The Jamie Foxx Show: The Complete First Season (review)

Jamie Foxx's recent Oscar win for his terrific performance in Ray is sure to bring a wider audience for his earlier sitcom... and that's too bad, because even small doses of this minstrel show are enough to spoil the memory of his more recent and far superior work. Constituting an embarrassing carnival the likes of which should have gone out with button shoes, these 22 episodes -- the entire 1996-7 debut season -- feature horrendous overacting, corny mugging for the camera, and humor that verges on the vaudevillian. Foxx plays Jamie King, a none-too-bright would-be actor who works at his aunt and uncle's (Ellia English and Garrett Morris) Hollywood hotel, where his job seems to consist of pulling off bad imitations of everyone from Michael Jackson to Hannibal Lecter and assaulting the female employees and guests with crude sexual innuendo, though it's really way too obvious to be deemed "innuendo." Jamie's idiocy and lascivious behavior make him the hero; the butt of much of the show's ridicule is the hotel's accountant (Christopher B. Duncan), an educated man who "acts white," which apparently means he does not behave as an animal in heat. Everyone involved should be ashamed to be associated with such a retrogressive spectacle. The only bonus feature -- a gag reel -- resides on the fourth disc, though you'd be forgiven for believing that there is extra material on every disc; the misleading menus lend an air of a heftier package.