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"The War at Home" (2005)

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84 comments in total

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29 out of 43 people found the following comment useful :-
Sunday With The Girls, 31 July 2006

Author: lovadoll from Canada

The War At Home is so good it's become my new favourite show.Me and my neighboors Carly and April watch this together every Sunday and laugh at how true to life it is.I love how everyone is so sarcastic and so worried and they dwell on every little issue.Once someone does something stupid they never live it down and that is soooo how family is.The father always harps on all three kids about every little thing.I love how the parents have no idea how to deal with the kids.It's so true to real family life and the fact that the parents are so overwhelmed and have no clue how to solve their teenagers problems just puts the show over the top.The War At Home is so brutally honest,and so true to the world we live in that it has become a milestone for sitcoms to come.This isn't Happy Days or The Brady Bunch this is real life.

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25 out of 43 people found the following comment useful :-
4 words: Bold! Edgy! Fearless! Awful!!!, 26 September 2005
Author: brockmporter from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

What do you get when you cross the family sitcom with the Fox Network? The most recent answer is this piece of trash.

What we have here is a pretty unremarkable show, that some lobotomized network executive took a look at and said, "Let's make this really edgy!" because it's Fox and they are trying to be cool.

What you get is this: the main character is a father who talks like a Brooklyn street thug, and has a smart mouth. Everything he says has the same sarcastic tone as a junior high school kid who thinks he's being funny. And a laugh track inserted after every one of his lines, funny or not. And there's the caring-but-sarcastic "I told you so" wife, and the teenage daughter who says "screw you guys" to her parents which is of course followed by the canned audience cheering sounds, as though they expect their viewers to react as though they've never heard anything like that before.

And the laugh track itself is just unbelievably stupid. It's a little bit louder than normal and unnecessarily enthusiastic, with occasional catcalls and howls, as though the "audience" has been given free beer, is half drunk, and is willing to laugh at anything.

It had to be last night's episode, "Which One of You Kids Stole Daddy's Pot?" that ended with the grandmother getting high that propelled this show into the "unbelievably stupid" category, and has me turning off the TV to do laundry between the Simpsons and Family Guy.

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35 out of 64 people found the following comment useful :-
Not bad, but with some issues, 11 September 2005
Author: ivko from USA

The humor in this show is actually not too bad. Many of the jokes are a little homophobic or racist, ala 'All in the family', and too often the actors talk to each other as if they were on stage, and for the love of god they need to ditch that cheesy laugh track...What was I saying? Oh yea, despite all that I actually found myself laughing out loud at several points. The humor is a mix of the 'All in the Fmaily' style generation gap stuff and 'Threes Company' style misheard conversations and situations. Like I said, some will find the sexuality or race based humor offensive, but if you aren't afraid of a few un-PC jokes then you might find yourself chuckling. Currently the show is a 5 out of 10 at best, but has a lot of promise. With some smart stewardship, it could be one of the better new sitcoms this season.

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10 out of 15 people found the following comment useful :-
Getting better with each episode, 1 April 2007

Author: mobiletom from United States

Like many situation comedies, "The War at Home" is getting better with each episode. The characters are starting to become real and I believe them as a family. I agree with many that the first few episodes were not that funny; I thought the show would be canceled for sure. But with the absences of "Malcolm in the Middle" and "Arrested Development," "War" provides much needed live action comedy for FOX on Sunday nights. And when compared with the rest of the sitcoms airing right now "War" is an even better choice.

Its appeal, at least for me, lies in its real situations. Teenagers have sex. Not every parent likes how their kids are turning out. Parents fight and call each other names. But rather than relying on being "mean" like many shows, everything is nice in the end which is the number one rule of a good sitcom.

One detraction from the show is the narration during/in between scenes. The "Arrested Development/Family Guy" style of flashbacks work well enough but the narration can be too much.

So anyone who needs something to watch on Sunday nights should check out "The War at Home," especially considering what is on the other major networks at that time.

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14 out of 23 people found the following comment useful :-
Why?, 1 September 2006

Author: ceirnus from United Kingdom

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

There are shows and films I've seen and subsequently read reviews of on IMDb.com that I've disagreed with, and been happy to accept that there has just been a difference of opinion.

