Classic Comedy Lookback - The Phil Silvers Show

The second show I picked from the 1950s is probably a bit of a surprise. The 1950s had its share of great situation comedies of which several stand out. Amos & Andy may have been the first TV show to feature an all black cast although the style of humour made it extremely unpopular with groups such as the NAACP which were successful in forcing it off the air despite the fact that many comedians such as Redd Foxx were outspoken in their support of the show. Sam mentioned Mr. Peepers as a prospect for this sort of treatment and I would have loved to have done it except that I've never seen an episode (there's a DVD set out there which I intend to get if I can ever find a copy). The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show took the format in a different direction by having George continually shattering the "fourth wall" and not only speaking directly to the audience and commenting on the action of the show but actually joining the audience and watching the show on TV for a while when he was off-screen. Of course the second most famous situation comedy of the 1950s (behind I Love Lucy) is The Honeymooners, possibly the most famous one season show of all times - the show ran as a series for 39 episodes although the characters had been created for Jackie Gleason's variety show and would continue in his 1960s variety program. So why am I looking at The Phil Silvers Show? Well in my estimation it is one of the funniest series ever.

The Phil Silvers Show, also known as You'll Never Get Rich is best known to the world as Sergeant Bilko (the name seemed to change every season). It's a service comedy about a fictional peace time army post in an equally fictional Kansas town, and while the base commander, Colonel Hall is supposedly in charge the truth is the whole place is run by the chief of the base Motor Pool, Master Sergeant Ernie Bilko, and everyone knows it. He has a finger in every pie. He rents out army jeeps to just about anyone, sells raffle tickets, runs dances, and has a new way to separate soldiers from their pay at every turn. His platoon are equally his accomplices and his patsies.Bilko could lather on the charm, particularly to Colonel Hall's wife, or conceive a complex con game - sometimes at the same time. About the only person who could really halt Bilko was the camp chaplain, although a pretty girl could always through him for a loop, and sometimes (but just sometimes) his own conscience would get the better of him.

The mid '50s was a perfect time for a service comedy. There was a whole generation of men who had been in the service, either in World War II, Korea, or as a result of the peacetime draft. Inevitably they knew a Bilko, even if - in most cases - that person wasn't as outrageous as Phil Silver's character was. Bilko was a small time hustler who found a home in the army (he was actually decorated for heroism in battle in the Pacific), and he wasn't about to leave when the alternative was living by his wits on the streets, doing jail time or, horror of horrors, getting an honest job. The very prospect of that brought chills to Bilko's spine. It is difficult to imagine a show with the same theme as The Phil Silvers Show working during or shortly after the Vietnam War, let alone today, although there was an attempt with the Don Rickles 1976 series CPO Sharkey - it didn't work. The last service comedy I can really recall is the rather tepid Major Dad with Gerald McRaney. It lasted four years but had none of the bite or sheer hilarity of Sergeant Bilko. It's hard to imagine Major Dad, or even CPO Sharkey doing an episode in which a monkey joins the army (The Court Martial of Private Harry Speakup).

It's easy to say that what made Bilko work is Phil Silvers but it's not the whole story. Silvers was the perfect choice to play Bilko. A burlesque comic who graduated to Broadway and the movies (he's in the Humphrey Bogart movie All Through The Night and has at least one scene with William Demarest and Jackie Gleason), but the brash sort of comedic style that was a trademark of burlesque, combined with his strong New York accent and his rapid fire delivery made him the personification of a low level con man and hustler, which is precisely what Bilko is. It is also true however that even the best performer is nothing without good material and series producer Nat Hiken headed a large writing staff. Writers from The Phil Silvers Show were nominated for Emmys in each of the four shows that the show was on the air and won the first three years. In 1956 they beat I Love Lucy in the comedy writing category, while The Honeymooners wasn't even nominated. It's also a fact that for comedy to work an actor needs someone to play off of. Phil Silvers was gifted with two great supporting actors to work off of in addition to various guest appearances. I've briefly mentioned Paul Ford. He was nominated three times for Emmys in the Best Supporting Actor category, although he never won. With his long face and often blustering manner when he was out to get Bilko which turned to befuddled depression when his plans went awry he was a perfect foil for Silvers. Ford gave Hall just the right sense of being a man who knew that he was overmatched when dealing with Bilko but just had to try. The other major supporting character was Private Duane Doberman played by Maurice Gosfield. Gosfield, who was in his mid-40s when the show was on, was a short chubby man with an incredibly malleable face that was capable of delivering an almost child-like quality when he smiled or when he looked sad. It was a quality that was perfect for the character. In fact the Doberman character was so popular that there DC Comics produced a Private Doberman comic book. A young man who occasionally played an MP on the show was in fact a real Army officer assigned as a technical consultant for the show. His name was George Kennedy who won an Oscar as an actor for Cool Hand Luke. Other young actors who appeared on the show and would later become famous included Fred Gwynne, Dick van Dyke and Alan Alda.

