Home Economics,. Season 1 (2021)

 

Tom Hayworth is a critically acclaimed novelist.  Critical acclaim doesn't always mean rampant financial success, however, and together with his wife and three young kids, Tom is just barely clinging to middle class status.  A struggle that is complicated by the fact that having three young kids makes it hard to find time to write.

Now as it happens, Tom could always swallow his pride and go to his younger brother Connor, for a loan.  The genial oaf of the family, Connor has made a huge amount of money and now runs a successful private equity firm.  He can certainly spare the money.

But pride is a difficult thing to overcome, and there's also his sister Sarah to think about.  Tom knows that Sarah and her wife live in a tiny apartment with their two adopted kids, and battle to get by from pay check to pay check.

Perhaps key to Tom's reluctance though, is that he needs the loan to tide him over while he writes an autobiographical book, in which his sometimes tempestuous relationship with his siblings is a central feature.

Home Economics is a lightweight situation comedy series about three basically decent siblings who all want to do the right thing while achieving success, but who have drastically different ideas about what 'the right thing' and 'success' actually are.

Like a lot of sitcoms, the show relies on characters with exaggerated, archetypical traits; Sarah is the strident activist, Tom the overly cautious over-thinker, Conner the buffoonish but well-meaning man-child.  In the wrong hands, this could quickly get annoying, but a likeable and well-chosen cast makes all three characters work well.  Plus of course, they have their siblings and each other to point out their more egregious foibles.

Overall the show's comedy works well, as it maintains a light and breezy overall ambience and gives each sibling an opportunity to be on different sides of a situation.  It is not always the same sibling as the voice of reason, or the instigator, and so on.  The humour can veer a little bit into 'cringe comedy' at times, but it does not generally last too long, and the scripts tend to focus more on slapstick and banter.

This first season runs a slender seven episodes, and in addition to the usual episode by episode sitcom shenanigans it delivers a reasonably complete story about the three siblings and them re-establishing their familial relationships.  You could sit down and watch this season in an afternoon, then walk away feeling like you've seen a somewhat oddly structured comedy film with a satisfying conclusion.

I enjoyed this season of Home Economics, and I appreciated that it included a longer story arc rather than just "the wacky situation of the week".  I have to say though that I am not sure how well the formula stretch as an ongoing series, especially as there are 22 episodes in season two.  The premise might get a bit thin.