The Upshaws

The Mess We Make

Sitcoms once had a neatness to them. You had a problem at minute two, a misunderstanding at minute twelve, and a moral lesson right before the credits rolled. I grew up on those shows, and I miss their reliable rhythm, even when the nostalgia feels a bit unearned. *The Upshaws*, created by Wanda Sykes and Regina Y. Hicks, uses that old multi-cam machinery, but the engine runs on something far more combustible. It's a comedy about a working-class Black family in Indianapolis, sure, but it refuses to play nice. The patriarch, Bennie (Mike Epps), is not just a bumbling dad; he's a guy who had a child with another woman while he and his wife were on a "break." That is a heavy anchor for a comedy to drag around. Whether that's a flaw or a feature depends on your patience for discomfort.



Sykes and Hicks clearly know the Norman Lear playbook. They built a world that feels tactile—the greasy garage where Bennie works, the cramped kitchen where the family argues over bills. Former sitcom writer Ken Levine pointed out that while the show is "mounted like a retro multi-cam, it somehow seems fresh." He's right, mostly because the series lets its characters be genuinely mean to each other. Bennie and his sister-in-law Lucretia (Sykes) trade insults that would end real-life relationships. Sykes plays Lucretia with a rigid spine and a permanent scowl, her delivery so sharp it leaves a mark. She brings the same acerbic bite that made her stand-up famous, but channels it into the deeply particular resentment of a woman who watches her sister settle for less.



You can see the friction best in the quiet moments. In one early scene, Bennie and his wife Regina (Kim Fields) sit across from each other at a restaurant. It's supposed to be a date, a rare chance to connect away from the kids. The camera stays wide, letting us watch their body language. Epps leans in, trying to charm his way past years of accumulated mistakes. His shoulders are loose, smiling simply a fraction too hard. Fields sits perfectly still. Watch the way her eyes track his movements—she loves him, but she's exhausted by the effort of it. The dialogue snaps back and forth, but the emotional truth is entirely in her posture. She's holding the structural weight of the family, and he's just trying not to drop his end of the couch.



Fields is the absolute anchor here. After decades in the television trenches (from *The Facts of Life* to *Living Single*), she knows exactly how to pace a scene. She does not just react to Epps; she grounds his manic energy. Epps, meanwhile, plays Bennie like a guy who knows he's a mess but lacks the tools to fix it. His comedy has always relied on a certain frantic hustle, and it translates perfectly to a mechanic trying to outrun his own bad decisions. The show is not perfect, of course. Sometimes the laugh track steps on the natural rhythm of the jokes, and the secondary characters occasionally feel like sounding boards rather than people. I am not entirely sure the balance between the broad comedy and the grounded drama always holds together. But when it works, it reminds you why we sit down to watch families argue on television in the first place. We're all just trying to make it to Friday without breaking anything we cannot fix.