IMHO "The Rules of Engagement" (3.03): Jeff's New Friend

When it debuted a couple seasons ago, The Rules of Engagement was a minor guilty pleasure for me. Patrick Warburton can usually make me laugh and Megyn Price turned out to be a good match for him as his wife. I didn't enjoy it enough to keep watching its second season, but they got me back with this week's debut of Orlando Jones as Jeff's (Warburton) new, gay friend, Brad.

If you're not familiar with The Rules of Engagement, its a variant on the doofus husband/frustrated-but-loving wife sitcom, except that there are three doofuses: a long-married one (Warburton), a newly engaged one (Oliver Hudson) and a creepy single one (David Spade). It's a slight improvement on the usual battle of the sexes sitcom and, with that in mind, set your expectations accordingly.

With those disclaimers in mind, I'm giving this one a sideways arrow, but for the details on why, you'll have to watch out for SPOILERS. (If you missed the ep and want to watch, it's online over here.)

Overall I liked that Rules started out not with the kind of gay panic humor I was expecting, but by mocking the guys' homophobia, with both Adam and Jeff rushing immediately to the idea of them being checked out (admittedly, that's more understandable on Rules than on, say, The King of Queens) and with Jeff making stupid comments about how Brad couldn't be gay because he didn't live up to gay stereotypes. Unfortunately, those were mixed with few gay panic jokes that dragged the episode down, like when Brad is Jeff's weight-spotter.

Who spots like that?

Meanwhile, I was feeling mixed about how they handled Brad. I'd like to think they tried to make Brad a character whose personality is a mix of masculine and feminine stereotypes, but there was something that didn't work for me. Overall, Brad felt less like a character and more like two lists of stock sitcom character traits stitched together. I guess that's where I should remind myself about those adjusted expectations, because the rest of Rules' characters are also only a small improvement on stale sitcom cliches.

From what I recall, Jeff used to regularly mock Adam in the first season for being a guy who cares about his looks (by paying attention to his clothes and hair) and for "unmanly" things like listening to his girlfriend. In "Jeff's New Friend", it came up when Adam set off Jeff's gaydar and, soon afterwards, ordered a sea breeze (which, I guess, is a "girl drink" because of its name). Usually when Jeff teases Adam's metrosexual side, the joke is more about how easily Jeff's sense of masculinity can be threatened. However, when Brad joins in on the teasing, the joke gets into fratboy territory about a guy not being sufficiently straight-acting and how a gay man can throw around sissy jokes, too.

Adam (Oliver Hudson) sips on his sea breeze

Jones is supposed to appear in at least a couple more episodes and it'll be interesting to watch if Brad develops. When Jeff and Adam played "Ask a gay man" with Brad, I realized a gay couple could make for an interesting addition to the dynamic of Rules. Unfortunately, so far Brad seems to face the exact same relationship challenges Jeff does, which doesn't make for an interesting addition to the show and suggests that Rules is looking at Brad as "the man" in the relationship and Jackie as "the woman". Hopefully Rules will give Brad and Jackie's relationship a little more depth if we see how they interact with Audrey or Jennifer.

We'll find out in a couple of weeks when Brad returns with out actor Sam Harris playing Jackie. In the meantime, what did you think?