The Phil Silvers Show was extremely funny but it tended to fall by the wayside in syndication - at least in North America - as colour TVs became more and more prevalent. Lesser comedies were seen for no other reason than that they were in colour. It hasn't even been on TVLand in years. This is ironic since the show was still popular when it ended at the insistence of CBS which wanted to rush the show into syndication. On the other hand in Britain The Phil Silvers Show is something of a national obsession. The BBC still runs the show occasionally as they have for 50 years. In 2003 The Radio Times (essentially the British TV Guide) polled its readers about the greatest TV comedies. The Phil Silvers Show was #1 with the people who responded, ahead of Seinfeld and Fawlty Towers. In 2004 Bilko finished fourth in a poll of "fictional characters who UK viewers would like to see as president (Homer Simpson finished first, Josiah Bartlett second, and Fraser Crane third). I defer to Ivan Shreve in his knowledge of British sitcoms, but I can't help but think that the show had some influence on British comedies like Porridge and On The Busses. Certainly the influence of Phil Silvers and Sergeant Bilko can be seen in Hogan's Heroes (a show I'll deal with in more detail next week) with Bob Crane's Hogan as the fast talking scheming con artist - this time working for a noble cause - irritating befuddling and manipulating his show's answer to Colonel Hall, Werner Klemperer's Colonel Klink. (If you really stretch the concept to its breaking point, you could consider Sergeant Schultz as Hogan's "Doberman". Of the 143 episodes of The Phil Silvers Show made over four years, only 18 episodes are currently available on DVD as a 50th Anniversary collection. It must have been very hard to pick 18 episodes because it's hard to find a dud in the entire run of the show.

Classic Comedy Lookback - I Love Lucy

Preface
I am, on the whole, finding this summer rather boring even if it is punctuated by occasional discoveries like Project Runway and hopefully, Psych. And then, over at Blogcritics I saw something that inspired me. What it was was a rather subjective ranking of the best situation comedies ever (even if it was titled "The True and Objective List of the Best Situation Comedies Ever"). And so, like all good creative people associated with Television, I took the idea and modified it enough to make it my own. I won't be presenting a list of the Best Situation Comedies Ever - subjective or objective. Instead I want to look at two sitcoms from each decade from the 1950s to the 1990s that have fascinated me. No judgement calls here, but maybe, just maybe, a few dark sides. I hope to do two a week, probably Tuesdays and Thursdays although since the idea just came to me toady this week is going to be a bit rushed. And so, without further ado I Love Lucy.

I Love Lucy

If you want to see the ancestor of the vast majority of sitcoms look no further than I Love Lucy - well at least on TV. The live studio audience and the three camera film technique were all invented for I Love Lucy - primarily because Desi Arnaz didn't want to move his family to New York and CBS and Philip Morris Tobacco which sponsored the show (this was in the days when a show was controlled to no small extent by a single advertiser) didn't want the show going to most of the United States as a poor quality Kinescope (live action filmed off of a monitor) of the sort that the west coast had been subjected to since network TV began there. That insistence on staying in California also created an asset that could be exploited by someone with business acumen. While others thought of TV shows as being transitory Desi Arnaz understood that these half hour movies that he and his wife and the rest of the cast had made didn't become worthless after one viewing (a lesson that so many have forgotten ever since - like the people who got rid of the early Doctor Who episodes, the ones who got rid of the Plouffe Family tapes in Canada, or the ones who blanked the early Carson Tonight Shows). I Love Lucy created the rerun. And like George Lucas getting all of the revenue from licensing for Star Wars, Desi Arnaz was able to build an empire out of exploiting the short sightedness of others.

