They’re linked in spirit and schedule

Let’s get one thing straight: Just because George Lopez and Freddie Prinze Jr. are Latino men with their own sitcoms on ABC, and their shows just happen to be scheduled consecutively on Wednesday nights, doesn’t mean there’s a new “Latin hour” on prime-time television.

So, por favor, don’t call it that. Nobody called the pairing of the wacky Barones on “Everybody Loves Raymond” and the emotionally challenged Harper brothers on “Two and a Half Men” the “white hour,” did they?

“Shows should just be able to be shows without hyphenating their lead characters,” Lopez said. “[With] us, they feel like they need to somehow label it to say, ‘All right, this is what you’re going to be watching, so are you sure you want to watch?’ But they don’t do it to people who are Jewish or African American. Because we have the muscle but we need the voice to say you can’t do that to us. Just watch because you think the shows are funny. Don’t watch because we’re a couple of Latino guys.”

To which Prinze added: “I have no patience for that. Because Latino is cool, all of a sudden, they’re like, we’ll say this and we’ll be cool. Shut your face, man. It’s TV.”

Actually, there’s a lot more to it than TV. Both Lopez and Prinze, whose lives and careers are connected by the tragic death at a young age of Prinze’s father, Freddie Prinze Sr., feel they have a lot to prove to the television industry, to mainstream America and to themselves. To them, the idea that their back-to-back shows on ABC have been labeled “the Latin hour” undermines the historic and cultural impact of what the shows bring to the entertainment landscape.

For the first time, there will be two shows centered on Latino families hailing from different cultures (“The George Lopez Show” is Mexican, “Freddie” is Puerto Rican) and socioeconomic perspectives (Lopez is working class, Prinze is upscale) but who have no qualms about expressing their Latino pride. Additionally, “The George Lopez Show” will air its 100th episode this season. It’s the first time a show about a Latino family has reached that milestone, which potentially means big-time syndication dollars. And for its creator and star, it means a place in history next to the only other Latinos who had hit shows: Desi Arnaz and Freddie Prinze Sr.

“It means a lot in that I always felt invisible and I was louder in my own head than I was verbally,” Lopez said. “I was torturing myself, wanting to say things and not knowing how to be. The stand-up was a way out but it never came easy. So to have something that’s named after me make it, and that has history tied to Desi and Freddie and now Freddie Jr., it’s unbelievable to me because I never really thought anything good would happen to me.”

In recent years, TV has introduced characters who are able to remain true to their Latino roots without hitting viewers over the head with their ethnicity: Rico (Freddy Rodriguez) and Vanessa (Justina Machado) on “Six Feet Under,” nurse Carla (Judy Reyes) on “Scrubs” and Gabrielle (Eva Longoria) and Carlos (Ricardo Antonio Chavira) on “Desperate Housewives.” (Although the latter drew the ire of Latinos when it was revealed that the wealthiest couple on Wisteria Lane gained its riches illegally.)

“This is indeed a milestone but it’s 2005: Why has it taken so long?” said Vince Gutierrez, a National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences governor who chairs the diversity committee. “There is finally recognition that the themes that George’s show portrays cross racial lines and have struck a chord with the viewing audience.”

But even now as Lopez approaches a career landmark, months after his wife donated one of her kidneys to save his life, and just before his idol’s son will become the fourth Latino man to star in his own show, Lopez resents that he hasn’t gained the level of respect of other comics with their own sitcoms, such as Ray Romano or Chris Rock.

“I think it’s easier for African American and white comics to be praised than it is Latinos because they think our culture or our humor is substandard,” Lopez said. “I mean, I just don’t think they want to give us credit. I just don’t think that they see us as important enough to be at their level.... I’m the longest-produced [comedy] at Warner Bros. and I don’t feel special. They come over and say hello. But everybody’s gonna make a lot of money and I don’t feel like I’m special to them.”

Personal approach

Inspired by the lives of their stars, “The George Lopez Show” and “Freddie” demonstrate what should already be obvious as the Latino population has swelled and the culture blended more into the mainstream.

“If you leak anything out, it’s that we are very different,” wisecracked the 44-year-old Lopez, who grew up in the San Fernando Valley. He finds it perplexing that such a fact needs to be pointed out at a time when Latinos, the largest minority group in the country, represent $700 billion a year in buying power and 11.2 million homes with TV sets.

Lopez’s 4-year-old sitcom depicts a Mexican American family in Los Angeles; Freddie’s family is Puerto Rican and lives in Chicago. George is a working-class airplane manufacturing plant manager; Freddie is a chef and owner of an upscale restaurant.

George’s show revolves around a nuclear family of four and George’s mother, who lived alone until last week’s season premiere, when her house burned down. Through it, Lopez says he has worked out many of the painful issues of his childhood that make his stand-up act so poignant.

On “Freddie,” which premieres tonight, the lead character is a successful bachelor who takes in three generations of women, including a sister-in-law, to live with him in his fancy digs while trying to balance his love life and relationship with his best friend, played by Brian Austin Green. (In a groundbreaking role, actress Jenny Gago will play the grandmother, speaking only in Spanish; her dialogue will be subtitled.)

The son of Freddie Prinze Sr., whose sitcom “Chico and the Man” broke new ground in 1974 and who shot himself while intoxicated on sedatives at age 22 in 1977, grew up in New Mexico with his Italian mother, grandmother, aunts and godmother, and spent the summers in Puerto Rico with his father’s family.

