Allen Payne in House of Payneby Paula Neal Mooney
TV & Film Critic, Blogger

I really wanted to like Tyler Perry’s new sitcom called House of Payne.

I really did.

I TiVo’d it and everything.

I’d been getting the emails from Tyler Perry saying that his show was coming, after all these years of hell and high water to get his vision made. 

My eagerness was also fueled in no small part to the fact that House of Payne stars Allen Payne, a beautiful talent who has been underutilized in the TV and film industry.

Not since Payne’s breakout starring role in the film Jason’s Lyric has he been featured so prominently in the public eye.

And what a waste thus far.

Pretty Demetria McKinneyI can almost feel Payne cringing under his role as CJ, father to a son and predictably sassy daughter, husband to equally gorgeous wife Janine, played by Demetria McKinney.

Unsufferable is the role of Allen Payne’s uncle, a curmudgeon of a character.

The actor playing the crotchety ol’ guy is LaVan Davis, who stars as fireman Curtis “Pops” Payne.

(Yeah, it’s a lot of Payne going on.)

House of Payne FamilyPops is supposed to come off as a lovable older man as he continually kicks his family out of his hearth and home, but in reality he seems to be a younger man with gray paint on his ‘fro — one who’s abusive and mean.

(Tyler Perry needs to work out more of his real-life issues with his abusive father in a drama akin to the excellent essay he once wrote for Essence.)

My man had already warned me that USA Today ripped House of Payne apart as we laid down to watch it — and I still held out hope.

Yet my husband and I were shaking our heads and trying to hold in the inevitable laughter that came with my high expectations being dashed whilst watching the first episode of the retooled House of Payne this past week.

Thank God TBS already made an unprecedented move and ordered 100 episodes of House of Payne, because the sit-com really needs the time to grow.

Or just change completely into a witty and not-dumbed-down comedy that’s actually funny – one that the record number of people (probably mostly blacks) hungered for when they tuned in for the House of Payne premiere.

Or the aforementioned type of non-melodramatic drama that we would eat up in droves.

There is hope.

And I seriously petition heaven on behalf of this show, because Lord knows we need more African-American faces on TV, behind the cameras and in the writer’s room.

When that door opens, let’s give ‘em something better to watch than triteness.

Tyler, can I hit you up with a treatment?

Watch full episodes of Tyler Perry’s House of Payne online here at TBS.