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Luis aired from September until October 2003 on Fox.
Bearded Luis ( Luis Guzman) had worked hard all his life and was now the owner of Park Avenue Donuts, a small food store in the Spanish Harlem section of Manhattan, as well as the building in which it was located. Although he was long divorced from his ex-wife, Isabella ( Diana-Maria Riva), she spent much of her time in the shop eating his doughnuts and reminding him, why they were no longer married. Although she denied it, she believed they would eventually get back together. Their daughter, Marly ( Jacklyn DeSantis), a teller at the East Harlem Community Bank lived in the building with her boyfriend Greg ( Wes Ramsey), a tall, free-spirited artist who had little success selling his paintings to pay his half of their rent. Others seen regularly werer Richie ( Charlie Day ), Luis' loyal assistant, who wished Marly would break up with Greg and start dating him; T.K. (Malcolm Barrett), the black neighborhood kid who tried to sell trash from Luis' dumpster to his customers; and Zhing Zhang ( Reggie Lee), the Chinese delivery boy who claimed he had been a cardiologist in his homeland.
A Review from The New York Times
By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN
Published: September 19, 2003
A similar white slacker is made a fool of on ''Luis,'' Fox's shrewdly packaged show for Luis Guzman, which also has its premiere tonight.
Mr. Guzman, the short character actor whose eyes are connected by a deep crease across the top of his nose, plays Luis, a Puerto Rican who owns a building and a doughnut shop in Spanish Harlem. He also has a daughter named Marly (Jaclyn DeSantis), a bourgeois exemplar: ''My little capitalista, wearing a name tag from a real, live bank.'' Marly, for her part, has picked up Greg (Wes Ramsey), a lanky blond who looks as if he might have played lacrosse at Exeter. Greg, who is nominally a painter, is out of money.
''We love each other,'' Marly says. ''It doesn't matter who pays the bills.''
Her father takes a different view. ''He got to you,'' Luis says. ''That's the tongue of the sponge talking.''
Greg is not the only con artist on ''Luis.'' There is also Richie (Charlie Day), a wheezy half-wit who works the doughnut counter and leers at Marly; his spastic delivery, which suggests Bobcat Goldthwait, is inventive. A raggedy thief (Malcolm Barrett) who sells his haul in the doughnut shop is funnier still. Advertising his goods (''A waffle iron and a 'White Oleander' DVD -- Renée Zellweger is a damn triumph''), he might just steal this show.
Mr. Day and Mr. Barrett stand out because they're not obliged just to tell the corny jokes about race that are meant to prove that ''Luis'' minces no words. Elsewhere on the show, the rote delivery of blacks-and-Jews jokes is enough to make one miss even the most supercilious days of political correctness.
''I'd have a nicer building if you would have given birth to a shortstop, like a Dominican woman's supposed to,'' Luis tells his ex-wife, Isabella (Diana-Maria Riva).
''Oh, please,'' she responds. ''He'd be half Puerto Rican. He'd be too lazy to practice.''
Exchanges like this one may induce in some viewers nostalgia for the street-bigot gaspers of, say, Don Rickles. (Those were the days.) But nostalgia is no substitute for comedy.
In fact, whether racism is a fact of life or the ne plus ultra of social transgression, how did television writers forget how little comic potential it offered in the first place?
A Review from entertainyourbrain.com
"Luis" Review
By Shawn McKenzie 10/03/2003
Luis Guzman has been one of the best supporting actors in movies for the last fifteen years or so. Why he has yet to receive a lead role until now is a mystery. I just hope FOX’s awful “Luis” won’t kill that chance again.
