What do you do? This question seems benign, but we all know at times it hits a nerve. The question even bugs Paul Reiser, who I've missed ever since his popular show “Mad About You” went off the air in 1999.
Reiser's obviously not your average stay-at-home dad (SAHD). He is married with two kids, and living in suburbia. However, he still is Hollywood–just disconnected enough from the studios for him to wonder what to check under the box labeled "occupation."
So, what do you do? I was asked this question more often when I was still working my 9-5 office gig. Now I'm working an "invisible" job at home writing and designing materials for nonprofits. Believe me, I'm not complaining. I get to pick my clients. Plus, best of all, I'm home with my kids. Yet, I still wonder what to put in that box labeled "occupation."
The ongoing occupational identity crisis facing many SAHM and SAHD is not always pretty or funny, but The Paul Reiser Show premiering last night on NBC made me laugh because those crazy-slash-normal neuroses are exactly what binds many of us together and ironically keeps us afloat. I admit that at the end of an exhausting day, spending time talking with my friends keeps me sane. If they can survive the chaos in parenthood and/or marriage, then I can too.
Paul appears relatable playing himself in the show, if you forgive the fact he is very rich. In a scene with Paul and his friend Jonathan (Ben Shenkman), his life seems so normal the conversation could be me with any one of my friends:
PAUL: You know that form from the kids' school we got. The little box "father's occupation," I don't know what to put in there.
JONATHAN: Well, put in what you used to do.
PAUL: Well, I don't do it anymore. I make pancakes and tell the kids to take a jacket.
JONATHAN: Well, put that down
PAUL: It's not that big a box.
The show's cast including Paul's posse of quirky friends might be too large, but I'm going to give them an episode or two so I can get to know them. In the first episode, Larry David guest stars playing himself. And since the show reminds me of David's show Curb Your Enthusiasm minus the edginess, he fits right in. In the first episode, Reiser and David are both positioned to get the same game show gig, but they don't know this. Impatient and overly suspicious of each other, they won't tell each other the name of the projects they are considering unless they both agree to tell each other at the exact after-the-count-of-three moment. They seem like a couple of teenagers in that exchange, yet I know I've felt like doing the very same thing a number of times with my own friends. Ridiculous. Yes. And funny.
I was surprised to see that Reiser's group of friends even though they are guys seem like my own friends--women I met in many cases only because our kids or spouses know each other. As Brian Lowry in Variety says:
"Basically, Reiser spends most of his time as part of a mismatched quintet of fathers, thrown together -- despite having little in common otherwise -- by their wives and kids."
The scene with Amy Landecker playing Reiser's wife Claire rings true. We don't see much of Claire in episode one, but I like her. She plays up the fact her character loves her husband despite his flaws--the fact he doesn't always listen to her, the fact he worries about odd things, the fact he is adorable even as he gets older and grayer. Claire is funny and smart, cynical and warm.
Despite some of the obvious similarities, The Paul Reiser show is not as strong a comedy as Seinfeld or Curb Your Enthusiasm. Yet. Some have called it "Curb Lite." Reiser's new show has the same self-depracting humor, the exaggerated hand motions, and the "What did I do?" questions. However the awkward moments that make us chuckle on Reiser's show are not the painful-but-funny moments that make that make the other shows classics. So far, the Reiser show does not include the comedic elements of David's outrageous protests or his "colorful" language.
The Paul Reiser Show is not Mad About You fifteen years later either. However I'm looking forward to Helen Hunt's guest appearance on an upcoming episode.
You can watch the first episode on NBC.com. Join the 2300–and counting–fans who like The Paul Reiser Show on Facebook or follow the The Paul Reiser Show on Twitter
Have you figured out what to put in that little box marked occupation? Maybe a better question to ask is, "What are you going to do next?"