The basic format was anything but new. The wacky wife-straight man husband - or vice versa - with funny neighbours format had been around since at least Fibber McGee and Molly on radio in the late 1930s (probably earlier than that but as I understand it most of the radio material still in existence comes from a period starting in around 1939). Indeed Lucille Ball herself had done that exact format with her radio show My Favourite Husband with Richard Denning. If all that I Love Lucy did was to port that format over from radio to television with Desi replacing Denning then I suspect that while the show would have been a hit at the time its eventual fate could have been summed up by what Lincoln said about his Gettysburg Address "The world will little note nor long remember what is said here." But the truth is that Desi and Lucy understood - because they came from the movies - that television allowed for visual as well as verbal humour. The show thrived on gags. In fact they even hired Buster Keaton as a gag consultant, although they never gave him an onscreen credit. And it was often the sight gags that got the biggest laughs. Reportedly the longest laugh in TV history occurred in an episode where Lucy tries to learn to dance ballet and gets her leg stuck in the barre. It was so long that the scene had to be cut to fit the show but still contain the sense that it was that funny. Everyone remembers sight gags from the show: the chocolate conveyor belt scene, the gigantic loaf of bread pinning Lucy to the kitchen wall because she didn't know how much yeast to put in bread, William Holden lighting Lucy's wax nose on fire, Lucy stomping grapes. While the show never reached the stages of sheer anarchy of The Three Stooges, it had moments of pure brilliance.

This is not to denigrate either the cast or the writing. The show had incredible writers who understood the characters and could work with the actors' qualities. They could work with Desi's accent to the point that "Lucy, you've got some splainin' to do" (usually combined with Lucy pulling a face and saying "eeewww") is not only still remembered, it's still funny - or at least gets laughs of recognition. Two of the writers - Bob Carroll Jr. and Madelyn Pugh Davis - would stay with Lucy for the rest of her career, writing her last show Life With Lucy in 1986. They produced some exceptionally well written shows although for me their best bit of writing was probably the "Vitameatavegimin" commercial in which Lucy's repeated practice of the script, using the product, doesn't make perfect it just makes her drunk. It's not simply that the writers were creating something funny it was that they had an understanding of what their actor could do

As for the cast, the most import was Lucy but but right along side her has to be Desi. The series was something that they did for him - Lucy wanted to keep Desi at home rather than touring with his band and if that was going to happen Desi wanted a way to keep the band together with a little more exposure than working as the house band for the Bob Hope radio show (a job Lucy had got him). Ricky Ricardo served as both Lucy's straight man and her nemesis in trying to develop a showbiz career. He's an ineffectual rein for her most hare brained schemes. Vivian Vance as Ethel Mertz also serves as straight man to Lucy, an even more ineffectual barrier to her schemes who is often converted from hindrance to Lucy's ideas to reluctant (and sometimes not so reluctant) accomplice. The final member of the primary cast, William Frawley (playing Fred Mertz) balances show by giving Ricky an ally/accomplice against the team of Lucy and Ethel, although even working together they are no match for Lucy alone. The characters have their own well developed traits; Desi with his fiery temper that inevitably caused him to lapse into rapid fire Spanish, Fred's cheapness, and Ethel's ongoing longing for the better things in life that she knows Fred's too cheap to buy her. The characters have their basic traits and although they grow some these are at their bedrock.

One interesting aspect of the show is how, through the course of six seasons and the hour long shows thereafter, how the lives of the Ricardos reflects the American dream. The original concept for the show was pretty much Lucy and Desi's lives - a glamourous movie star and a successful musician - but they were told that it wouldn't work. Instead they start as a band leader working in a club and living in a small walk-up apartment in a brownstone. They have a baby, get a better apartment and become a bit more successful. Then Ricky gets his big break. They (and their friends) go to Hollywood and hobnob with the movie stars of the day (the Hollywood episodes include such people as William Holden, Van Johnson, and John Wayne as well as Lucille Ball's friend Hedda Hopper). Ricky's success allows them to travel to Europe, and when they return to the United States Ricky's able to open his own nightclub - Club Babaloo - and the family (including the Mertzes) are able to move to a farm in Connecticut. Deliberately or not the show progresses and has a sort of weak continuity that so many later comedies lack. I Love Lucy is not merely a funny show it is a template for so much of what followed.

