Cynical Cinema

Paramount Home Entertainment is releasing the First Season of Sister Sister on October 28th. It’s a sit-com about twin 14-year-old girls who are reunited after being separated at birth. This separation is conveniently explained with the line “stupid adoption agency”, and then dropped. So…they have lived in the same city their whole lives, no one has ever commented on the resemblance, until they run into each other while shopping. They are trying on the exact same clothes, which leads to a trying day for a put-upon sales person. And of course, also leads to the inevitable first-ever meeting of the twins, which is an unnecessarily long and simple and unfunny scene reminiscent of ninth-rate Marx Brothers.

Then the scene is set, after one episode - the girls have met, and they have bonded instantly. Tia’s father and Tamara’s mother hate each other. But they have to move in together, through some incredibly contrived circumstance. One can only assume that the reason this first episode is handled so quickly and sets up the story so fast is that the rest of Season One has much more important and funny episodes to share, and the set-up episode was simply an administrative thing that needed to get out of the way early. But then…the rest of the First Season contains two jokes. Like Marmaduke. Marmaduke either thinks he’s people, or he eats a lot. Sister Sister is the Marmaduke of sit-coms. Their parents hate each other. And the twins are…surprisingly similar! These are the two jokes of Sister Sister.

The pilot episode speeds at a million miles an hour through things that not only seem important, but also seem like they could be funny. But no time is given to these things. It’s right into standard sit-com stuff. Why not spread this stuff out over the entire season? There is enough material there to make this show both funny and interesting! But instead it isn’t. It’s Marmaduke.