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Til Death on Fox

Does size matter?  In the cutthroat world of television, when it comes to the size of your audience, it certainly does.  Just ask the makers of Til Death. Mercifully, Fox announced in March that it would finally kill Til Death.  After months of bouncing around the schedule and various desperate revamps, the show found its eventual resting place at 7:00 p.m. on Sundays.  Originally, the show focused on two couples – one newly wed and the other married for 23 years.  By the fourth season, however, the newlyweds living next door were replaced by the older couple’s daughter and her slacker boyfriend.  The comedic tone shifted as well toward racier topics.  Unfortunately, as Fox burns through the last of the episodes, those topics do not comport with show’s given timeslot. 

For opening the hour BEFORE the Family Hour with sexually charged dialogue about the size of a certain part of the male anatomy, the April 18^th episode of Til Death has been named Worst TV Show of the Week

The episode begins as Eddie and his friend Tommy (played by Gilbert Gottfried) enter a locker room after a game of racquetball.  As Tommy strips naked, he complains about his hot young trophy wife: “A couple of weeks ago, she started talking and I thought it was just a phase she was going through, but then she wouldn’t stop and the worst part about it is she wants me to listen and she’s not even wearing lingerie when she does it … All I want is what I paid for – a hottie with an iron stomach who fulfills every one of my sick twisted desires.  Is that too much to ask?”  Eddie looks down and is shocked to discover how well-endowed Tommy is.

“When you fly, do you have to buy an extra ticket for that thing?” Eddie wonders. “No,” Tommy replies, “I just hold it in my lap during take-off and landings.”

Later, Eddie rants to his wife Joy, “The thing was enormous and it was terrifying.  He should just put it in a cage and feed it mice.  It should be hanging in the window of the Carnegie Deli.  If you put arms on that thing it could have been Bill Walton's stunt double.  And here's the thing, it was still in the sleep mode.  It wasn't even angry yet.”

“Okay, I got it.  It was big.” 

But Eddie continues, “Yeah, and that was even after his rabbi took his ten percent.”

“Alright!”

“It was huge and it was uncalled for.  And it's left me shaken because all I can think about is my little pea-shooter.”

“Oh, stop it, Eddie.  You’re fine.  C’mon, it gets the job done.”

Joy tries to reassure Eddie, but he can’t stop obsessing over size.  Evidently, neither can anyone else in this episode.  Eddie and Joy’s daughter Ally is pregnant and the obstetrician doesn’t have to strain his eyes looking at the sonogram to figure out the baby’s sex.  At work, Eddie’s co-worker, Whitey, brags about his endowment when Eddie confides his secret to him.  Whitey boasts, “I have got an aircraft carrier, Eddie.  I tell you, other people worry about crabs.  I worry about barnacles.  I don’t get into bed, I drop anchor.”

Tommy asks Joy for some advice about how to get his wife to shut up, but of course the subject turns to sex and Tommy’s member.  He offers a bit too much info: “I figure what doesn’t kill her [his wife] makes her stronger.  She’s got the pain threshold of a mule.  Sometimes I tell her, ‘Tap out, baby, tap out.’”

Even while Eddie sleeps, his little predicament plagues him.  He dreams that Whitey spills the beans to his girlfriend Duffy.  Whitey and Duffy happen to be into bondage and submission, so in the dream Duffy wears a leather dominatrix outfit and whips Whitey with a riding crop until he talks. In the end, Eddie feels reassured once he sees a printout of Ally’s sonogram and realizes that his grandson won’t take after him.

Had the series stayed in the timeslot it had previously occupied at 9:00 p.m., this column perhaps would not have been written.  But given that it now airs as early as 6:00 p.m. in the Central time zone, just as families sit down for Sunday supper, there is absolutely no way that an episode devoted entirely to penis size is anywhere near appropriate for that timeslot.  We can only hope that as the show limps toward the finish line, Fox will refrain from airing any lewd episodes like this one.  Really, no one is going to miss them.

For showcasing sexually explicit dialogue before the Family Hour, Til Death has been named Worst TV Show of the Week.