A & amp;E show misses mark

'Family Plots' is a reality series about a family of undertakers.
By JOANNE WEINTRAUB
MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL
"Family Plots" isn't a bad title for a reality series about a clan of undertakers, but after meeting the wacky Wissmillers of California's Poway Bernardo Mortuary, I had to wonder if "Death Takes a Holiday" wouldn't have been a more appropriate one.
When things get extra busy, ace embalmer Shonna Wissmiller Smith giggles about "spinning into a death spiral" and wanting to go into the parking lot and slit her wrists.
Younger sister Emily Wissmiller Vigney, who works in the office, and dad Chuck, who picks up the bodies, get into a food fight one lunch hour that starts with Chuck calling his daughter "mental" and ends with pizza sauce dripping down the wall.
As Chuck remarks amiably, some days he thinks they might as well change the name of the business from Poway Bernardo to "The House of Nuts."
This far-from-funereal family -- which also includes a third sister, hearse driver Melissa Wissmiller, and her fianc & eacute; and boss, Rick Sadler -- is A & amp;E's answer to the fictitious Fishers of "Six Feet Under."
Fans of the HBO drama will note that the new show's opening credits are more than slightly influenced by the stark, stylish look of the older one's. The occupational hazards -- straining one's back while lifting a hefty corpse, for instance -- are also familiar.
Endless wisecracks
But where rubbing elbows with the Grim Reaper day after day haunts the morose Fisher brothers, the Wissmillers are never at a loss for a wisecrack about bodily fluids.
This makes the first couple of half-hours kind of unsettling, even a little queasy.
Are folks in the funeral business as entitled as the rest of us to make flippant remarks and irreverent jokes behind the scenes? Absolutely. Do I want to hear them being made? Not so much.
It's not that the Wissmillers are uncaring; far from it. Shonna works her tail off in the embalming room so the family of an accident victim can see their relative one last time without undue trauma.
Rick, the future in-law who lacks the Wissmiller gene for flamboyant expression, sensibly observes that morticians can't afford to get emotionally involved with each grieving family. Like cops, crime reporters and emergency-room workers, they use black humor, some of it pretty caustic, to get them through the sad or grisly parts of their jobs.
Clumsy
But the producers can't seem to find the right tone to take us from a melancholy moment with a dead woman's daughters to a silly scene where some of the Poway Bernardo staff bet on who can last the longest without a cigarette.
In fact, the clumsiness of this reality series made me more impatient than ever for "Six Feet Under" to return in June.