TV Review: Bless the Harts (2019). Does Fox's newest animated family sitcom have enough Southern charm to win over fans?

Image courtesy of Fox

Tv Review: Bless the Harts (2019) by Ben Jeffries (6/10/2019)

Season 1 Episode 1 - Hug N’ Bugs (29/9/2019)

22 minutes

Comedy, Animation, Family

Airs Sundays on Fox

The newest animated family comedy from Fox walks an interesting line between the grounded and the absurd as it explores the everyday lives of a blue collar family from North Carolina.

Bless the Harts follows the lives of Jenny Hart (Kristen Wiig), her mother Betty (Maya Rudolph), her daughter Violet (Jillian Bell), and her boyfriend Wayne (Ike Barinholtz). The Harts may be poor in money, but they’re rich in laughter and friends, and the series charts the everyday ups and downs of their lives in the town of Greenpoint, North Carolina, as they struggle to live the American dream. With Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, Andy Bobrow and Seth Cohen on board as Executive Producers, this newest addition to Fox’s Sunday night animated lineup comes form creator Emily Spivey (Up All Night, Saturday Night Live), and is inspired by her own experiences of growing up in the South. Big performances and grounded writing give the show a solid foundation from which to build an animated family comedy.

On a spectrum of animated family sitcoms Bless the Harts sits at a midpoint between King of the Hill and Bob’s Burgers. It has the American South setting and blue collar characters of the former, while being written and animated with the more cartoonish aesthetic and sense of humour of the latter. While it’s writing is rooted in a genuine place of inspiration, it remains to be seen how well Bless the Harts can navigate the fine line between representation and exploitation as it explores the ironic frustrations and inherent challenges of an average, albeit exaggerated, Southern family.

When bill stress threatens to see the Harts water cut off, it’s a convenient turn of events that leads Jenny to discover her mothers secret collection of Hug N’ Bugs. A reference to Beanie Babies, Hug N’ Bugs were an early 90’s fad, where each unique plush toy is made in the image of not one but two pop culture references from the decade. Favourites include Colin Powel Macarena Hug N’ Bug, and the extra rare Axl Rose Budweiser Frogs Hug N’ Bug. Betty has been collecting the toys for years, on the basis of a promise the toys would increase in value, with the intention of selling them to pay for her retirement. Standing in a storage unit filled with boxes of the dangerously flammable toys, Jenny is caught up in the excitement of her mothers apparently prudent investment, and suggest selling just a few to get out from under the weight of their bills. Betty refuses, adamant that selling the toys piecemeal would damage the value of her collection, which she puts in the range of 70 thousand dollars.

In secret, Jenny starts to sell off her mothers collectibles to help pay off their outstanding debts while,

Violet is frustrated with being crammed
into the utility room
Image: Fox

also in secret, Betty continues to buy up every Hug N’ Bug that comes up for online auction. Betty is, of course, buying back her own collectibles. Meanwhile, in an attempt to win her daughter Violet’s favour, Jenny’s boyfriend Wayne builds her an art studio of her own in the back yard. Modeled after her own drawings, Violet is thrilled with the fantasy themed structure, but Wayne’s plan is thwarted by the bureaucracy of local council building codes, of which he has met precisely none. While the jokes and gags that feature in these story lines are cartoony and exaggerated, with plush toys bursting into flames and characters making physically impossible structures from found objects, the stories themselves are fairly grounded and relatable in nature. Jenny is dealing with the difficulty of making ends meet on a minimum wage while her mother wastes money in misguided investments, and Wayne is dealing with feelings of inadequacy as a surrogate father figure for Violet, whom he clearly loves like his own daughter. There’s a genuine sweetness to the show as the little family unit all come together as the episodes problems resolve in the final moments.

