Bob ❤ Abishola (Mondays at 8:30 on CBS)
Everything about Bob ❤ Abishola is annoying at first glance, not the least of which is that DAMN HEART I have to keep pasting into the title but which is pronounced "hearts" (because, I don't know... CBS decided to use youthful lingo from seven years ago to try to draw a somewhat younger audience than usual?). There's also the fact that it looks like a diversity grab for America's oldest, whitest network, the kind of show that makes 70 year olds in the Midwest feel progressive when they watch it. And then there were the teasers and previews that focused entirely on the absolutely ridiculous premise that a FAT GUY could possibly have a crush on a BLACK WOMAN and OHMYGOD did you hear her accent?! It felt like Bob ❤ Abishola was teed up to be the first big miss of the season.
And yeah, it kind of does miss, but not nearly as widely as you might've thought.
The very first joke we get in the opening moments of the show is Billy Gardell as Bob (the less successful half of Mike & Molly) being wheeled through a hospital in the throes of a heart attack that his mother (an utterly wasted Christine Ebersole) tries to convince him is gas. Before they turn the corner, Bob pauses, farts, and exclaims, "Nope, it's a heart attack!"
Y'all, I sunk so far into my sofa after that joke that I thought I might get lost among the cookie crumbs and balls of lint.
But as it turns out, there's nowhere to go but up when you start with a fart joke. And Bob ❤ Abishola only ever improves, though it never really becomes anything memorable or special. We learn that Bob owns a sock company, that his sister runs their sales and marketing poorly because she's in therapy over a divorce that happened a year ago (LOL white ladies crying, amirite?), and that his brother is a perv who would never have a job in the Me Too era if Bob didn't own the place. We meet Abishola (Folake Olowofoyeku, Transparent) and her Nigerian immigrant family: aunt Olu (Shola Adewusi, Chewing Gum), uncle Tunde (Barry Shabaka Henley, Bosch), and son Dele (Travis Wolfe Jr.). We meet their co-workers. We see them go about their daily lives: Bob screams at Malaysian workers who can't deliver the socks he needs, Abishola rides the bus and fails to save a patient in cardiac arrest. It's a very traditional rom-com setup, which is refreshing in its own right for a CBS sitcom. The humor that stems from these slice-of-life scenes is the best in the pilot. It's not fart jokes or catheter jokes or jokes about accents (both Abishola's lilting Nigerian one and Dottie's abrasive American one) but moments like the one when two immigrant women of color discuss what their prospects are in terms of finding love and how easy it would be to settle for a fat, old, rich white guy because who knows if anything better will come along? That's where the show is at its funniest and its most engaging.
It's also strongest, in general, whenever Olowofoyeku is on screen. Her deadpan delivery as Abishola is perfect and often laugh-out-loud funny, whether she's chastising Bob for not washing his hands after using the bathroom or trying to explain to her family why a strange man is bringing socks to her apartment. When Bob ❤ Abishola is about giving voice to the experience of being black and not American born in 2019, it's not only funny but touching. Unfortunately, the scenes surrounding those of Bob's family being caricatures of annoying white people don't even kind of match up. For every sweet moment Abishola consoles her son with a punchy one-liner ("I think you should join the track team. One day you're going to throw a chair at the wrong person and have to run for your life.") there's a moment when Bob's sister Christina opines that it's time for Bob to become a vegetarian so he doesn't die young like their father, or when his brother Doug declares that they need a Human Resources department in their four-person company "because we're humans."
But when it comes to the potential relationship between Bob and Abishola, and when it comes to them as individual characters, there's a sweet earnestness to the show that's hard to deny. Even though about half the jokes don't land, it's nice that creators Chuck Lorre, Eddie Gorodetsky, Al Higgins, and British stand-up comic Gina Yashere don't treat the material cynically and don't routinely play to the lowest common denominator (fart joke notwithstanding). If the stuff concerning Bob's dippy, annoying family can be toned down and if the dialogue for all the characters can match the humanity of Abishola's in the pilot, this will be a totally fine, enjoyable series to add to your queue.
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