This week, the old one, Tom, was the subject of equal parts disgust and derision. He continues to be inexplicably bound to the loud awful woman, Carol, who insists on showing up at the house he's staying in solely to take care of him. Last I checked, divorce means that you don't have to be responsible for the other person anymore, but these mysterious awful people don't seem to understand that.
The only thing they do understand is stupidity and cruelty. These characters are rife with completely idiotic moments. Jayma is an airhead who believes that inheriting her brother's phone is the best thing in the world, and she blindly accepts his decision that out of five upgrades, only one can be used for his phones, while he saves the rest in case of emergency. In that simple story, there is extreme selfishness in the case of Nathan, and extreme naivete in the case of Jayma. We also have the case of Tom, who is shown to be the ultimate of infantile ignorance. He can't be trusted to make his own meals, dress himself, or even think for himself. Any action to have him do things on his own ends in disaster. The incompetency reaches high enough levels that I don't believe such a person could survive to adulthood, or at least not without being diagnosed with some disorder.
But in this case, it's not only accepted by the family and laughed at by the unseen audience, but is met and encouraged with acts of violence. This takes the "joke" too far. When Jayma tells her mother that she hit Tom, and the next two minutes are spent in smug approval, it's disgusting. A man so inept that he cannot even make cereal, but has to have bowls and spoons explained in a condescending voice, clearly has problems. And yet, we are supposed to laugh when he is hurt for his foolishness? What a vile interpretation of humanity.
These people are mean to each other. It's a family that doesn't like each other, that spends the entire show mugging about how awful they are, and then end the half-hour having sunk to even deeper levels of deprivation. There is no learning here, only the moray of The Millers's soul-lessness. There is no familial affection, only back-stabbing, eye-rolling disdain. Every episode ends worse than it began. And while there is the argument of over-exaggeration for the sake of humor, this is not humor. This is a glorification of a family who is everything bad in one little package.