“When I was growing up, people had whatever image they had about my father, and I’m not crazy about talking about it because it wasn’t a very good image,” said Prinze, 29, who was only 10 months old when his father died. “These parents of the children within my school would look at me and they would see him. They would see a man that took drugs and ended his life, and whether they wanted to believe it was an accident or a suicide, it didn’t matter. Their child wasn’t hanging out with Freddie Prinze Jr.”

So the son did the only thing he knew to clear his father’s name: He became the best man he could be, working three jobs in high school in New Mexico to help his mother with the bills, and moving to Los Angeles at 18 to become an actor and portray “stand-up guys that made mistakes but understood what they were and weren’t going to make them again.” Never a party boy, Prinze married actress Sarah Michelle Gellar in 2002.

“They [people] can’t fathom what it’s like to share that name and read something bad about the man who gave it to you,” Prinze said. “So I worked as hard as I could to clean up that name.... To do this show is me testing those waters and if it succeeds, I don’t care as long as respect is paid to my father.”

What Prinze did not know as he was growing up was that in the San Fernando Valley there was a Mexican American teenager who lived for “Chico and the Man” and was crushed when its funny and sexy star died suddenly. That teenager was Lopez, who says he never believed he could follow in his idol’s footsteps, though he always dreamed it.

“The first time I saw him, I wanted to be like him,” Lopez said. “He was so young and cool and Latino and everybody loved him. And then when he passed, it was devastating to me. I later learned that he was tortured, like I was tortured, and I learned to fight through it.”

Then fate intervened. At least, that’s how Lopez, Prinze and the man who managed his father, Ron De Blasio, see it. Lopez, who had been working the stand-up circuit for many years in the hopes of getting his own sitcom, met De Blasio six years ago. De Blasio had managed such comic heavyweights as Bill Cosby, George Carlin and Richard Pryor, but after his young client’s death he gave up comedians for musicians. Eventually, Lopez wore him down.

“Freddie Sr. was a very funny guy but he was also a very, very bright guy with an exceptional IQ,” said De Blasio, who has remained an “uncle” to Junior. “He could have been whatever he wanted to be. And I just felt his presence when I was with George. I felt like this was probably the extension of what Freddie and I were going to do and finishing it out.”

Restoring father’s name

In 2002, Lopez finally got his own show, and later wound up living four houses away from Prinze Jr.’s mother. They became friends, and she gave him his idol’s key chain and his old American Express card. Then two years ago, Lopez met her son.

“I don’t know what the word is, but there’s a stronger spirit out there and a stronger being and a stronger essence that made all these things happen,” De Blasio said. “Freddie Jr. didn’t get to this town and go crazy, even when he suffered defeat and people said things about his dad that weren’t true. He remained a good kid and very decent guy and he’s bringing his father’s name back that way. And George has helped him with that.”

It was Lopez who campaigned for Prinze Sr.’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, which was unveiled in December. When Prinze Jr. signed a deal with ABC, Lopez, who says he still feels like a “mother hen to a fragile egg” on his own show, was there to provide guidance and allowed his executive producer, Bruce Helford, to run “Freddie” as well.

“George Lopez says without Freddie Prinze there’s no George Lopez,” Prinze Jr. said. “But without George Lopez, my father never gets his star. Without George Lopez, nobody says good stuff about my father. And the fact that he goes above and beyond to help me, after he’s succeeded, that’s a big deal to me. I can count on one hand the people who have character who do that in this business. But it’s always guys like George. It’s always the people who have been disrespected and who have not been treated well their whole life who say, ‘I’m not going to let that happen to somebody else.’ ”

Perhaps part of the reason Lopez feels the industry does not hold him in high enough regard is that ABC has moved the show four times (joked Prinze: “from Testosterone Tuesday to the Witness Protection Program on Fridays”), and it has never grown into a ratings juggernaut, said Peter Roth, president of Warner Bros. Television. Last season, “The George Lopez Show” drew an average 7.2 million viewers (12% of whom were Latino) and ranked 88th among 201 prime-time shows, according to Nielsen Media Research. Last week, 9.1 million viewers tuned in for the show’s season premiere, making it the No. 1 show in its new time slot.

“From our perspective, he’s done a yeoman’s job of bringing a very attractive and a very acceptable and large number of people each week,” Roth said. “The thing about George that distinguishes him from almost every other star we work with is that he has literally been involved with every single stage of development and execution of the series. “

Added Steve McPherson, ABC’s president of prime-time entertainment: “Traditional family comedies right now are not getting the kind of spotlight that they deserve sometimes. But I think creatively, he’s doing some of the best family comedy that there is on the air right now. With the departure of [“Everybody Loves Raymond”], we have the dominant family brand and I think he’s a shining star in it.”

McPherson has joked that instead of the “Latin hour,” the pairing of the two sitcoms should be called “The Bruce Helford Hour” since the producer runs both shows. Reflecting on the impact of the two comedies on the TV landscape as well as society, Helford amplified a line from the star of his new show.

“It’s really interesting what Freddie said at press tour [this summer],” Helford said. “Desi [Arnaz] unlocked the door, his dad opened it and George kicked it down. Now, I guess, we just have to widen the doorway.”