The King of Queens: 1st Season (review)

Do I look fat in this sitcom to you? Obvious and distasteful, this working-class “comedy” relies entirely on class and gender stereotypes to elicit laughs in the same way that one pulls teeth. Doug Heffernan (Kevin James), a professional package-deliverer complete with ugly brown uniform, is like a real-life, unironic Homer Simpson, but his wife, Carrie (Leah Remini), is no Marge. He and his friends are crude and rude, she cries a lot, and her father (Jerry Stiller), who moves in with them in the premiere episode, gets a pass on his lewd sexism because his hilarious (not) borderline dementia means he lives in a perpetual 1952. All 24 episodes of the debut 1998-99 season are included here — plus, mysteriously, two bonus episodes from seasons 2 and 3 — and jokes about “a box of wine” and a man’s love affair with his TV are about as good as it gets. Extras include two pointless featurettes and commentary on the pilot by star Kevin James and creator Michael Weithorn.