A Family In Crisis Doesn't Need A Laugh Track

I noticed something odd when I was watching the new ABC series Crumbs tonight. No, it wasn't the overbearing laugh track. Oh I noticed it and I'll get into that in a bit, but the decision to use it and with such a heavy hand was scarcely odd, more like about what one would expect the network to demand for this sort of show. No what seemed odd - and maybe it was just me - but sometimes it seemed as if some of the lines weren't exactly in synch with the movements of the characters' mouths. This seemed to happen a lot with Jane Curtin's character, and to a lesser extent with William Devane's character. At times it seemed almost as if the actors redubbed their lines after scenes had been shot, some of them not quite the same as what had been originally said. For reasons I can't explain this bothered me somehow even though, as I said, it could just have been me.

We are introduced to the Crumb family when youngest son Mitch receives a call from his mother Suzanne. She's getting out of the "sanitarium" (what in less sensitive time and for less well off people was called the mental hospital). Mitch is in California where his family believes that he's a successful (and straight) screenwriter, but he decides to fly back to Connecticut to help her to get readjusted - and to keep her from trying to kill her ex-husband again. She was put in the sanitarium for trying to run over her husband Billy and the girlfriend he left her for after thirty years. In Connecticut he reunites with his older brother Jody, the rather immature chef who now runs the restaurant that his parents started. Jody is devoted to his mother, and hates his father for leaving the business and Suzanne. He also deeply resents Mitch apparently for having the "good life" in California. As for their father, Mitch finds him in the hall closet after the brothers get their mother home. He's picking up the last of his stuff to finish moving in with his girlfriend. Billy might have come back but she's pregnant, and he's starting a new life as a "past life massage therapist".

The fact is that all of the characters are hiding secrets, some of which emerge. While Suzanne may hate her ex-husband she moved on too, in the form of a very large African-American orderly named Elvis who she met at the psychiatric facility. Mitch hasn't told his family that he's gay and that the "girl" that he tells them about is in fact his boyfriend (and his shrink). Suzanne of course knew since Mitch was a teen that he was gay and was just waiting for him to tell the family. Nor does he tell them that while he wrote one hit movie, his writing career is stalled. The big secret is about Billy's girlfriend being pregnant. When Mitch blurts this out while trying to convince Suzanne that Billy isn't coming back it sets her off on what seems to be a homicidal rage. Suzanne finds Billy at his new job and pulls a gun on him. Her sons are close behind but aren't exactly effective in disarming her. She pulls the trigger on the gun...which turns out to be one of those lighters shaped like a gun.

Hanging over the family and most of the stresses that they experience is a family tragedy, the death of the third brother, Patrick, in a boating accident a number of years ago. Jody's resentment of Mitch really stems from the fact that he left as soon as he could and then wrote a screenplay about the tragedy which for Jody was all the more real because he was supposed to be with the brother when the accident happened. Jody isn't able to write a new movie because the screenplay he created for his big hit was so personal to him. It may be all that he could have written. Their mother's crutch in the crisis was being with her family and that was shattered when Billy suddenly left her. As for Billy for all that he believes that his affair was just a case of flirting that got carried away, it seems obvious that he was coping by breaking away from his family. In a very real sense this is a family in crisis, one which is finally acknowledging a part of their problems and maybe starting to heal. Of course since this is a comedy, the humour isn't in the actual healing but in never getting much beyond the first step. Inevitably Suzanne will never fully reconcile herself with Billy leaving and will continue to want revenge. Jody will continue to be mad at Mitch despite the fact that his younger brother has moved back home to become the manager of the restaurant (allowing Jody to spend more of his time on the cooking). But that's okay. Dysfunction in and of itself can be funny.

This of course is where the Laugh Track comes into the equation. I am not totally opposed to Laugh Tracks; used properly and with a certain surgical precision they can sweeten the reaction of a live audience and give a joke that received a lukewarm response to a somewhat higher level. Unfortunately the person who was in charge of the laugh track for this show had the subtle hand of a drunk with a sledge hammer, and apparently no live audience response to sweeten. Every funny line or incident gets one of those over the top reactions that is the hallmark of a badly used laugh track, and it sometimes seems as though the same sequence of laughter was used over and over again. It's as if the producers are determined to tell us "This is the funny bit, you laugh here" just in case we didn't recognise it. I feel more than vaguely insulted.