Luis (Guzman) is the owner of a Spanish Harlem donut shop named Park Avenue Donuts and the landlord of the building it’s in. The apartment building has some multi-ethnic tenants. Mrs. Gallagher (Eve Brenner) is an intolerable elderly Irish woman who lives in a rent-controlled apartment (her rent is $96.15 a month.) Zhing Zhang (Reggie Lee) is a Chinese delivery boy for Moon Palace Family Fine Dining who swears he was a cardiologist back in the “Old Country” and doesn’t speak English. TK (Malcolm Barrett) is a young African-American kid who harasses his customers by trying to sell them the “merchandise” he found in Luis’ dumpster. Luis has to deal with his family as well as his tenants. His ex-wife, Isabella (Diana-Maria Riva), helped start the donut shop with him, and despite acting nasty to him, keeps coming around all the time (Luis suspects that she still likes him.) Part of why she might be coming around is to visit their daughter, Marly (Jaclyn DeSantis), who lives in Luis’ building with her white boyfriend Greg (Wesley A. Ramsey.) While Marly is a responsible, hardworking, 23-year-old woman (she is a teller in a bank), Greg is a freeloading artist who hopes to pay his share of the rent by selling his paintings. Greg drives Luis nuts because he thinks that the boy sponges off his little girl. The last person in his life is Richie (Charlie Day), the donut shop assistant who is hot for Luis’ daughter, and doesn’t hide it.
In the first episode, Luis upsets Marly by demanding that Greg get a job. Greg’s fellowship money has run out, and Marly is paying his share of the rent. Greg gets frustrated that Luis doesn’t understand his “art,” and says that he will find another place to live. Luis is happy about this, until Isabella chews him out for upsetting their daughter. Luis caves in and allows Marly to pay Greg’s rent. The episode ends with Luis and Greg taking Mrs. Gallagher to see Zhing Zhang because she had a kidney stone (but it looked like she had a heart attack.)
In the second episode, Luis is thrilled when his ex-wife Isabella sets him up with one of her co-worker friends, Eva (Laura Ceron.) She did this so Luis would get over her. Eve is sexy and seems fun, but she has the annoying habit of agreeing with everything he says. Luis bails out of the date early and confronts Isabella about why she set him up with Eve (she knew about her agreeing habit.) He thinks she set him up with Eve because she knew that it wouldn’t work out and that she would have the option of getting back with him, since he thinks that she isn’t over him. She denies it, but when he goes in for a romantic kiss, Isabella invites him into her apartment to have sex. Also in this episode, Greg plans a romantic date with Marly to keep their romance alive (since she had pointed out that they never go on dates anymore), but is mad at her when she forgets about the date and works late at the bank. He quickly gets over it when she says that he can do the sexual thing he likes to do with her in the bedroom.
Why did the man who appeared in great movies like Traffic, Boogie Nights, and Punch Drunk Love agree to make this show? It is so unfunny that it is an insult to such a good actor. I’ll give you an example of the dialogue. Luis: “I don’t think it’s fair I gotta pay for something I can’t see (referring to the gas bill.)” Marly: “Well, you paid for your shoes and you can’t see those (she says this while patting his belly, meaning his belly gets in the way of seeing his feet.)” Luis: “I’m gonna let that go ‘cause…I’m fat.” Are your eyes welling up with tears of laughter yet?
All of the “colorful characters” are very annoying. I didn’t see much of Mrs. Gallagher, but I saw too much of the useless TK character. Richie seems to be doing the same character that Elizabeth Regen does on NBC’s “Whoopi,” the white, fake homeboy character (or homegirl for Regen.) It makes Jamie Kennedy’s Brad Gluckman character from Malibu’s Most Wanted look like Oscar material. Zhing Zhang confuses me, because he didn’t speak English at all until the closing credits of the first episode. Whether he speaks English or Chinese, he is an irritating stereotyped character.
“Luis” was so not the right first project for Guzman to lead. I think that between the two episodes I saw, I laughed maybe four times. The rest of the time, I spent wondering where he went wrong. I just hope that this show doesn’t bring down the still funny “Wanda at Large” and the guilty pleasure high school soap opera “Boston Public.” I’d love to see Guzman lead a TV drama for his next project, or at least a funny sitcom. Until then, I’ll watch around this show.
1/2
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