His sister (Christie Courville) is a failed pageant queen, an aspect she never quite gets to develop fully. More action surrounds the off-putting brother-in-law (Jeffrey Staab), doing a kind of malevolent Art Carney.
Ttheir four-year old is Lucas (yet another Tittone kid, Jack Klinginsmith) who is the neighborhood menace, attacking old bikers with water balloon and hitting them with his mini-GMC truck. And that’s episode one.
While the 10-episode “Divas” may occasionally be appealing in a kind of low-budget, homemade way, it generally takes too long to set up jokes or fire up scenes.
Worse, it seems at times tone-deaf about actual family life. Michael McQuary, who chews up scenery in more than a half dozen roles in the series, with a crazed Paul Lynde approach, is first seen as a priest who inappropriately cries in a flashback of the mother’s funeral, where the father comments on her “beautiful booty.” Elsewhere there are lengthy dog poop bits and a “choke the chicken” line that wouldn’t make Disney Channel. Lucas’ catchphrase is “You suck, dad.”
Tittone is also unaware of prevailing issues surrounding police misconduct, and so has his bungling suburban responders pulling guns at every opportunity in Keystone Cop fashion.
I liked Dawn Linneman and Sonny Gaitan as the active grandma and her beau, but there’s not really enough of them in it. Or when they are, the action goes predictably awry.
There is something interesting about watching an entirely suburban sitcom, where houses are huge, lawns are expansive and there is money to spend on an annual neighborhood Nerf gun battle. But the eventually tiresome “Daddy’s Divas” is generally so dim and embarrassing that Tittone might do well to the admonition of a daughter playing a daughter: “Dad, stop!”