I'm not sure about the cast either. Just about everyone is talking about this the return of Fred Savage to network TV as though he was gone longer than his time on the series Working would have indicated. He's nice enough but he seems to mostly be playing the "straight" man in this one, at least so far. For me this series is all about the marvellous Jane Curtin as the bitter angry medicated Suzanne. Sure she chews the scenery and has the sort of wild-eyed look that makes you want to lock up the china, but she is absolutely letter perfect for this part. I have more of a problem with William Devane but I suppose that's because I'm not a huge fan of Devane as a comedic actor. He always comes across to me as though he's trying too hard to be funny and that's also true in this show. Rounding out the Crumb family is Eddie McLintock as Jody. I'm not sure what I can say about him beyond the fact that he plays off of the other actors reasonably well even though, as yet, his character is little more than an immature kid in a man's body.

I think I'm being influenced by something I read about this show today (actually I know I am) but I think it's accurate - Crumbs is trying a bit too hard to let you know that it's something different. Moreover, I'm not sure that ABC really knows how to handle different. This show is a big departure from According To Jim or Faith And Hope - heck it's a big departure from Emily's Reasons Why Not and Jake In Progress (and given that the network has pulled both of those next Monday for a double dose of The Bachelor we know how those two are working out) - and I don't think the network is too sure of their footing here. Sure they want the sort of critical acclaim that a show like Arrested Development gets, but they don't quite want to go as radically different as that show is. The net result is neither fish nor fowl - it doesn't stray far enough from conventional to truly stand out but is far enough out that it's going to have a tough time catching people who want conventional. I'm also going to suggest that the network doesn't have that much confidence in the show. They're hoping that the people who watch Dancing With The Stars will stay on ABC for this but if they must have known that they'd be going up against a truly different show in The Office, which means that they're burning Crumbs off as a good idea that didn't quite gel. If you're in the market for a comedy that's different from the run of the mill, change the channel after Dancing With The Stars and watch The Office.

Watch This? Why Not

I just got around to watching Emily's Reasons Why Not thanks to my Monday schedule which keeps me from establishing many ties to TV shows on that night. I tape a couple of shows (Las Vegas and CSI: Miami) and will be taping 24 once it gets back, but for the rest of the shows I normally don't even have time to sample them. I'll catch them in reruns... if they make it that long. Still if you're going to review you should make an effort, so I taped the series premiere of Emily's Reasons Why Not and the season premiere of Jake In Progress and I tried Emily on Tuesday night.

Heather Graham plays Emily, and I have to admit that she's damned cute. Now that shouldn't really matter but for some reason the main characters in this series sort of look the way their characters "should". It's kind of hard to explain but let's take Emily herself. According to the setup, explained in the first minute or two of the pilot, Emily is a young woman who has never had any difficulty in finding reasons not to do things she shouldn't do. This trait has, over the course of the years, apparently kept her for starting smoking (my VCR cut off the first 30 or so seconds of the show so I missed most of the childhood scene that introduced the character) and led her to become a successful editor with a major New York publishing house. The only place where her ability to find reasons not to do something has perpetually failed her has been with regard to the male of the species. In the words of the song, she "falls in love too easily". Most recently she's been involved with Reese, one of her authors, who has written a book called "Hook, Lie And Sinker: The Lies Men Tell Women And The Lies Women Tell Themselves". Clearly, just the act of hooking up with this guy on anything other than a one night stand basis and being surprised when she finds that he's been cheating on her is absolute proof that Emily is hopelessly naive about men. Either that or she's hopelessly optimistic about them which in this case is much the same thing. Which is where Heather Graham's appearance comes in. She has that naive, hopeless optimist vibe going right from the start in no small part because of the way she looks. It certainly doesn't hurt that she's a good enough actress to go beyond just appearance, and at the same time convince us that she's good at her job.

Appearance also plays into the two female members of Graham's supporting cast, Nadia Dajani as Emily's best friend Reilly and Smith Cho as her bitch of a colleague (and former assistant - she was promoted after claiming one of Emily's ideas for her own) Glitter Cho. Dajani has the appearance of someone who has been through the mill a few times and as a result has developed a crusty cynical exterior that Emily lacks. Reilly works with Emily's other best friend Josh (played by Khary Payton) a gay man who has recently moved in with his boyfriend Aknad. Of the three he's got the most stable relationship. When the two of them commiserate with Emily after her break up with Reese, Reilly is unable to resist an oblique "I told you so", which leads Emily to vow to look harder for reasons not to become involved with a man.

