JOSH Peck (left) and John Stamos
John Stamos plays a 50-year-old bachelor-restaurateur in the new sitcom, “Grandfathered” (Fox, Wednesdays, 8:30 p.m.), which centers on his character suddenly becoming a dad to a grownup son—a young man who has a child of his own!
The revelation sends Jimmy (Stamos) reeling in his posh restaurant—which, by the way, is off-limits to families with kids—right after Gerald (Josh Peck), the 20-something dad, gushingly introduces himself as the biological son of the woman whom the formerly narcissistic hunk dated, back in the day.
The mom, Sara (Paget Brewster), had a good reason: Jimmy was immature and irresponsible at the time, so she kept the pregnancy a secret. She chose to raise her son on her own.
Gerald is a sweet and sensitive guy, most of the time exceedingly so, so Jimmy helps him out, to make his son less awkward when it comes to women.
Gerald is secretly in love with his daughter’s mom, Vanessa (Christina Milian), but they’re just friends.
Feel-good, if formulaic, “Grandfathered” is created by former “The Simpsons” and “The Office” writer Daniel Chun. It’s a family show that doesn’t try too hard to present an unorthodox dynamic, which is mined for its share of decent, but not necessarily “wholesome” humor.
Stamos, 52, plays someone who looks eternally youthful, and freely moves and sleeps around without a care in the world, except for the finer things in life—it’s a “deal with the devil” that clearly works out for him, as Sara puts it when she sees him now, decades after the breakup.
But Stamos is self-effacing enough to poke fun at himself on-cam. A joke focused on his “skinny” legs, so he showed his less-than-spectacular gams. And while Jimmy may be considered a womanizer who’s often insensitive, the character is favorably described as “a Clooney” in one scene, and figures in many more that make fun of his age and fashion choices.
He and the rest of the similarly charismatic cast members mesh well (Brewster was in “Community”; Peck was the chubby kid in “Drake & Josh”)—quite adorably and, often, endearingly.