YMMV / The George Lopez Show

• Accidental Aesop:
  • One theme in the show seems to be that sometimes your troubled family members won't clean up their act or change their ways and trying to be nice to them will backfire on you.
    • Angie's brother and Benny's mom were rotten people, both George and Angie tried to give them the benefit of the doubt, and it blew up in their faces: Angie's brother was willing to rob Veronica of her inheritance, and Benny's mom berated and belittled her own daughter when she was on the stand.
    • Jason's father was a neglectful stage parent who was OK with his son taking steroids if he meant he could play football, and one of the ways Jason grew as a person was cutting the man out of his life.
    • Benny warned George not to look for his neglectful father. George ignored her, looked for Manny, and while he seemed affable and wanted to make up for abandoning his son, he ultimately proved to be so cowardly and selfish that he willingly barred his own son from going to his funeral. And this was after George was willing to give up one of his kidneys to save his life .
  • The episode about the female sex offender appears to have "sexual abuse by a pretty woman is still sexual abuse" as its moral. However, the other moral seems to be that "sex offenders are not irredeemable monsters undeserving of life". Chris committed a terrible crime, but she admits what she did is wrong, went to therapy, and has turned her life around that she can afford to live in a middle-class neighborhood. She also gets mad at Max for coming into her house and propositioning her.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • George becoming a jerkass in the later seasons. Flanderization? Or justified considering all the crap he and his family had gone through over the series?
  • Jason had neglectful parents who were never really around for him and pressured him into taking steroids, which causes him to experience roid rage, smashing a lamp and yelling at Carmen. He has his moments of showing warmheartedness and is the only one of Carmen's boyfriends to actually care about her instead of simply trying to get her in bed. However, the way he treats Carmen at times is questionable at best, including cheating on her and telling his friends that they aren't dating. At best you could say he's a decent but flawed guy. At worst you could say he's a flat-out Domestic Abuser.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • You either think Benny is a hilarious Deadpan Snarker whose Hidden Heart of Gold makes her endearing, or you find her an Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist whose sad childhood does not excuse the horrible ways she treats the people around her.
  • Carmen is either a generic Bratty Teenage Daughter or a Woobie who has been through quite a lot, is not all that unpleasant of a person, and actually shows Character Development by slowly maturing throughout.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • Carmen finally breaking Piper's nose after the snot spread a rumor that she was promiscuous.
  • Any time Angie stops being a permissive doormat and puts her foot down, especially with Carmen and Vic.
  • Benny doing the world a favor by socking Zack Powers with a wrench.
  • George gets back at Benny by breaking into her car and stealing her steering wheel.
  • After seeing the Palmero family belittle George, it is cool to see Claudia get back at them from beyond the grave by making George the trustee to Veronica's inheritance.
• Crosses the Line Twice: The Powers Brothers say downright despicable things in the most hilarious way.
• Growing the Beard: The first season was rather forgettable, being little different than most family sitcoms with generic storylines and not-so-great humor (not to mention being just four episodes). The second season, however, featured the inclusion of many story arcs, and a much more mature and better-received sense of humor.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • One episode has George doing a Bill Cosby impression as part of some sexual foreplay between him and Angie. Cosby getting charged with sexual assault makes that scene a lot less funny, let alone sexy.
  • In one episode, George says that he's in favor of tighter border control. And now look what's happening with Arizona... Be careful what you ask for!
  • When George catches Veronica's deadbeat con artist father trying to skip town, he lies that he's only going for a walk and the cab is part of his training like how Lance Armstrong has a truck follow him around when he trains. With the reveal that Armstrong was doping after he won the 1999 Tour de France, Veronica's father comparing himself to Armstrong is darkly prescient.
