George Lopez’s self-titled sitcom was often praised for doing for Hispanics what “The Cosby Show” did for African Americans, but that assessment overlooks the elephant in the room: While “The Cosby Show” was above all a great sitcom, “George Lopez” was a joyless regurgitation of the worst sitcom conventions. Don’t hold that against Lopez himself, though. Lopez, who does an 8 p.m. show at the Riverside Theater, is too amiable to dismiss—a decent actor, a sympathetic spokesman for kidney donations and an all-around good guy. His stand-up is better than his recently canceled show would suggest, too. It pairs the family-based humor he’s now best known for with gentle satire and frank discussions of race relations.
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