The Nanny didn’t need six seasons to become a cultural touchstone, with Peter Marc Jacobson and Fran Drescher’s brainchild becoming one of the highest-rated sitcoms of the ’90s, earning 12 Emmy nominations and cementing its place in sitcom history. Prior to creating the iconic Fran Fine, Drescher had small roles in films such as Saturday Night Fever, UHF, and This Is Spinal Tap — all successful, but not star-making.
It was the birth of The Nanny that thrust the comedienne onto the A-list, with her portrayal of Fran Fine, a woman known for her fashion, her style, her flair, and being there. Or so spaketh the theme. But the excessive makeup and short skirts were window dressing (and, yes, actual dressing), for a character who proved love could exist between individuals and families from the other side of the tracks and of the religious spectrum. Although Fran herself would declare she’s not Mother Goose, there are undeniable lessons to be learned from the sitcom, fundamentally about the ways in which familial warmth is not based on socio-economic status, and that culture can intermix and be celebrated. No one does fish-out-of-water-and-I-don’t-give-a-rat’s quite like Fran Fine and her bowelant-haired family, and it is the embracing of such cultural tropes, of Yiddish, and of eating Chinese food after religious observances, that keeps the Fine family at the top of sitcom royalty, and as a lesson in the joys of leaning into the chaos!
Fran Drescher plays Fran Fine, a Jewish woman from Queens who gets fired from her job at a bridal store. Again, all this is covered in the theme song, a nice way to dodge the pratfalls of Pilot episode exposition. She lands a plum gig as a nanny to the Sheffield clan, a waspy family on the Upper East Side living in a mansion filled with polished banisters and repression. Essentially, it’s The Sound of Music meets Saturday Night Live, with all the traditional character tropes and jokes. But despite this, there remains something refreshing, inspiring even, in the Fine family’s embracing of their Jewishness. It’s like a celebration of nerves, a quality which apparently divided the cultural community in the early days. Some criticize the never ending gags surrounding excessive make-up, fat-shaming, man-chasing, and the obsession with status. But as with many criticisms of comedy, the outer layer is merely a comic fodder to reveal the truth: at the heart of the eccentric, over-the-top caricatures lie the most admirable qualities of family, loyalty, and desire to ‘do the right thing’ at any cost. Whether Fran is putting her job at risk by sticking up the children, putting her job at risk by doubling-down on her sense of right and wrong, or putting her job at risk by destroying her employer’s relationships with celebrities, she remains a bastion of good intentions, always getting it wrong, but somehow making it right.
Unlike the formal pleasantries of the Sheffield home, the familial warmth within the Fine household is one which emanates from bickering and long-held grudges borne of nothing at all. Of bonding over food, discount shopping, gossip, and of course, the long term quest to find Fran a Jewish doctor. Or Jewish accountant. Or Jewish man. Until, finally, she throws in the towel and declares she’s “down to ‘mammal’”. Such one-liners are typical of the New York Reform Jews as portrayed by the Fine family in their comfortable Left wing, unselfconscious attitude, dabbling in visits to but more excited by the prospect of a ‘traditional’ post-synagoge yum cha than any real interaction with a higher power. This easy-going attitude is relished by the Sheffield’s, who embrace Fran’s family and culture without prompting , celebrate Hanukkah, and play along with completely fabricated Jewish holidays and other excuses to attend a sale at Loehmann’s. Even language begins to lovingly infiltrate the Sheffield vocabulary, with the patriarch confessing his love for the occasional “kibbitz”, and the constant smattering of oy vey’s throughout the manor.
It’s not only Fran who has charmed her way into the hearts of the household, but also her spirited extended family. Constantly popping in unannounced are Fran’s gaudy and irrepressible mother, Syliva Fine (Renée Taylor), and equally unhinged grandmother, Yetta Rosenberg (Ann Morgan Guilbert). The two women delight in leaving a blanket of warmth and a healthy dose of conflict in their wake. These characters lead the parade of the kitsch glamor with their tight clothing, big hair and unequivocal love for the Sheffield children. Equally adored though only once seen in full view is Fran’s tv-loving, toupee-wearing, slighty-deaf father, Morty (Steve Lawrence) and best friend, the dimwitted but compeltely lovable, Valerie Toriello (Rachel Chagall).