Reading positive reviews of this filth merely puts me in mind of a sinister conspiracy involving TV network employees being ordered to browse the internet, posting unconvincingly positive reviews for programmes they themselves are responsible for.

How else would one explain a review opining that this show is "sure to become a phenomenon" a full year after it's become clear its going to be nothing of the sort?

I won't waste words describing this mess, but suffice to say if you enjoy, wives who emasculate their husbands, husbands who emasculate their sons, children who are disrespectful jackasses towards their parents and absolutely no other threads of behaviour or subtext to legitimise characters that are basically just unfunny one-liner spewing automatons, then watch this show.

I, on the other hand, have some Seinfeld DVDs to get through.

Futurama - Cancelled. TItus - Cancelled. Arrested Development - Cancelled. The War At Home - Renewed.

No justice.

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11 out of 18 people found the following comment useful :-
The Real Low-down, 24 September 2006

Author: Filmy2020 from Canada

This show is actually pretty good. Like all shows on TV, it has its good episodes and its bad ones.

I have read where people compare this show to Married with Children, and I suppose it is a similar show for the new generation. However, because of what was expected and allowed on TV in the days of Married with Children, that show was taken to great extremes to show that it was in fact, a television show, and not meant to be take seriously.

The War at Home has the luxury of being a bit more realistic. The parents talk to each other like real life parents often do, telling their children one thing, when they will turn around and do the opposite.

Sure, some of the content can be considered controversial. But I find this show really tries to maintain a sense of honesty. Like it or not, there are a lot of families out there just like this one.

Every episode does teach a 'valuable lesson'. Its just that sometimes the lesson is that you will not find a perfect solution for every problem that a family may encounter, and sometimes the solution is to pick the lesser of two evils. We all know that in some cases, as a parent, the only goal you can have is to keep your kids out of really big trouble, and hope that they learn right from wrong.

I respect the writers for attempting to keep the show true to life, instead of having some magical ending like the Cleaver family always had.

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9 out of 15 people found the following comment useful :-
Unspeakably AWFUL, 8 October 2006

Author: shortround8391 from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

I watched the first episode of "The War at Home" because I thought it was worth replacing "Arrested Development", boy, was I disappointed. It should be clear to everyone that this show was blatantly ripped-off of "Grounded for Life", "Titus", and "Married...with Children" since they are all similar in plot and overall mood. The so called "punch lines" are all repetitious and formulaic, even more, those "punch lines" aren't even funny at all, to me, they're more along the lines as being crass and crude. The main character Dave Gold acts like a white trash thug, who thinks he's being funny and cool, which he's not. (Even Hillary (Dave's daughter) said so in the episode "Gaza Strip").

In the episode "Dream Crusher", Hillary wanted to be a singer {but was actually pretty bad}, Dave and Vicky then gladly decided to crush her dreams by telling her she sucked. After that, she then wanted to be a child psychologist and planned on going to Harvard, after telling Dave and Vicky so and left the room, the two of them began mindlessly mocking her. Also, in the first episode Dave said of Hillary's {black} boyfriend "Does she actually think we're gonna let her go out with this guy? I'd rather drink my own urine", that line has to the dumbest line in the history of television. And Dave is constantly making fun of Larry (his son) when he breaks the fourth wall because he thinks he's gay and is a geek. Also, let's not forget that he also made fun of Larry's (fat) girlfriend. Dave is the father he's supposed to stand up for his son no matter what. "The War at Home" is without a doubt the worst TV show for family. That clearly explains why the show should be canceled since it spreads a racism and homophobic agenda. It's like the show wants to be funny for always putting in that stupid laugh track every time someone says something, but the lines are all somewhat forced, idiotic and pathetically juvenile.

Another reason why the show's horrible is the acting, Mike Rappaport and Kyle Sullivan are terrible, terrible actors. Rappaport has to always move his hands around when he's in front of the camera, he not only does this on this show but he also did that during his time with "Boston Public". Sullivan talks and acts like some kind of robot every time he acts (he also did this in "Malcolm in the Middle"}.

