LARGE-LY SPEAKING
Wanda at Large
(9:30 pm/ET, FOX)
Let's give Fox some credit. The network dares to be different. Shows like Married... with Children and Titus pushed envelopes. A trio of recent offerings — Undeclared, Greg the Bunny and Andy Richter Controls the Universe — were all off-beat delights... but off the radar ratings-wise, and thus off the air relatively quickly. All things considered, it shouldn't be a surprise to find Fox going back to the tried and true.
At face value, Fox and Wanda Sykes look like a perfect couple. Sykes's sass would seem to symbolize "Fox attitude." The stand-up comic proudly admits it was her mouth that led to her gig as a roving reporter on Inside the NFL. That, along with a recurring role in Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm, followed an Emmy-award winning gig as writer-performer on The Chris Rock Show. If any comic deserves her own series, it's Wanda Sykes. But not this series.
Sykes plays a variation of herself, a struggling stand-up named Wanda Hawkins who inadvertently talks her way into a job as roving reporter/commentator on a D.C. political-talk show. That's all well and good. The remote pieces Ms. Hawkins does for the fictional show The Beltway Gang are hilarious. Sykes's persona is all over them. That's where the laughs are, and that's why the show's worth watching. But it coulda, shoulda, woulda been so much better if, instead of Hawkins being based on Sykes, they'd simply used... Wanda Sykes. As is. Straight, no chaser. The supporting cast is competent with what they're given to do, but that's little more than being the walls of a familiar sitcom structure that only serves to restrain Sykes.
At work, Wanda has a sympathetic station-manager/boss (Jason Kravitz) and two unsympathetic on-air sparring partners. As The Beltway Gang co-host Bradley, Phil Morris has lost the 'fro, but not the pomposity of lawyer Jackie Chiles, Morris's recurring Seinfeld character. Ann Magnuson (Anything But Love) plays his equally right-wing co-host Rita. Their broadly drawn conservative-without-compassion characters are supposed to contrast with candid liberal Wanda. But the sparks aren't much more than cheap shots, making Wanda and Bradley's flirting in an upcoming episode ring untrue. Off-stage, Wanda has a boy buddy in co-worker Keith (Dale Godboldo), who's instrumental in getting her the job in this opener; and a girl buddy in sister-in-law/neighbor Jenny (Tammy Lauren). Jenny is harried parent to Wanda's niece and nephew, and this is where someone has erred big time. These totally superfluous entities must be someone's nod to "family values." Wanda Sykes needs to play off of kids like, oh, a fish needs the proverbial bicycle.
In this sense, Wanda at Large reminds me of Life with Bonnie. I want to like the show more than I do. Both Ms. Hunt and Ms. Sykes are funny on their own. On their respective shows, their best scenes are when they are being themselves while interacting with "regular folk" in the course of their on-camera jobs. But both fade considerably when pushed into mundane scripted situations.
So, come for Wanda. Endure the rest. — Steve Robinson
Wanda at Large - Tonight at 9:30 ET on FOX! 
I can't wait for Wanda. I've seen her on Inside The NFL and on the Chris Rock Show and I seriously think she's very hilarious. I couldn't stop laughing the other night when she was on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. I hope this show is funny and that it does something for her. She really is hilarious...
