Bill Engvall Puts Comedy In A Family Way

Go ahead and call Bill Engvall middle of the road. That’s exactly where he’s aiming.

Bill Engvall
He’s ridden his clean-as-a-whistle standup routine to glory as part of the megasuccessful Blue Collar Comedy Tour — where he pals around with fellow down-home funnymen Jeff Foxworthy, Ron White and Larry the Cable Guy — and now stars in his own TBS sitcom The Bill Engvall Show. The show’s second season begins June 12.

The Galveston, Texas, born comic is trying to emulate the family-friendly shows he has always loved, the kind of traditional three-camera laughfest that used to dominate the airwaves but people now say is dead. Engvall believes the market never went away, only the desire on the part of the networks to produce the shows. The numbers so far prove he has a point. The first season of his show ranked among the top sitcoms cable had to offer.

He mentions influences like Dick Van Dyke, Bill Cosby and Bob Newhart. While he knows his lack of edginess won’t win him many critical raves, he’s more than content winning praise from everyday people. He took some time from rehearsal to share with us his quest to bring back the family sitcom.

It’s nice to see a guy on TV, especially a dad, who isn’t a slob, who actually likes his kids, and isn’t automatically wrong all the time. Was that on your mind when you came up with the show?

Bill Engvall: I’m glad you brought that up, because that was one of the things that when TBS came to me and said, “We want to do a show,” I said, “That’s great, but I don’t want that typical finger-wagging wife and the husband who you don’t know how he gets out of bed without his wife’s help in the morning.” Because in my tours across the country, that’s the resounding comment I get, is “Finally, a normal family.” They sit around the dinner table, they talk, the kids smart off and the parents put them in line.

I don’t know where it got started, but it just seems like, maybe because it was the easy way to go out, but you don’t have to have it. One of the things I’m most proud of is last season, this family said grace at the dinner table. I don’t know why we’ve gotten so far away from that, just being a normal family.

You’re known as a blue-collar comedian, but Bill Pearson doesn’t hold a blue-collar job. Why did you decide to make him a family therapist, and were you encouraged to go a different route with the character?

If you watch the Blue Collar Tour, I was probably the least redneck of everybody. So it wasn’t that big of a step. But Blue Collar was a blast. I always say Blue Collar was like being married to a rich girl. It’s great, but you want to show that you can earn your own living after a while. So what I wanted out of this show was I wanted a show that would appeal to the masses, whether you’re a plumber or a Sheetrock hanger, or a doctor or a lawyer, whatever. You didn’t have that regionality, you didn’t have that, “Oh it’s a Southern show.” That’s why we set it in Colorado. It’s the middle of the country. I wanted this show to appeal to everyone across the country.

So what’s Bill Pearson going to get himself into this season?

Oh, we’ve got one where it’s an anniversary show and Nancy says we shouldn’t get gifts this year, and of course as a guy you go, “Does that mean no gifts or are you just saying no gifts?” I think the story arc you’re going to see this year is just this family, every day is a new day. One of the shows we’re doing, and it actually comes from true life, my son is 16 in real life and just trying to get him out of bed to go to school, you would think I was asking him to go give blood. And so we’re trying to find story ideas like that. What I want is a family to be watching the show and the husband nudges the wife or the wife nudges the husband and goes, “That’s you” or “That’s our kids.” I think that’s one of the things we are really striving for this year is that relatability to the American family.

Having a season under your belt, are you more confident this time around?

Oh yeah, I’m a lot more high-maintenance. [Laughs] When we had our first table read of the second season, everybody just picked up like it was last week. Everybody’s got their characters down now. There is that confidence. I’d be lying if I didn’t say that confidence comes from the reassurance we’ve been given from TBS. They love the show, they’re behind the show. My goal is for The Bill Engvall Show to be a show the networks look at and say, “Ooh, maybe we should get back to the family sitcom.” One of my favorite stories is when we were premiering last year is, my gosh, we just got raked across the coals, me and TBS, people saying, “Why would they do this? This genre is dead.” You know what, it’s not dead. The only reason they say it’s dead is that they just decided to stop doing it. You know as well as I do that the family sitcom was the stalwart of TV for God knows how many decades. Go back to Dick Van Dyke and The Honeymooners. Every year it was one of those shows that was in the top 10. They just stopped doing it. I don’t know if they got bored or what but I’m just so thrilled that TBS has decided to come back and say, “Let’s get good family [shows] back on TV.”

I was watching something on TV the other day, and I couldn’t believe the language — and this isn’t cable, this is network — the way kids talk to their parents, and the language that parents use. Maybe I’m getting older, but I don’t want to have to sit and explain stuff, or be embarrassed when a girl pulls her top off. And I think if you were to poll most of America, other than the coasts, if you go to Omaha, Neb., or Kansas City, Mo., they don’t want to see that either.

You’d been on a lot of shows before, so did you bring some lessons with you that might have helped you here?

You know what the biggest lesson I learned was, and if I could pat myself on the back for one thing, it would be this, one of the things that I hear on our set, and this is from crew, and people that have done hundreds of shows, they say that they’ve never had more fun on a show. My theory is this: You work your whole life to get this shot, why would you be a jackass? Why would you make this a hard thing to do and be difficult to work with? As I told the cast, when you get up in the morning, there should be a smile on your face going, “I get to go make a TV show.” I say this with all sincerity, I really don’t understand these people that are difficult to work with. It’s not that hard. You’re not hanging Sheetrock. You’re not pouring concrete. I’ve done that. That’s a job. This is fun.

You look at it and it just wears you out. It’s like, “What’s the drama going to be today?” Listen, we all have bad days. Overall, it’s easy to get caught up in “How come I’m not doing this, how come I’m not doing that?” But the bottom line is, every Thursday night, I’m on TV. And that’s a very cool thing.

Nancy Travis and I were talking the other day on the set, and it hits you every once in a while, we were rehearsing scenes and just standing there, and I said, “You know how many people would give their right leg just to get a pilot?” Then you get a pilot and it gets picked up for a series, and then a series that gets picked up for a second year and it’s miniscule the amount of people who get to do this. We’re in an elite group, and I don’t mean talent-wise, but people don’t get this shot. I try to remember that in the sense that one of these days this is all going to go away — I know that — for whatever reason. And when it does, I want to be able to sit back and look at my wife and go, “God, that was fun.” You know, why do you want to look back and go, oh, it was so miserable? Well, then, don’t do it. Go do something else. And when it stops being fun, then I’ll stop doing it. But hopefully that won’t be for a long time.