  • "George Can't Let Sleeping Mexicans Lie" has Benny smashing up a neighbor's statue because it was racially insensitive to Mexicans. In 2020, a number of statues that were considered glorifying of racism were destroyed during the protests over the death of George Floyd. The real life debate about the validity of such actions even mirrors the one Angie and George have over whether or not Benny was justified in destroying the statue.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Hilary Duff plays Angie's mentor for La Marie cosmetics, and Max guesses she's one of Carmen's friends. Later, when she guest stars again, she plays one of Carmen's friends.
  • For bonus points, said friend is essentially the living embodiment of the popular opinion of Tumblr.
  • In one episode, Benny makes a Take That! towards SpongeBob SquarePants. The show later got picked up by Nick at Nite and became Adored by the Network.
  • In another episode, Benny confesses that she likes movies where dogs can talk. George Lopez would later go on to voice Papi in Beverly Hills Chihuahua.
  • Angie ends up taking too much charity work, and yells "They're deaf, George!" when he tries telling a group sitting in his kitchen table to leave. Her actress, Constance Marie, would have a deaf daughter on Switched at Birth.
  • The jokes about Fidel Castro in the show after his death in 2016. When Castro died, Lopez himself posted a clip from the show when he dressed up as Castro for the occasion.
• Ho Yay:
  • There's enough between Ernie and George that in one episode, George has a worm-induced hallucination in which he and Ernie are a gay couple. Another moment worthy of mention is when George and Ernie are playing guitar and they get close and stare rather intently into each other's eyes.
  • In one episode, Veronica mentions that she was hit on by two store managers.... and that one of them was a girl. Max, who was with her at the time, comments, "It was awesome."
• Jerkass Woobie: George and to a lesser degree Benny.
  • She appeared in one episode but Benny's Mother could count as this, according to George she was hit by her late husband at least once and in her appearance, said her husband was "a wonderful man".
  • Ricky was Max's delinquent friend who talked Max into a lot of stunts that damaged the Lopez house and drained their finances. But his childhood was pretty much the same as George's, maybe even worse, so George was willing to take him in.
  • Veronica was a spoiled brat who tested George's patience more than once. But her father was a manipulative conman who abandoned her, and returned again just to steal her trust fund money. Her mother was apparently dying for a while, and it's implied that her relatives were also poor role models for her, since her mother Claudia made George a trustee, and one of them later sued Veronica for her money, forcing her to live with the Lopez family.
  • Zack Powers is a subversion. He may have had a difficult childhood, but his embezzlement of company money, trashing the factory just to spite his father, and then trying to manipulate Carmen into having sex with him, and then running away to San Francisco completely shreds any sympathy.
  • Carmen hasn't had it very easy. George has often shown more favor to Max due to his being a boy. Her best friend left her when her family moved away, and throughout the show she has been a magnet for some really scummy guys. Her first boyfriend on the show dumped her when she refused to have sex with him, another ex-boyfriend claimed he had sex with her to avoid being seen as a loser (resulting in her being bullied for "being a whore" and sexually harassed so bad she was forced to switch schools), another boyfriend was a cocky delinquent who just wanted sex and manipulated her into running away with him to San Francisco and dumped her when she refused to have sex. Her next boyfriend was initially embarrassed to be seen in public with her due to his being popular (while she wasn't), and then cheated on her with a more "experienced" female classmate for a month. The girl has been through a lot, and you can only hope she can achieve more in college. That being said, many of her troubles stem from her being an absolute Horrible Judge of Character, a complete Drama Queen, being overly focused on her own problems, or all of the above. She even tried milking the sympathy card in order to do whatever she wanted after she returned home from running away, leading Angie to firmly (and rightfully) put her in her place.
• Magnificent Bastard: "George Decides to Sta-Local Where it's Familia": Enrique Vega is a soft-spoken, intelligent businessman who buys out Powers Aviation and intends to relocate their factory to Mexico to cut costs. Though George tries to confront Vega over the loss of jobs this will cost, Vega quickly charms and seduces George into instead accepting a job offer, nonetheless playing along with amusement at George's attempt to look defiant for his employees. When Vega learns that George has turned on him and allied with the factory workers for a lock-in, Vega strikes a deal with the city's mayor to keep the factory open in exchange for giving Vega immense tax exemptions, Vega letting George have the credit for "saving" the factory and promoting the man for his tenacity and skill while Vega himself continues to profit from his enterprises.