Emily's resolve is tested almost immediately when she meets a new man "Stan from marketing". They hit it off almost immediately and start dating. Even Glitter expresses her "approval" by cattily (is it possible to be catty and a bitch?) saying that she'd move in on him if he wasn't taken and then trying as hard as she can to bring Emily and Reese back together. Stan and Emily have fun together and it's almost perfect except for one thing: Stan won't kiss her. In fact any attempt at intimate contact seems to repulse him and when she finally gets him to sleep with her, that's what he does - sleep. Reilly and Josh have suggested that Stan could be gay, although Reilly informs them that some of the best sex she ever had was with a gay man who was trying to prove to himself that he wasn't gay - he kept trying to prove it over and over again for hours on end. Emily doesn't believe them until "evidence" starts to mount up: when Stan sleeps with her he actually sleeps with her, Stan wears makeup (specifically bronzer), Stan subscribes to Martha Stewart Living. The capper is when she tells Reese that Stan is an expert at Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and he bursts into a laughing fit calling it the "gayest sport ever". Going with her to see Stan participate in it Josh and Aknad tell her that this is very gay behaviour, and of course when your gay friends say he's gay he must be gay. Emily breaks up with Stan but does it in a very "male" way - she leaves a message on his voice mail (again her judgement in matters related to men is absolutely faulty). The punch line - and of course there has to be a punch line - is delivered by Glitter. She met Stan's sisters the night before and she knows a secret; Stan is a Mormon and a virgin. Unfortunately Emily doesn't find this out until after Stan and about four of his colleagues in the marketing department hear the voicemail break up.

I mostly enjoyed Emily's Reasons Why Not and a lot of it has to do with Heather Graham. She manages to to pull off the goofy side of Emily's personality in a believable manner. Nadia Dajani is solid as the cynical best friend. If I have to find fault with the casting it might be with Khary Payton who seems to be pushing the gayness of his character rather aggressively, coming close to the edge of stereotyping. The smile he gets when watching the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is a little bit too much. Smith Cho seems to be there to serve in whatever manner the writers want her to function in - meddler, wannabe Cupid (if being Cupid means she gets a shot at Stan by putting Emily back with Reese) and bringer of what in most situations would be good news. Maybe I just don't have a good read on Glitter yet. As for the show itself, there seems to be a desire in some quarters to compare it to Sex And The City, perhaps because, like Sex And The City it is based on a novel, this one by Carrie Gerlach. Beyond this I don't see the similarity, unless perhaps it's Sex And The City with Charlotte as the lead character. Carrie (or even Charlotte) was never as naive about men, or driven by her hormones, as Emily seems to be. Emily seems to have more in common with Ted from How I Met Your Mother than she does with the women of Sex And The City in terms of trying to find the right "one" in a city full of wrong ones. That's not to compare the two series though. How I Met Your Mother has what I can only describe as a warmer sensibility about it. The supporting characters so far seem more likable. In this Emily does seem to have something in common with Sex And The City.

On the whole I liked Emily's Reasons Why Not - and certainly I found it more appealing than I ever have the show that follows it in ABC's new Monday night lineup, Jake In Progress. The writing seems good and if they can sustain it over the long haul it should be okay. The big problem I see - besides 24, Las Vegas and the CBS comedy lineup - is that I'm not sure the premise will be able to sustain a lengthy run. The premise (based on seeing one episode of course) seems to be Emily meets a guy and becomes "smitten", Emily begins to develop doubts about the relationship, Emily find reasons to end it - valid or not, Emily takes solace in her friends and professional life while looking for the next Mr. Right. How many times can you repeat that before it starts to get old? Of course, given the competition it might not get the chance. It's a show you should at least try to see once while you have the chance.

Sometimes They Get It Right

Most of the time the producers of situation comedies don't really push the envelope that much - they've been doing variations of the husband-wife-two-kids-and-a-dog format since Ozzie And Harriet. On rare occasions a new idea will emerge, like a baby alligator incubated by a chicken. If the idea doesn't work it drives others back to the same old ideas, but if it does work others will jump on the bandwagon...and usually produce crap. Sometimes however the imitators produce something that's not too bad. That's what happened with How I Met Your Mother.

