Large and In Love?

So CBS has decided to feature a large-size couple in their new show "Mike and Molly". I wasn't sure where they were going to go with this. Is it going to be one massive fat joke, or will watching it be a healing experience, the way watching "Huge" was all summer? "Huge", on ABC Family, featured a group of large-size teens at fat camp, and was touching, funny, and remarkably liberating for me. The teens were allowed to be real kids, not merely fat jokes. It is one of the best shows I've ever watched, and I'm anxiously awaiting Season 2 (which may or may not happen).

Anyway, I taped "Mike and Molly" Monday night and watched it last night. The main characters are introduced as going about their lives trying to lose weight: Mike, a cop, is eating a plain unadorned hot dog while his partner chows down on an actual plate of food. Molly is on a treadmill of some sort (I don't know exercise machines; I'm sure this one has a name, but all I know is that she was walking on it), and her scrawny mother and skinny sister delight in eating chocolate cake in front of her. Okay. This all rings true. Some people can eat anything and stay thin. Some of us can walk for hours and stick to our diets and struggle to lose an ounce.

Then, Mike and Molly "meet cute" (as all the reviews have been sure to note) at an Overeaters Anonymous meeting. One of my friends met her husband at an OA meeting, so I was kind of tickled by this concept. Mike's cop partner Carl attends the meeting with him. Molly's thin but apparently drug-addled sister Victoria comes with her. Why? I have no idea. Mike's last name turns out to be Biggs. How much of a fat joke is that? I wish they'd chosen a better last name for him, something neutral, instead of something that lends itself to so many digs at his size. Anyway, the first irritating fat joke that I remember comes up when two large people are walking upstairs next to each other and meet somebody coming down. The two large people completely block the stairwell. Real life? One of the fat people would have moved behind the other. For the purposes of the TV show, though, they made them stand side by side. I could have done without that. It added nothing to the show.

Well, Mike is too shy to ask Molly out, even though she's clearly interested in him. Carl eggs him on without making any references to his or her size, which I liked. I would have probably gotten counseled by my mother: "You might as well go out with him. Who else will want to date you at your size?" (This frequent occurrence goes a long way towards explaining why I married the wrong man...) She invites him to speak to her fourth-grade students, which he does, with mixed results. At the next OA meeting, he works up his courage to ask her out, doing so while leaning on a table, which collapses at an inopportune moment. Another fat joke I could have done without - the Collapsing Furniture. Guess what? We fat people rarely break furniture. The last thing that should be done on a fat-positive show is to have a main character break furniture because of his size.

Anyway, Molly's house is robbed, and Mike finally asks her out while taking a police report. Sort of cute for a socially awkward guy no matter what his size.

I'm writing this the next day, and I'm not rewatching the show as I do it, so I know I missed things. My feeling at the end was that it could develop into something better as it goes along, but the pilot was not that good.