Okay, this had to be the one, didn’t it? I mean, come on–two consecutive good reviews in a row? For Tyler Perry titles? Surely this is the one! This is the one where, if it were a used car, the wheels fly off and the undercarriage starts throwing sparks and the radio starts screaming insults at me. It’s Meet The Browns Season Three, and the folks at Lions Gate sent out a copy for me to review. Time to see if the Broken Clock Principle swings both ways!

Once again, Meet The Browns takes us back out to Brown Meadows and the various Browns–and not so Browns–that have come to make up the highly unconventional Brown family. And there’s plenty of change going on at the Brown house, in pretty much every sense of the term. A lot of things are going on out there; people are leaving, some new ones are arriving, and the ones who stick around are somewhat different than they were.

And indeed, this is the series where things start going wrong. See, Tyler Perry makes the horrendous mistake of making Meet The Browns a bit more like House of Payne. In a surprisingly large number of instances, events that are clearly not at all funny are thrown in–someone gets assaulted, the Browns’ quasi-adopted daughter (who will later become adopted) is on birth control and likely sleeping around, and then there’s the worst of the lot where the younger Browns actually threaten their quasi-adopted daughter with a RETURN TO FOSTER CARE if she doesn’t improve her attitude.  They threaten to, essentially, THROW THEIR OWN KID AWAY if she doesn’t do as she’s told. That’s not funny. That’s disturbing.

But then, then Meet The Browns manages to recover by going back to its true strength, the thoroughly irrepressible antics of David Mann, surprisingly top-notch comic actor. Mann throws himself into his comedy, throwing up both the comedy of dialogue (the man commits more Spoonerisms than possibly even Spooner himself) and some great physical comedy on the side. The man is excellent, and he’s backed up by some surprisingly good writing.

And after a few false starts, you’ll find much of the rest of Meet The Browns surprisingly palatable. A little too much Tyler Perry drama gets into this for my tastes, but there’s still plenty of fine Meet The Browns comedy. I’m hopeful that future seasons of Meet The Browns will understand what works and what doesn’t, but this one is starting to show some cracks.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Meet The Browns Season Three a seven out of ten–a little too much Tyler Perry drama gets infused in this one, but a good chunk of the earlier-season laughs still manages to slip through and provide a good time.

When the folks out at Lions Gate sent over a copy of Meet The Browns Season Two, I have to admit, I was looking forward to it. This was by itself a strange new feeling for me: looking forward to watching anything Tyler Perry had to offer was a wholly new experience. But would I be disappointed? Would Perry’s oeuvre of heavy-handed pretentious crap come back to bite me by giving me a taste of the good life and then yanking it away like the tablecloth under a stack of crystal glassware?

Meet The Browns takes us back to Brown Meadows, where Leroy Brown, his doctor nephew and his nurse niece in law, are doing their best to keep up the newest retirement home in town. And while the home is packed with some of the strangest old folks you’ll ever hope to meet, the sheer amount of strangeness that the Browns and company will take on is going to mystify anyone who watches, including us.

There will be some substantial differences between the first season and the second. And I found this one didn’t have so many big laughs as the previous one, but it did still have a decent number of them. Admittedly, I was starting to get a bit concerned when the first fifteen minutes of an episode and no laughs, but thankfully, it didn’t take long for the laughs to kick back up.

It’s never a good idea to start a whole season off on a weak note, and that’s just what happens here. However, it recovers quickly, and gets us back to the laughs, which is not only where this series has proven amply that it can be, but where history has shown that it’s the best. It’s sad to say that the second season isn’t as good as the first, but it is comparable, and at the end of the day, that’s pretty good indeed. It’s still a delight, for the most part, even if it’s a bit less of a delight than it was previously.

And frankly, this never fails to amaze me. I am actively enjoying a Tyler Perry title. That’s weird. It has never happened to me before. But here it is, I’m laughing along happily with Meet The Browns. It’s the best thing I’ve seen Tyler Perry do, and frankly, I wish he’d do more like this. Instead of godawful low-budget plays and sanctimonious Serious Film, Tyler Perry needs to put more of his effort–in fact, all his efforts–into sheer pure blinding comedy. I’d happily watch more Tyler Perry if it were all as hilarious as Meet The Browns.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Meet the Browns Season Two a seven out of ten; it’s not quite as good as season one was, but season two will have plenty of good quality laughs in its own right.

It may surprise some of you to know that there’s another Tyler Perry show on the market called Meet The Browns. And the folks out at Lions Gate sent over a copy of Meet The Browns Season One for us to tackle for you. The question of course will be whether or not this particular batch of Tyler Perry will be any better than his previous incarnations, which have largely been disastrous.

Meet The Browns takes us out to Brown Meadows, a retirement home made from what used to be a private residence, but was converted into a retirement home on the strength of a promise a man named Leroy Brown made his deceased father. But what Mr. Brown is going to discover is that running a retirement home is going to be a whole lot more complex than he first imagined. But since his son is a doctor, and his son’s wife is a nurse, he’s got the beginnings of a big undertaking. But can he survive it all with his sanity–and his house–intact?

I don’t believe I’m about to type this, but seriously, folks…Meet The Browns is unquestionably the most hilarious thing I’ve ever seen from Tyler Perry. Ever. EV-ER. I laughed. This alone should tell you something, considering I’ve referred to Perry’s previous work as everything from “godawful” “piles of melodrama” to “(a) putrefacted carcass“. But clearly, this is where all the funny that Tyler Perry could muster has gone. This is his entire stock of funny, all thrown into one package. All the jokes that should have been in For Colored Girls or anything Madea-related or that spectacular exercise in masochism known as House of Payne have all migrated to Meet The Browns.

And while everyone in the story is doing a fine job of keeping up, the clear winner of Meet The Browns has to be Mr. Brown himself, David Mann. This guy is one of the best comic actors I’ve seen in the longest time. He does a terrific job intermingling physical humor with a kind of raw idiocy intermingled with a gentle, goodhearted nature that blends so beautifully that makes this a hilarious piece of work.

I can’t believe I’m saying half this stuff about anything that came out of Tyler Perry’s endless maw of horror and misery, but Meet The Browns Season One is an untrammeled delight that proves that even a broken clock is right twice a day.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives the endless laugh riot that is Meet The Browns Season One an eight out of ten. It’s packed to the gills with laughs, and I”m amazed to realize this is as good as it is. Bravo, Tyler Perry…you managed to get one right. For a change.