The preview of Cristela, a comedy on ABC, is enough to make people not want to watch the show. Cristela meets a woman who thinks that she is a cleaning lady because she is throwing something away. When the woman realizes that she is wrong, she asks if she could validate her parking ticket.
Why anyone would assume that Cristela is a cleaning lady or a parking attendant is beyond me. She isn’t dressed for the part in a uniform. She is supposed to be in a law firm and a woman thinks that is out of place because she’s Mexican. Ridiculous.
Yet somehow, I decided to endure 20 minutes of the pilot of this show and couldn’t even do that. The show is about Cristela, a woman who is completing her sixth year of law school and working as an unpaid intern in a law firm. Since she can’t afford to have her own place, she has moved in with her sister who wants her to get a real job and her brother in-law, who thinks she is a freeloader.
Yes, this isn’t a very progressive show. It would be more difficult to believe that Cristela could be a paralegal who is working for a law firm and is going to law school at night in order to try and become a lawyer, which is what a lot of lawyers have done. That might make the show more realistic and even give people a few laughs since there isn’t anything to laugh at when I saw this show.
You would think that the setting of the show, which is Cristella living with her family and two children and the law firm would bring at least one laugh in 20 minutes. Instead, the only laughter is from the canned audience as we watch Cristela give a cheer and spell the word regressive. Then there is a line about the daughter’s hope to become a cheerleader for the Dallas Cowboys even though Cristela said that cheerleaders are bimbos.
It was a chore getting through the first part but I had to end it when the second part came on. Cristela was in the office with a partner from the law firm and he said “if I don’t like you, I can always call the INS.” I’m sure that there were a lot of other people that turned the show off after this. I would have considered giving this show another chance but when I saw that someone would think that Cristela was a Nanny, I said why bother.
It seems sad that hollywood has taken such a departure from producing great shows like Ugly Betty and The George Lopez show. Even though the critics bashed the TV show Rob for having inappropriate ethnic jokes, the producers have decided to ignore this by putting out St. George - which was already cancelled - and now Cristela. Maybe what I find here is that the ethnic jokes on Cristela are more insulting to people like me who want to watch this show but can’t since none of it is realistic.
I cannot believe that the National Latino Media Council is backing this show and encouraging Hispanic men and women to watch it. Based on conversations that I have had with my friends about this show who are Hispanic, I can assure you that they are not impressed and felt that Hollywood can do better than this.
No stars for this show from me. I hope that at some point, hollywood producers will come to the conclusion that these ethnic jokes are not entertaining. It’s just another good reason to see this show cancelled as soon as possible.
Ron Hummer
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