So to wrap this whole thing up, you all got your reasons of what's wrong with this show 1.It's unoriginal 2.The acting sucks 3.It's not even funny 4.All the jokes are the same 5.Has lousy script 6.The characters are pitiful and unlikable 7.The dad's a rip-off of Archie Bunker

FOX needs to take this trash off the air, because anything's better than this.

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7 out of 12 people found the following comment useful :-
Horrible and as usual made by FOX the home of the bottom feeder sitcom, 6 November 2006

Author: BigWhiskers from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

I'm one of those gluttons for punishment when it comes to sitcoms these days-I still will check them out every once in a while.My observation is that most of them aren't very funny even the ones on major networks that are getting high ratings ,I just don't get who is finding them gut busting funny. While a few have made me crack a smile ,none of them made me laugh out loud,I usually change the channel after a few minutes. Now on the FOX network they churn out new shows like changing your underwear,for some reason they think they can make a good sitcom,wrong dead wrong. They have beat this dead horse so much it is to the point of hiring just anyone they can find to write a crappy pilot with bad dialog and just churn them out.Let's take a brief look at the latest piece of junk that Fox has churned out called "The War At Home"

I watched about 5 minutes of it and that was generous. In this particular episode,the daughter is mouthing off to her parents doing the I'm an adult now rant.The dad gets fed up tells her "OK fine,go ahead and do whatever you want,If you screw up it's your problem" to which she replies"Well I guess your mad but hey at least I didn't get AIDS"(cue the laugh track,no way that can be a live audience unless they have been paid to applaud such garbage)-I found the crack about not having AIDS to be in such bad taste. Well hey at least I don't have to watch any more of this crap. Take a hint FOX, stop wasting your time with sitcoms.OK well you have the Simpsons but it is now getting really old and tired as well.

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11 out of 20 people found the following comment useful :-
The War At Home: A modern day Married... With Children, 23 January 2007

Author: erinturtle from Japan

This show is verging on brilliant. It's a modern day Married...with Children. The scripts are witty, as they are sprinkled with clever sarcasm. They are also realistic, dealing with issues that face many parents of teenagers today. As well as the on going burden that you might not be the worlds greatest parent, and how is the best way to deal with this? However, at the same time, it manages to remain light hearted and fun. Which, with all the drama and action on television these days, is a very pleasant and welcome change. It is something you can sit down in front of for 30 minutes and relax, laugh and relate to. It isn't the world's most hilarious comedy. yet will make you laugh at least a handful of times an episode. Michael Rapaport is brilliant in the lead as Dave. He fills the big shoes that the heavily sarcastic script requires and then some. He and Anita Barone (Vikki) have fantastic chemistry and bounce off one another very well. This show has a strong future if it is marketed at the correct target audience, and put in the right time slot. Also, if Fox release it on DVD, the following will be stronger and larger. (As is a classic example with Scrubs.)

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1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
Horrible!!, 23 October 2007

Author: ikoiko33 from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

What Fox's fascination with dysfunctional families, made up of mean, obnoxious, spoiled kids, and parents who are determined to be cool, as opposed to being a parent?? I'm sorry, I don't get it. The one episode that I was barely able to stomach watching involved one of the kids demanding a Bar Mitzvah, with the intention of getting thousands of dollars in gift money. Of course, the idiot mother decides that her precious little junior has to have the biggest and bes-test party of all, and has no problem dropping 20 grand on the big event. The ditzy, brain dead, boy crazy teenage daughter bounces back and forth between wanting to be Jewish and then Catholic, when she see's the "cute" religious tutors.

The one borderline "heartwarming" moment in the entire episode, was when the putz of a father, who has been convinced the entire time that the Bar Mitzvah is solely a money making scheme, see's the son studying his Hebrew lessons, and is momentarily duped into thinking that perhaps, his conniving offspring is being sincere about the right of passage into manhood. This warm, fuzzy feeling is immediately ripped out of his chest when he informs junior that since he has not yet had a bris, a certain "procedure" needs to be performed. The Bar Mitzvah is called off, and the mother is out several thousands of dollars when the kid refuses to comply.

This show is garbage, and I am saddened that I shall never get back the 23 minutes of my life I wasted watching this piece of crap, because nothing else was on TV ...

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