Kaitlin Olson, Carla Jimenez helped make 'The Mick' the year's funniest new show

In January, I expressed hope that the cast of FOX's raunchy new sitcom, “The Mick,” could craft characters that win us over even when the show's more extreme gags turn us off.

I am happy to report that they did it.

Starring Kaitlin Olson and created by her “It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia” cohorts Dave and John Chernin, “The Mick” has supplanted “Family Guy” as the go-to late-night laugh-o-rama in my household. (Whew, that was a lot of hyphens.) The show's premise, which sees Olson's trashy Mickey Murphy become surrogate mother to a trio of spoiled Greenwich mansion brats, has provided 17 episodes' worth of over-the-top domestic comedy, culminating in this past Tuesday's season finale, “The Intruder.”

They haven't all been winners - a March episode about cyberbullying seemed particularly cold and cruel - but every episode of “The Mick” has a big laugh, provided, more often than not, by Carla Jimenez. As the maid who becomes Mickey's main partner in crime (sometimes literally), Jimenez has a game attitude that makes Alba hilariously unpredictable. In the opening scene of April's “The Implant,” for example, Mickey says she's bored and looks to Alba for suggestions. Alba matter-of-factly responds, “I never tried mushrooms.”

If you missed the boat on “The Mick,” fear not - every episode is available for streaming at FOX.com. And if the pilot doesn't strike your fancy, try a doubleheader of episodes 4 and 5, which feature a kids' birthday party gone horribly wrong and Mickey trying to quit smoking, with no thanks to surrogate daughter Sabrina (Sofia Black-D'Elia).

“The Mick” has been renewed for a second season, and the incredibly funny Olson is, at last, on her way to superstardom.

<i>Sean Stangland is a Daily Herald multiplatform editor. You can follow him on Twitter at @SeanStanglandDH.</i>