In this way, she follows in the footsteps of one of her comedy forebears, and one of the only big stars of the ‘80s not to cameo on her show: Joan Rivers. Probably this understanding arose from star and executive producer Fran Drescher’s real experiences in Hollywood, but she reproduces the expectation more or less uncritically. She seems to know that her beauty is a condition of acceptance-a kind of apology for her aesthetic and temperamental bigness, and for her Jewishness. Sylvia Fine turns up near daily at the Sheffield mansion to munch on cream puffs and terrorize the WASPy Sheffields by reminding them that the vivacious nanny they love may someday place her appetite for carbs over her appetite for Loehmann’s sales on teeny-tiny crop tops.įran is at frequents pains to assure Mr. The Nanny derives comedy from the revolting possibility that Fran might turn into her mother, who is constantly eating and- quelle horreur-a size twelve.
And, in the logic of the show, she’s probably not wrong. Fran’s unpretentious street-smarts and Yiddish-heavy vocabulary are the qualities that endear her to the Sheffield family and ultimately secure her place within it.īut she perceives these traits to be acceptable precisely because she is beautiful, and most of all thin. The show’s representation of fatness as threatening is at odds with its central thesis: that tackiness and loudness are primary source of charisma, connection, and power. Outside allergic incidents, Fran is known for her big hair and her tiny waist, and she is convinced that in the combination lies her only chance of getting somewhere in life. It ends there absolutely, obsessively prodding that boundary. In its aesthetics and its humor, The Nanny evinces an admiration for excess that extends right up to the possibility of having an excessive body. How do we remember a show that expanded the limits of what was lovable-but still placed fat people firmly outside the lines? As a result, its impact on a longer comedy tradition is in question. However, The Nanny has a limited place in our collective television memory, making appearances on niche social media accounts rather than a big streaming platform.
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Revisiting its preoccupation with fat jokes demonstrates the (limited) extent to which TV has moved on. The incongruous fear of fatness ultimately reveals what kinds of excess seemed possible for women on television in the 1990s. It’s weird for a show that embraces so many other kinds of bigness: loud voices with exaggerated Queens accents broad, slapstick comedy bright, over-the-top outfits. But in The Nanny, the embrace of fat jokes is strange.
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It’s one of a long series of shows that have used the fat suit device, from Friends to more recent fare like New Girl and Mad Men. The sitcom made a frequent habit of cruel fat jokes and plotlines like this one. Only when Fran is “deflated” can the romantic plot of the show recommence. In this punchline, fatness is revealed to be an inherited sin, transferred from mother to daughter for maximum comedic disaster. As it turns out, Fran’s swelling has resulted from a counterreaction to something she ate: a bowl of her mother’s diet soup, which contains vegetables, and, if she’s honest, a little bit of tortellini-just for flavor. On The Nanny, fat is the worst possible thing you can be, and it can happen to you at any moment. Sheffield replies through a grimace, “Miss Fine, don’t you be ridiculous! There’s two-three-six times as much of you to love!” This claim isn’t convincing Fran mutters to the doctor, “ Kill me, please.” Sheffield,” she moans, “you’re never going to find me attractive again!” Ever gallant, Mr. But a bad reaction to an allergy shot makes her balloon in size, still stuck inside her skintight dress. She’s finally about to seal the deal with the stern and respectable father of her charges, whose heart she’s melted with her wacky antics.
Thick thighs befall the titular nanny, Fran Fine, a wisecracking and trashy-fabulous woman from Queens. Late in the series run of CBS’s The Nanny, the show’s aesthetics of excess finally confront their final frontier: fatness.
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