'Ben and Kate' Provided Four of the Best Comedic TV Performances of the Past Decade

https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2020/01/ben-and-kate-dakota-johnson-nat-faxon.html

The 2012-2013 television season saw the debut of a number of memorable—albeit not quite good—one and done television series. It was the season of 666 Park Avenue (a.k.a. You’ll Get ‘Em Next Time, Rachael Taylor) on ABC, Do No Harm (a.k.a. Dr. Face Hands) and Animal Practice (a.k.a. Dr. Monkey) on NBC—even though some quality snuck out in the form of NBC’s one-season Go On (a.k.a. GOON)—and longer-lasting series like ABC’s Nashville and NBC’s Hannibal. This ICYMI column isn’t necessarily about single-season shows, but as it turns out, a lot of single-season shows were, in fact, missed by most people. Go figure. However, there was one truly great series that lasted one season during 2012-2013: FOX’s single-camera sitcom Ben and Kate.

Nat Faxon and Dakota Johnson starred as the titular Ben and Kate Fox, an older brother-younger sister duo that reunited after human circus Ben moved into almost-too-anxious-to-function (but not too anxious) Kate’s garage to help her—a young single mother—raise her six-year-old daughter, Maddie (Maggie Elizabeth Jones). Rounding out the cast of characters were BJ (Lucy Punch), Kate’s “glamorous enigma” party girl best friend and co-worker, and Tommy (Echo Kellum), Ben’s ride or die best friend and a man forever after Kate’s heart. The series was created by Dana Fox, one-forth of “The Fempire” with Diablo Cody, Lorene Scafaria (who served as consulting producer and writer on the show), and New Girl creator Liz Meriwether and who would later go on to co-write the romantic comedy How To Be Single, starring her Ben and Kate lead Dakota Johnson.

Ben and Kate was a series that managed to seamlessly blend the hangout comedy (especially the successful brand of hangout comedy that came from this era) and family comedy genre well, both without being too sanitized (appeasing the latter but hurting the former) and without being too caustic (appeasing the former but hurting the latter). To compare it to another hangout/family comedy from the same era, Cougar Town had it easier by having its “child” character be someone in his late teens; there were moments where characters tried to shield him but never to this extreme. But Ben and Kate actually mined more comedy out of the balancing act of having to do both, with the Maddie character functioning in a way that didn’t hinder the more adult humor. Instead, it made it funnier, whether the show chose to have the jokes go completely over her head (because she was six), or had her question certain comments (because she was six) or made the adult characters struggle to either explain or change the subject, or—in the best version of this—had BJ treat her like any other adult human she disdained (despite the fact that she was six). Maddie was also the rare child character who was funny without being precocious: She was six years old, and she acted six years old, never once understanding or saying anything she shouldn’t say.

In a series full of all-time great comedic performances from its entire cast, Lucy Punch’s BJ was easily one of the best original comedy characters of the 2012-2013 television season—if not THE best, given the competition—with a performance that, to this day, makes anyone who’s aware of it wonder why Lucy Punch isn’t dominating television right now. BJ was a character who could insult a six-year-old—whether it was to the child’s face or to the child’s mother—out of pettiness or give a rambling, but kind of genius impromptu monologue that managed to both insulted and raised up another character at the drop of the hat.

The pilot, it’s worth nothing, has Kate utter the line that best describes the character for the entirety of the series: “I don’t know what to do with my body.” (She then proves that with a great bit of physical comedy, as she would do for the rest of the series.) While it’s, of course, worth noting just how great BJ was because of how good Lucy Punch was and always is—which was also apparent in CBS’s one-season comedy The Class in 2006, also obvious ICYMI fodder—the most frustrating thing about Ben and Kate’s lack of success and seeming disappearance in the pop culture discussion is the fact that people don’t understand just how funny of an actress Dakota Johnson has proven herself to be and is. Johnson’s Kate was a mix of non-stop self-deprecation and realistic (but still hilarious) awkwardness that has yet to be duplicated, especially when you factor in her ability to also pull off how much Kate loved and excelled at being a single mother on top of that. While the Kate character was 26 years old, Johnson was only 23 at the time, a fact that regularly made it even more impressive just how rich and honest she was able to make her performance.