Review of “Too Many Cooks” (2014)
Seen in 2017.
Layered spoof of cheap ’80s/’90s mainstream TV serials.
Black comedy. An image of my own generation growing up in a kaleidoscopic, sometimes claustrophobic TV landscape. As of writing this review, a PDF of the TV Tropes entry ran to 15 pages.
I see four principal, mutually compatible interpretations of “Bill” (William Tokarsky’s nameless character): Just another genre jump among many, a liberator whose solution to “intronitis” matches the MD’s plea (though it is not effective, as Smarf’s Brady Bunch matrix and “Bill”’s return demonstrate), a feminist caricature of the head of a traditional sit-com household (as indicated by his replacing Darren, the original father, in the third iteration of the camera timer shot), and a symbol of the viewer (savvy, untouchable, unnameable, able to shift between genres, and again, taking up the sweet spot in front of the television, which would be in the place of the timed camera).
References here: Cooking with Bill (2017), Daybreak (2019).