Who is watching Lopez Vs Lopez?
And who is the show really for..?
*Editor’s Note 5/11/2025
I am reposting this because I was right. The show was just cancelled by NBC and the fallout is ongoing. Mayan Lopez’s response is that it was “fucking rude.”
Recently, NBC sitcom, Lopez Vs Lopez, was renewed for a third season. This came as a surprise because for the life of me, I couldn’t tell you who’s actually watching this show…or who the audience is supposed to be.
Comedian turned actor/producer, George Lopez, has been in the spotlight recently and for all the wrong reasons, but if recent news and the comments on his social media are anything to go by, it seems odd that his current TV show is doing so well.
Admittedly, I’m not a fan of the show.
I’ve tried (multiple times), to watch clips from the series, but every time I do they are never funny. They are, what the kids call “cringe,” and I hate that feeling when it’s supposed to be something that allegedly represents me.
I also know that I am not the target demographic for the show but surely there are people out there who watch it…but who? Clearly NBC thinks someone is, otherwise why renew it?
Reviews on IMDB are polar opposite; people either hate the show or think it’s god’s gift to sitcom TV. I tend to think the people who profess they love the show are either fake or delusional.
According to NBC, the show “reached nearly 10 million total viewers across all platforms” and, their words, “is the highest-indexing broadcast program among English-dominant Hispanic households.”
Again, surprising. And just who are the people in these so-called “English-dominant Hispanic households” and why are they watching this awful program? And what the fuck does that even mean? How the fuck would NBC know if a household is “English-dominant” and who qualifies as “Hispanic” to the network…?
Questions…
Lopez Vs. Lopez is not funny, full-stop.
George Lopez’s old show, which seems ancient now, his old talk show, and of course, his old stand up, were hilarious. It’s what made Lopez Lopez and why he is where he is today.
His short-lived show Lopez, which ran 24 episodes in 2016, was funny and it was unapologetically Chicano. Sadly, it did not “vibe” with the network the way his current show does. That’s telling because the old show was, in my Chicano opinion, authentic. His new show is puro pedo.
The old show’s tag-line read:
“Too rich to go back to his working-class Latino roots and too "brown" to feel comfortable in his affluent celebrity life, being George Lopez comes with many problems.”
That’s the George Lopez we all know and it’s about as far from whatever his current show is about as you can get. He also didn’t look like the Mexican Albert Einstein back then either.
Lopez did not become one of the most well-known Chicano comics by cowering from hecklers, looking like a slob, painting his nails or letting his family belittle him weekly on network TV. The old George was chingón.
LVL comes off as a show that exists to do two things;
1.) Treat an aging and continually out-of-touch George Lopez as a human piñata for everyone to beat the shit out of for fake laughs.
2.) Serve as a network-approved nepotism vehicle to shoehorn his unlikeable daughter into showbiz.
No one asked for Mayan Lopez and if we’re being brutally honest here, she would not be on TV were it not for her famous dad.
Her acting chops are god-awful and the chemistry between her and her dad on screen is terrible. It’s insane to me that the people who are shelling out the cash to fund this dreck are watching it and going, “Oh, yeah. This works. This is funny.”
Many of the reviews reviews on IMDB call for Mayan’s character to be recast, so I know it’s not just me who cannot stand her. She sucks.
Her character is insufferable, mean-spirited and the lead puncher with her dad serving as a human punching bag on the show and no amount of celeb cameos can fix that.
The show is supposed to be a light-hearted take on the real life Lopez family dysfunction, but truth be told it just thinly veiled dysfunction set to a god-awful laugh track.
On some level, the show feels like a kind of penance that Saint George is self-imposing for the numerous sins he committed against his family over the years. And just how does Saint George he repay his debt?
By self-flagellating himself before the network and the “10-million viewer audience” in an effort to help his daughter.
That’s the only way this show - and the current iteration of George Lopez the person - make any sense to me.
Still, it must have some kind of fanbase unless NBC is trying to somehow force the show into success, at a loss, though that seems highly unlikely.
