By Chris Ryall
August 5, 2004
Kevin Hill’s place is the bachelor pad of a rich, single guy. Devoid of women’s touches, it features fancy furniture, sports memorabilia and a closet that would make Mickey Rourke’s character in 9-1/2 WEEKS jealous. His answering machine contains message after message of women calling and asking if he’ll ever call again, saying they don’t normally do such things on first dates…but they don’t regret it. Kevin Hill storms into a record label, talks about the slave wages his new singer-client is getting paid, makes his lawyerly demands and storms out. Out at a club, he easily gets digits from a famous actress.
In short, Kevin Hill’s perfect life is ripe for a fall. And, this being the world of episodic TV, you know that the comeuppance is coming quickly. Remember, in the entertainment world (unlike in the real-life entertainment world), hubris and fame and money and good looks and single behavior means nothing but trouble.
Kevin, played by Taye Diggs, gets a phone call. His cousin has died. See, Kevin left town at 18 and became this high-powered lawyer, but this left a bad taste in his family’s collective mouths. So after the requisite “you don’t call, you don’t write” speech, he’s then handed a six-month-old child. The kid, the offspring of Kevin’s cousin and a cokewhore stripper, has been left to Kevin. He knows he isn’t ready for this, and refuses, but another requisite lecture convinces him. Just like that, his life has changed.
Immediately, the kid is trouble, crying his head off on the airplane ride back to New York. He calls his assistant and asks her to get some kid stuff for the baby, so he comes home and finds his fancy bachelor pad overrun with toys. He does the “single-dad grimace” over the smell of a dirty diaper. Luckily, the THREE MEN AND A BABY comedic bits are kept mostly to a minimum, fortuitous because we’ve seen this so many times before.
Hill does the Ollie Trinke thing and brings his baby to work. The crying baby completely distracts him from the meeting with the record label and his new musician client. The room complains about the baby’s crying, so Hill blows up and cancels the meeting. Hill’s not long for this job, as his best friend and co-worker Jon Dame (Seda) tells him.
Hill can’t get any of his one-night conquests to come help him babysit, so his friends set him up with a nanny. Hill thinks the goofy white guy is from “gaywhiteguys.com” and insults him, but the guy comes in anyway. His friends are off to a Maxim magazine swimsuit party, and he really wants to go…but he can’t. The sacrifices begin. George, the nanny (Patrick Breen), is horrified to see the bachelor pad’s lack of baby accoutrements and food. Hill makes a couple more gay comments (he’s insensitive, see…but just you wait until the bay works its magic on him).
Hill calls his new actress friend, who invites him to Vegas for a rendezvous. He’s also supposed to go to dinner at Nobu to talk business. He passes because of the kid. One of the partners comes to his house and talks about taking some of his clients with him, they argue, and Kevin quits. New baby, no job, all in less than a week. Haven’t we seen this before?
Hill hits the streets and meets with numerous law firms. He’s given various excuses why he won’t work out—too expensive, said to be too flaky, the firm is downsizing. Desperate, he walks into a boutique office. The secretary, a big-chested white girl, immediately sizes him up. “About a seven,” she says, staring at his crotch, when he asks how many employees work there. Then she corrects herself and says “three, there’s three employees.” He meets Jessie Grey (Michael Michele), a single mom who makes the single parent thing seem much easier but is drawn to Hill because he’s in the same position. In fact, he clinches the job by making some growling noise into the phone to show the nanny how to encourage his new daughter to eat. He also meets Nicollete Raye (Christina Hendricks), who he already met but thought she was the assistant. Instead, she’s a stealthy ass-kicker. There’s also Veronica Carter (Kate Levering). Veronica is a former one-night stand of Kevin’s (luckily he remembers her name), so she’s a bit wary of Hill. But he’s changed, he tries to show her. Or at least he’s in the midst of changing.
Now, it’s my opinion that Taye Diggs is being greatly undervalued. The guy just seems better than most of the material I’ve seen him in. The last courtroom show he was on, ALLY McBEAL, just played up the absurd and left Diggs with little to do. Nothing worse than coming in at the tail end of a David E. Kelley show. But Diggs…he’s smooth. He should be playing James Bond. Instead, he gets saddled with the “cocky guy” role more often than not. And here, it’s more of the same, more of the guy who has it all but has to choose between the life he thought he loved and the new life that’s been thrust upon him. Still, as far as familiar show vehicles go, this one’s not bad. Even as a cocky guy, he still comes off as likable, and the women in his new office are firm and serious without being typical harpies.
His character reminds me a bit of Eddie Murphy in BOOMERANG, a feeling exacerbated by the fact that the “nice” girl in the office is drawn to him despite being wary of his past with another co-worker. So there, I’ve said that the show’s premise is overly familiar about enough times. However, what I haven’t said in clear terms is that I like this premise when it’s not beaten over our heads (like in Nic Cage’s THE FAMILY MAN). And Diggs plays well with the others in his office. There’s a fair share of sexual tension, and Kevin Hill doesn’t do the immediate full turnaround. He learns to love his daughter and respect women, but he still retains his cocky edge, turning it on when he needs to, like when he steps in and helps his new firm beat a famous athlete client being defended by his old one. This only comes after he spends some time siding against his client, the rape victim. But he eventually comes around a bit. And he does enough to make me want to see a bit more from this show. Nice to see UPN give us something that at first look appears to be nothing new but then takes a less-than-expected approach to the characters themselves.
UPN’s KEVIN HILL airs this Fall on Wednesdays at 9 PM.
E-MAIL CHRIS RYALL | ARCHIVES