• Memetic Mutation: For kids that grew up in the 2000s, the show would play in the early hours of the day, so anyone who fell asleep with the TV still on would wake up to the theme song playing at 3 AM.
• Narm: The scene where Manny walks out on Benny and George would be a Tear Jerker, if it wasn't for the fact that baby George had his adult head imposed on his infant body.
• Pop-Cultural Osmosis: Those familiar with the show are more apt to recognize "Low Rider" by War as "the George Lopez Show theme song".
• Replacement Scrappy: Veronica to some.
• Strawman Has a Point: Hoo boy does this fit George. His cynicism and vitriol in various situations are often condemned but usually validated.
  • The best example of this would probably be when Benny moves into the house temporarily. George warns Angie against allowing it and is proven right when Benny's constant presence and refusal to be responsible so she can move out eventually cause even Angie to want her gone. In spite of this, George is shown as in the wrong for wanting to throw her out despite his mother going out of her way to demean and humiliate him while receiving no support from even his wife.
• Unintentional Period Piece
  • In Season 5, the show had a crossover with the sitcom Freddie, which is inarguably the only reason anyone remembers Freddie.
  • In "Dubya, Dad and Dating", Carmen protests George W. Bush and the Iraq War when the president makes a speech at the factory, which is treated as irresponsible teenage behavior and only serves to embarrass George at work. This episode came out in 2003, right before public opinions on Bush's presidency and the Iraq War had nosedived and most shows and sitcoms became highly critical of him.
  • Several episodes have Angie insisting that Max goes to college, with Max being discouraged from working at the factory despite being good at it. A year after the show ended, the Great Recession struck America, and even people with college degrees found it difficult to find steady work. In 2020, the COVID-19 Pandemic and the following recession made college less attractive and trade schools a better choice for many.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Benny falls into this a lot:
    • One episode reveals that George's little league coach bequeathed him $100,000, which Benny proceeded to quickly fritter away on a new car and a trip to Las Vegas. The event is never mentioned again after the episode but it means that every attempt to portray Benny as a flawed but hardworking and underprivileged mother rings hollow as she had the funds to provide George with a comfortable life but wasted it on herself.
    • During Benny's trial, George brings her mother to the stand in order to make Benny look sympathetic to the jurors. While on the stand, she proceeds to mock Benny and shows how bad a mother she was to her daughter. This was done to make Benny seem like a Jerkass Woobie and show how tough she had it growing up in a broken home. The problem is that Benny was just as bad at raising George. Being emotionally and physically abusive to him, being neglectful of his feelings, disregarding his dyslexia, being unsupportive of his goals, and lying to him constantly. And as an adult she is still a Jerkass to him and his family. She is the reason he has so many repressed memories and a demon parade. It's pretty hard to sympathize with her.
    • In one episode, George completely remodels her bathroom, free of charge (and even throws in some custom stuff). When she complains about this and he rightfully calls her out for being ungrateful, she launches into a rant about all the bad things that happened in her life. The logic gap from being angry at people in your past and never saying thank you to your son is pretty blatant.
  • Carmen can be this sometimes, despite being possibly the most screwed over character in the series, with many of her troubles stemming from her being a Horrible Judge of Character, a complete Drama Queen, or both.
• The Woobie:
  • Ernie can fall under this. He's had terrible luck with women, and one that was even chubbier than him ran out on what was supposed to be their first date.
  • Angie in the episode where her mother dies. Not only does she learn that George failed to get her mother a grave next to one for Angie but it is revealed that Angie's last conversation with her mother was to tell her she never forgave her for cheating on Angie's father. Seeing Angie in tears when she realizes she can never take back what she said to her mother is truly heartbreaking.

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