The only way I can rationalize any of this is by comparing modern day George Lopez to modern Day Howard Stern.
Stern, like Lopez, was completely and totally different a few decades ago. Both men built their audiences by being raw, unapologetic and politically incorrect - both using edgy and vulgar humor to pave their way to prominence, though Lopez was not nearly as vulgar as Stern. Even still, they were unafraid.
Today both men are unrecognizable from their former selves and both pretend the people they use to be never existed. It’s no surprise then that both of their fanbases have noticed and are extremely unhappy.
And yet, both men have completely different fanbases now, most of which consist of people who were either not fans in the old days and either don’t know or don’t care about who they used to be or old fans who hate the current version and are bitterly clinging to the idea of the old one.
For Stern, this is completely ridiculous as his excuse is “I was out of my mind back then.” Stern absolutely revels in shitting on his former fanbase in lieu of his newfound “woke” status.
But with Lopez - a guy who is a rarity among celebrities because he was always unapologetically Chicano and seemed to revel in being just another vato - he seems to want his cake and eat it too now and his old fans are not having it. In fact, most of them can’t stand him now.
As far as I can tell, no one likes the new George Lopez.
Truth be told the old George Lopez would rip the new one apart and I think, deep down, he knows that. It’s written all over his face.
And yet his show was renewed for a third season.
If Lopez is to be believed, it’s also up for more than one award. Again, this is not all that different from Stern, who was recently renewed at Sirius for a ridiculous amount of money despite being despised by his fans.
This begs the question then: who the hell is watching Lopez Vs. Lopez??
I couldn’t tell you.
The show, in my opinion, seems forced.
George seems forced, as if someone is making him do all of this. But that would be a convenient excuse.
The new show seems to be an industry pet project for pats on the back and diversity accolades by those in the industry.
I don’t buy the 10-million viewers stat from NBC but I do think some people are watching the show. I also think that most of them are probably not Chicano and certainly not George’s old fans.
If you look up who actually creates the show you’ll find a myriad of diversity. And that would be great if the show was actually funny and if it actually related to Chicanos on some level. Spoiler: it doesn’t.
The show was co-created by Debby Wolfe, the daughter of a Salvadorian immigrant mother and a Jewish father.
Wolfe, raised in Miami, uses words like “Latine” and “Latinx” and that tells you all you really need to know about who makes Lopez Vs. Lopez and who they’re aiming for.
“I think our industry fails to recognize that Latine people are not a monolith.” - Wolfe says in an interview.
And while I agree with her, the very use of “Latine” and “industry” tells me that the execs at the networks are banking on pushing a show that actually does appeal to a monolith - a woke one that shits all over everything from the past.
It would be one thing is LVL were a funny Chicano-centric show. And honestly, I could see 90’s George Lopez doing that. But it’s not.
LPL feels like simple pandering. It feels like the network checking off a box and patting itself on the back for doing so. And it feels like it could be titled “That Hispanic Show.”
And I know we’re supposed to celebrate our “wins” and rah, rah, rah, but this show just feels like bullshit.
I might feel differently if George Lopez were just another milk toast Latino celeb but that’s not who he was or how he built his fanbase. If LVL were an unapologetically Chicano show then that would be something worth celebrating but it’s anything but.
It’s just more pandering being celebrated as “authentic” by people who see us as nothing more than a check box, and George is helping them every step of the way - paying that price in order to set up his daughter.
Lopez Vs Lopez feels fake, forced and hollow, which is a shame because it has a lot of Brown faces on it. Despite what the network or its creators say, it is not FUBU - for us by us - they won’t allow that.
Personally, I will take something unapologetic and authentic over something to check a box any day and will pass on Lopez Vs Lopez and anything else Hollywood tries so desperately to force.
S/C
I don't watch it. You pretty much nailed it. His daughter has no business being on television. I do like the little boy and hope he has a future in acting. I'd rather watch Primo or What's up Fool. But they both were cancelled.
Member when Lopez was funny? I member...