In Saturday's episode, Snoop loses a push-up contest with his older son ("Elizabeth, I'm comin' to join you," he wheezes, echoing Redd Foxx) and it is decided that he should see a doctor. Much is made of his fear of needles, which may be genuine enough, and the doctor sends him first to a yoga class, and then to a blind acupuncturist, from whom he runs. (He discovers finally that vacuuming is his Zen.) In another, he tries to get his kids to share his love of soccer -- "I'm trying to get y'all thinking outside of America" -- which leads to his claiming a nonexistent friendship with David Beckham. It's the premise that launched a thousand guest shots, and Beckham appears in due course.Like Ozzy Osbourne, the George Washington of the genre, Snoop has no problem playing the butt of the joke: He's the father as child. Although coming attractions suggest that we will eventually see him at work, in the first episodes he's as randomly occupied as Ozzie Nelson, and, like Ozzie, spends a lot of time thinking about food. Sneaking fried chicken, which wife Shanté has cut from his menu, is about as bad as he gets.
We heard nothing about Snoop's real adventures in porn and pimping, his near-divorce in 2004, his early incarceration and ongoing brushes with the law. Some kinds of reality are more appropriate to this venue than others, obviously, and with a name out of "Peanuts" and a manner to which the word "laconic" barely does justice, the star can seem darn near cuddly. Shanté, for her part, has a spark and an ease that suggest she might do well playing someone other than herself, in some other, wholly, unashamedly invented context.
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