Last summer saw the debut of ABC Family’s hilarious new series MELISSA & JOEY starring Melissa Joan Hart and Joey Lawrence. As a family show, the series focuses on the challenges of a fun-loving politician who, after taking in her teenage niece and nephew after their parents are caught up in an criminal scandal, hires a manny to help out — a former business executive and money manager who just happened to be one of the victims of a ponzi-scheme scandal. The daily travails and conflicts of this make-shift family leads to much comedic tension and provides a light family drama as they all attempt to navigate the tenuous familial life created out of the most absurd circumstances.
As fans of MY FAKE FIANCÉ already know, the chemistry between Melissa Joan Hart and Joey Lawrence is dazzling. Whenever they are on screen together, they are riveting. While the show does not overtly focus on the will-they-or-wont-they kind of romantic entanglement, seeing Melissa and Joey’s characters dance around each other as they simultaneously strive to provide parental guidance to Ryder and Lennox — it is clear that they are not only role models for them, but they are also the bookends for their lives in this mixed-up world of comedy laced with a golden heart.
MELISSA & JOEY is about family in the most unusual of circumstances and how love grows in the midst of comedic, and yet perhaps predestined relationships. Family is not something that you have to be born into — it is the people that love you and care for you no matter what the circumstances. [Read more…]