Real Rob – Season 1 Review

Real Rob

This kind of felt like Curb Your Enthusiasm but with Rob Schneider, and… well, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by how it ultimately turned out. After the first episode, I was still optimistic he’d pull this off, though. Schneider is a good actor. He just needs someone to write better material for him. But if Real Rob is as “real” as it suggests, then Schneider just comes across as a rich asshole. He quickly devolves into an unlikable character on the show, and I couldn’t help but wonder if Real Rob was merely a chance for him to trot out his family. It stars his real life wife and daughter, the latter getting her name in the opening credits despite not being able to talk (and not appearing in every episode). His wife’s performance wasn’t very convincing, either. It was obvious this was her first time on screen. Yet I can almost hear Schneider saying, “You may not find me funny, but at least my wife is hot.”

Real Rob doesn’t paint a flattering picture of Schneider’s personal life. Granted, Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm could be a jerk, too, but it felt more justified there and was actually funny. I stopped laughing at Real Rob in Episode 2. That’s when they busted out the cliched vasectomy storyline. I mean, seriously… if you’re already doing a vasectomy story in the second episode, your show’s never going to last. And the delivery is so scattered. Episodes are randomly interrupted by scenes of Schneider doing stand-up. Is he still performing stand-up in real life? The show doesn’t ever acknowledge this. It feels out of place. But not as out of place as the cutaway talking head interviews. Then suddenly, it’s like we’re watching a reality TV show. But nothing else about the presentation suggests it’s supposed to be taken that way.

Don’t worry, if those segments bother you, the show abandons them near the end, anyway. But that late in the game, Real Rob has already resorted to cringe-worthy impressions and scenes of having diarrhea on the toilet, so who knows what they were going for. Any sympathy the show may have tried to convey in the beginning is completely lost, and what we’re left with is basically an Adam Sandler movie without the Sandler. What’s funny is that one of Real Rob’s storylines is about Schneider getting upset over the changes a TV network wants to make to a show he wrote. But if Real Rob is what happens when Schneider gets his way, then he should really go back to listening to the network.

Reviewer

Clark
I love gaming so much, I wrote a book about it.

Published by

Clark

I love gaming so much, I wrote a book about it.