While it’s completely functional as an episode of television, the episode has the familiar air of Fox meddling with a show’s broadcast order given how “un-piloty” it feels. It doesn’t go out of it’s way to introduce the characters, or make any effort establish it’s setting beyond what we see in the opening title sequence. Instead it plays as if the audience should be familiar with these people and their world. Of special note is the Jesus figure in the mural wall of the seafood buffet called “the Last Supper” where Jenny works. After closing time, Jesus (Kumail Nanjiani), comes to life and steps out of the mural to talk with Jenny in the empty restaurant. It’s the most cartoony and wild element of the episode, it’s not explained at all, and it’s entirely unclear whether Jesus is really there or just a figment of Jenny’s imagination, though Jenny’s reaction makes it clear that this is a regular occurrence. Whether the episode that aired was originally intended to run later in the season, or it was intentionally written without the awkward furniture of a pilot episode that so often gets in the way of story telling, is hard to tell, but aside from the jarring appearance of a talking Jesus painting , the episode functions well enough and does an adequate job of opening up the world of Bless the Harts to the audience.

The appearance of Jesus in the Last Supper buffet is
an odd turn for the otherwise mundane comedy.
Image: Fox

Audience response to the show may well depend on how they feel about the performances of the central cast. Kristen Wiig brings a lot of energy to the role of Jenny, employing a definite but not excessive accent that locates the character without making her a total caricature. On the other hand, Maya Rudolph leans a little harder into the accent as she plays Jenny’s mother, Betty, with her typical big, broad, style. Jillian Bell forgoes an attempt at a Southern accent as the quietly sardonic Violet, Jenny’s sensitive and artistic teenage daughter, playing the clever girl with quiet heart. Ike Barinholtz is a good fit for Jenny’s boyfriend, Wayne, with his performance giving the slower thinking character a personality that feels authentic and not mean spirited, while also leaving room jokes.

The art is colourful and detailed, with a lot of attention paid to the background detail, but some viewers may find the character design a little challenging. Everyone has big, wide set eyes that tend to stare, with most of the facial expression coming from the shape of the mouth and movement of the eyebrows. The style can feel a little blank and unreadable in some scenes, but that could be down to animators still getting a feel for how best to work with the characters, and deciding how loosely they want to treat the reality of the show. For the most part, the visuals are grounded in a nominal reality, but there’s a hint of whimsy around the edges, with some fairly cartoony action taking place as a building explodes into the evening sky like fireworks.

Bless the Harts is inspired by creator Emily Spivey’s youth growing up in North Carolina, and seems to be coming from a genuine place. Importantly, it doesn’t feel as if it’s making fun of it’s subjects or looking down at them, though certain jokes could be taken as skirting that line. In preparation for sitting down to sort out the family’s bills, Jenny treats herself to a “full caffeine Mountain Punch in a fancy cup”, which is Mountain Dew in a wine glass. Whether you think that’s a mean spirited dig at a certain kind of person or a funny piece of character specificity will depend on your personal perspective. In the same way that King of the Hill was never mean about it’s blue collar Texan cast, Bless the Harts doesn’t seem interested in presenting it’s characters as pathetic or unlikable because of where they’re from. It’s not making fun of stereotypes: if it plays a character up for laughs it does so through the specifics of the character and their personality, though the audiences response to that perspective will be defined by their own point of view.

Over the years Fox has had a host of animated sitcoms that it’s attempted, with varying degrees of success, to slot into the long running Sunday animation programming block which features The Simpson’s and Family Guy. Departures from the family comedy model have been largely unsuccessful, with audiences being more responsive to different takes on the family dynamic like King of the Hill, American Dad, and Bob’s Burgers. In that vein, Bless the Harts seems to be a good fit for the space. Whether or not Bless the Harts finds an audience seems like it will depend on the reaction to the “middle America” setting and whether it’s accepted as a genuine effort of representation, or seen as more of a cynical or mean satire. Taking the show at face value, it’s seems to be coming from a genuine perspective, and the blend of grounded writing and cartoon humour styles give it a fresh but familiar feeling, while the bright performances create immediately engaging characters. Wayne’s construction skills may not be up to code, but the foundation on which Bless the Harts is constructed seems sturdy enough to support a strong show going forward.

6/10

Bless the Harts Stars: Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Jillian Bell, Ike Barinholtz, Kumail Nanjiani, Gary Anthony Williams, Fortune Feimster

Created by: Emily Spivey

Written by: Erin Wagoner

Directed by: Peter Michels,

a Production from: Jessebean, Lord Miller, Fox Entertainment, 20th Century Fox Television,

Distributed by: 20th Television