The Bernie Mac Show: An Underrated, timelessly funny gem of the 2000's.
The Bernie Mac Show premiered on Fox on November 14th 2001 and ended on April 14th 2006. Starring the late great comic superstar Bernard McCullough aka “Bernie Mac”, Kellita Smith, Jeremy Suarez, Dee Dee Davis and Camille Winbush. The show was about Bernie Mac the famed comedian\actor taking in his drug addicted sister’s three kids while she was in rehab along with his beautiful and more easy going wife Wanda.
The Bernie Mac Show is one of those shows I grew up with and a lot of kids I went to school with grew up with. I was such a huge fan of Bernie Mac that as a kid I would tell classmates that he was my uncle and whether they believed me or not, It didn’t matter because the idea of Bernie Mac being my uncle was the ultimate fantasy for me. The show also had a huge impact on television besides being one of the few black cast sitcoms on network television it’s entire run, it also was one of the first situation comedies shot in single camera and without a laugh track like the single camera comedies of the sixties like The Andy Griffith Show, Hogan’s Heroes, The Munsters etc. or M.A.S.H. in the 70’s and 80’s. The Bernie Mac Show, Malcolm In The Middle(which premiered a year before Bernie) and medical sitcom Scrubs (which also came out in 2001) ushered in a new type of format for the television viewing audience that has become the regular with shows such as The Office, Everybody Hates Chris, Modern Family, 30 Rock, Blackish, Brooklyn 99, Reno 911, The Middle, Atlanta, Insecure, Parks and Rec etc. However, The Bernie Mac Show still managed to usher in certain elements that hadn’t been seen before on a tv show then or even now like the little written texts thrown into a scene:
Creator Larry Wilmore said in the DVD commentary of The Bernie Mac Show pilot that the idea of that specific gimmick came from some french films he had seen. It was certainly unlike anything a tv show ever used before, you could say that this show unintentionally created memes.
The show also was a rare seen at that time blend of outrageous comedy and genuine dramatic heart:
The Bernie Mac Show went on to win and be nominated for multiple awards, winning an Emmy for outstanding writing in a comedy series, a Peabody award, a Television Critics Association(TCA) award, three NAACP awards for outstanding comedy series and Bernie Mac himself won an NAACP award for outstanding actor in a comedy series four years in a row. It also boasted an extremely lengthy list of guest stars including Monique, Dr. Phil, Matt Damon, Halle Berry, Angela Basset, Ice Cube, Don Cheadle, Irma P. Hall, Ellen Degeneres, Chris Rock, Serena Williams, Niecy Nash, Issac Hayes, Lucy Lawless, India Arie, Wesley Snipes and Shaquille O’Neal just to name a few.
Despite all of these masterful achievements and levels of excellence in the casting, writing, acting, directing etc. I feel as though the show is so overlooked since it went off the air. Probably due to so many of the single camera comedies that owe Bernie Mac a great deal for their success but instead take up all the glory. I also feel as though it was too quickly cancelled and deserved another season or two to make up for the lackluster fifth season. It may have been Bernie’s illness that hurt some of the show’s quality, but, nevertheless, Mac deserved a much better ending after five seasons of making people laugh every week.
No matter, though, because The Bernie Mac Show still lives on through reruns on Tv One, Aspire, MTV 2, it’s first season on Dvd and streaming on Hulu.
Unfortunately we lost Bernie Mac himself back in 2008 and like many, it has left a giant void in the entertainment industry, but, like the show, B Mac and legacy still lives on to this day and will for all time. Til next time, folks!
