Son of the Beach

It’s not deep. It’s not classy. It’s not subtle. It’s not even original. It’s just really, really fun. You’ve gotta be in the mood, but if you are, FX’s new spoof Son of the Beach is one rip-roaring way to spend a half-hour.

The exact TV equivalent of a good MAD magazine spoof...

This broad, bawdy style of humor usually doesn't work because it's hard to hit a target with silly jokes. In this case, the producers know exactly what they're doing; the jokes may be silly, but they're also sharp. [14 March 2000]

Son of the Beach is everything you'd expect from a TV comedy executive produced by Howard Stern - and more. It's unbelievably vulgar - and one of the best bits of dopey humor television has featured since "Police Squad!" [13 March 2000, p.15]

Son of the Beach is a loose, louche parody of Baywatch, and it's actually very funny sometimes. Stern didn't create it but he clearly has a lot of input into the scripts.

Stack, Stern and the other executive producers created "on of the Beach with "over-the-top" as the show's mantra. It may not hold up on a weekly basis, but this first trip to the "Beach" is outrageous fun.

Son of the Beach is sophomoric, off-color, tasteless, obvious, sexist and offensive to several races. It's also fairly funny, a cheeky, sunny, goofy, low-budget "Police Squad!" version of "Baywatch" produced by that nasty-talking proponent and arbiter of everything tacky in American mass media, Howard Stern. [14 March 2000, p.E8]

But so help me (and I'm not proud of this) Son of the Beach made me laugh. Out loud. Several times. I may not respect myself in the morning, but I'm having a good time tonight. [14 March 2000, p.35]

For fans of amply endowed eye candy and anatomy-centered gags of the PG-13 variety, it's Nirvana. [14 March 2000]

The potential problem is that it's dumb funny, not smart funny. This may be what FX is looking for as it tries to become known for something other than reruns of somebody else's shows. But Stack has proven he's considerably smarter than Notch Johnson, having hosted the clever make-believe talk show, "Nightstand with Dick Dietrick" on E! Entertainment Television. [14 March 2000]

Judging from the lone episode sent out for review, Son of the Beach does a reasonably good job of achieving that goal - at the same time that it meets all expectations of sniggering humor. The show clearly never met an innuendo, double-entendre or sex-oriented pun it didn't like. [14 March 2000]

Simple. It's not very funny. [14 March 2000, p.1E]

Welcome to Son of the Beach, a Howard Stern production, where the jokes are as broad and obvious as a beached whale, and where bikini'd female flesh is as plentiful as lip piercings at Lollapalooza. [14 March 2000, p.D04]