Indebted is in the running for the worst show of the season.
Sadly, Fran Drescher’s big return to television proves how hard it is to have another hit. While not high art, The Nanny is iconic for its winking nod to Jewish stereotypes. With Indebted, Fran Drescher, as Debbie, embraces them wholeheartedly … but it’s embarrassing and painful to watch. The fact that most of the cast is Jewish saves the show from becoming offensive. Instead, Indebted becomes as annoying and overbearing as Dave’s (Adam Pally) parents, Debbie and Stew (Steven Weber.)
In “Everybody’s Talking About the Pilot,” Debbie and Stew “come out” as broke to Dave, their daughter Joanna (Jessy Hodges), and their daughter-in-law Rebecca (Abby Elliot). Debbie and Stew went into debt after Debbie had knee surgery. However, their problems didn’t start or end there as they are also massively irresponsible with money. They can’t afford to keep their house (so they need to move in with Dave) but insist on surprising Dave and Rebecca at a Drake concert with tickets they bought off Stub Hub and going on exotic vacations. It’s obvious to everyone except for Debbie and Stew that they need to become more fiscally responsible. As the pilot progresses, it becomes clear that Dave’s parents intend to mooch off their son and his wife until Dave puts his foot down which — will never happen because Debbie will find a way to guilt her son into changing his mind.
The caricature of Jewish parents is at its worse in Debbie and Stew’s Facebook fundraiser. The couple decides that they could try saving the house by begging strangers on the internet for money. You’d expect it to fail because Debbie and Stew aren’t the most likable people, but they play up Debbie’s knee surgery. However, the real reason for the campaign’s success is Rebecca’s breasts, which she unwittingly displays to the world when the door she’s changing behind swings open and her reflection in a mirror is shown on camera. Rebecca’s understandably upset and wants the video taken down.
Yet, she feels like a jerk once she watches the entire video of her in-laws gushing about the entire family and her daughter-in-law’s wonderfulness. Regardless of what Debbie and Stew said in the video, Rebecca has every right to be angry that her privacy was violated and feel like her life is destroyed, yet she shrugs it off because her in-laws said nice things. A real person would probably ignore the nice comments and focus on the problem that her in-laws broadcast her naked body to the world because they didn’t bother to pay attention to their surroundings or the background of the video they posted.
Indebted is a bad rehash of The Nanny. Even Happily Divorced, Fran Drescher’s TV Land show that was loosely based on her real life, was better. And Happily Divorced revolved around the one-note joke of a woman and her best-friend/gay ex-husband still acting like a happily married couple while living together.
Indebted does the viewer a huge disservice. In a world where Jewish culture is accurately depicted on TV, Indebted goes for stale jokes. Go rewatch The Nanny, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, or The Kominsky Method. Sometimes they fall into common stereotypes, but it’s always done affectionately, a trait Indebted severely lacks.
Indebted airs Thursday nights on NBC. You can stream episodes on Hulu.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5RTxscE9OI
