The Rapaport Report

It looks like Christmas came early this year, folks! To make matters confusing, though, it arrived on Easter Sunday, getting its yule tide peanut butter all over our collective chocolate bunny, in what can only be described as proof positive that such nebulous terms as "God" and "Rupert Murdoch" are actually quite synonymous. I am referring, of course, to Sunday's miraculous double dose of The War At Home, the only show on television currently featuring the Christ figure in this entirely non-hyperbolic extended metaphor, Michael Rapaport. Let's face the facts: he's Jewish (like Jesus); he's the typical hammy, earnest red head (like Jesus); he's 6'4" (like Jesus). Unlike Jesus, however, he wasn't executed before the advent of situation comedies, and so his teachings may be captured in real time on video tape and preserved for generations to come. Now we all know that the 8:30 slot in Fox’s Sunday night line-up has always been a greased trapeze of sorts, where eager sitcoms come to fly from The Simpsons’s firm grip only to fall to their bloody doom. Enter our hero Rapaport: character actor supreme in film after film where he plays the only white guy. His charge: not only following The Simpsons, but ushering in The Family Guy. Two animated cartoon shows?! Who says prime time isn’t for kids anymore? Anyway, if there was any doubt, which there wasn’t, Rapaport and co. pull it off flawlessly. Not only that, but they are pioneers in the world of sit-coms in that they have added a special twist: the slightly dysfunctional family! You would think Fox, always the edgiest network, would have thought of something like this before; but nope, it takes Rapaport to do a man’s job. And what did he bring to our feasting table? Well for one thing, he made the decision to include ethnic diversity in primary roles, casting feisty Italian(!!!)Anita Barone as his wife Vicky. In an unprecedented move, he actually traveled back through time to capture a teenage Conan O’Brien, forced him into drag, and cast him as his sexually promiscuous daughter. Then, in an act of unrivaled celebrity altruism, Rapaport rescued a poor starving orphan child from the barren wastelands of Malcolm In The Middle to play his disappointing older son (beat that, Brangelina!). And finally, there’s an obnoxious young blonde actor playing his obnoxious young blonde son. The genius of the show is that each kid has a problem; Rapaport and wife argue about it with them and each other; after a series of one-liners for each cast member the problems are more or less resolved; and to keep things from becoming formulaic, slightly different problems are thought up each week! If that’s not a recipe for success, then it wouldn’t be Rapaport’s recipe. Keep up the tasty work, I say! Well that’s all for the report right now, fellows. Keep a dedicated eye out for future reports, and The Rapaport Report might reach its ultimate goal: At least one Rapaport show on every major network.