The Mick is about a loveable lowlife named Mackenzie “Mick” Murphy who ends up having to raise her wealthy sister’s spoiled-ass kids after she and her husband are accused of tax evasion and have to flee the country (and the law). The pilot establishes Olson’s character as something of a modern-day version of the classic rebel, like a stereotypical slacker in the Nineties who just decided to own it all the way into her late thirties.
Micky (as she’s sometimes called) is wild in a fun way, as if all of her experience conning and getting over have given her a unique point of view as well as some very helpful “life skills.” Although she does have a few things in common with Sweet Dee, she’s different in a very specific way -- she’s a good person. In Sunny, Dee (like the rest of the gang) is straight-up toxic. That funky variation on the group-of-friends-who-work-together trope was, and still is, that show’s defining characteristic -- and its rude charm. Instead of the characters slowly learning from their mistakes and improving as adult individuals, they learn nothing at all and, more often than not, become even shittier people.
The Mick, however, centers on a leading lady with a heart. That heart is buried under the crust of a perpetual three-day bender, but it’s there.
The kids in this show -- Sabrina, Chip and Ben (Sofia Black-D’Elia, Thomas Barbusca and Jack Stanton, respectively) -- do a very good job of pissing everyone off right at the start. They remind me of the mother in Mrs. Doubtfire in that they’re not necessarily bad, but they still give me every reason to root for the other guy. In my opinion they absolutely need a good old-fashioned butt-whoppin,’ though. They have some serious issues with authority that they express in ways that, well, let’s just say I wouldn’t have been able to get away with when I was their age.
It is fun watching Micky outsmart her bitchy older sister, or seeing her “guy” Jimmy (Scott MacArthur) give his brand of fatherly advice to the severely misguided, bratty middle-child, but the icing on the cake is the youngest boy, Ben. He still has the innocence of youth, and as it happens that makes him the source of some the cutest grown-up/little-kid exchanges I’ve ever seen.
A handful of sub characters are also introduced during the pilot, the most notable being Alba (Carla Jimenez), the family’s in-house hired help; Liz, the snooty/nosey neighbor, and an unnamed community security guard who has it out for Mackenzie. The latter two provide a couple of decent opportunities for quick laughs, but Alba is the stand out of the bunch. Her primary purpose seems to be playing second fiddle to Mick whenever she’s in need of a partner-in-crime. (Pictured below, left to right: Olson, Jimenez, Black-De'Elia, Barbusca and Stanton).