The premise of the series is fairly simple. In the year 2030 Ted (played in the future by the voice of Bob Saget) is telling his son and daughter the story of how he met their mother in, as the son puts it "excruciating detail". Back in 2005, Ted is introduced to this gorgeous girl by incredibly obnoxious friend Barney. For Ted, who has to deal with his two best friends - Lilly and Marshall - getting engaged to each other, it is love at first sight. It just gets better as he gets to know her. Unfortunately he makes the error of telling her that he loves her and that derails everything. Still we the audience expect true love to run its inevitable course, with Ted marrying the woman...until the end of the first episode when "Future Ted" tells his kids "And that's how I met your Aunt Robin."

In the episode I watched on Monday night, Ted was still trying to connect with Robin, largely because she and Lilly had become friends. Lilly told Ted a little more than she promised Robin that she would, namely that Robin wanted a sort of casual relationship and that telling her that he loved her had driven her away from Ted. So Ted decided to set up a casual meeting, despite a warning from Barney that it wouldn't happen. He decided to invite her to a party but the night he had set it up for was wrong for her, so he set it for that night. She didn't show up so he told her the party had been held over to the next night and when she didn't show up then he extended it for a third night. When she finally did show up the party was virtually dead (it was a Sunday night) and although Marshall managed to get Robin to the most romantic spot he knew - the apartment building's roof - she hit him with the "let's be friends" line to end the evening.

There were a couple of interesting B-plots in this episode. Lilly, in a fit of post-engagement horniness, was trying to do Marshall at just about any opportunity while, between the sex and the parties Marshall wasn't getting much of a chance to write a 25 page paper for Law School. The other subplot involved Barney finding the girl at the party who didn't know anyone and taking her up to the roof for sex, expecting never to see her again. Then she showed up at the second party... and the third, much to the discomfort of the relationship phobic Barney.

Why do I like this show as much as I do? The first big thing is the casting. Both Cobie Smulders, who plays Robin, and Josh Radnor, who plays Ted, are essentially unknown to TV audiences - Smulders is a former model while Radnor may be most famous for playing Benjamin in the 2002 stage version of The Graduate opposite Kathleen Turner and Alicia Silverstone. The two have a definite attractive quality, to the point where you're really rooting for Ted but can sympathise with Robin. Jason Segel, who plays Marshall is better known, having had a recurring role in Undeclared and a starring role is Freaks and Geeks. He comes across as basically a lovable schlub who has just happened to snag the perfect girl. If this were a typical family sitcom and Marshall and Lilly were fifteen years older with a couple of kids we'd be asking how in the world did he get her and talking about how unrealistic it is, but seeing them as they are when they've recently fallen in love we begin to understand. Of course the big guns in the series are Alyson Hannigan as Lilly and Neil Patrick Harris as Barney. As always Hannigan is wonderful a Lilly. She has a certain innocent sexiness to her as well as a perceptiveness which indicates that she's really in touch with her friends. Barney may well be the role that makes people forget Doogie Howser. He's obnoxious and overbearing with a huge - and undeserved - ego. Lilly describes Barney as a huge dork but he basically doesn't care. The Barney-Lilly dynamic is a fun one to watch, primarily because Lilly sees Barney for what he is, an overgrown teenager who always wears a suit because - "suits are cool" - except when he's playing Laser Tag.

The writing is reasonably good. There are some gimmicks (besides the narration from "Future Ted") such as scenes where Ted imagines what's going to happen as he sets things up or how they've progressed set in metaphorical terms, and of course the ever popular excerpts from flashbacks. Moreover there's a certain wit to the approach in that the characters aren't doing the sort of obvious jokes that you so often hear.

An obvious comparison exists for this show. In fact the Canadian edition of TV Guide stated "We don't dare utter the word 'Friends' but we hop it has staying power." I would like to offer a different assessment of the show. We all remember the fiasco which was the American version of Coupling which was badly cast and attempted to transplant the British scripts for the show into the mouths of the badly cast American actors. I would like to suggest that while NBC made a total mess of Coupling, I would like to suggest that in creating How I Met Your Mother CBS and 20th Century Fox Television have managed to do an American version of Coupling - and do it right - even as they quite rightly avoid slavishly copying it. I certainly like the result and coming from someone who dislikes most sitcoms as much as I do, that says a great deal.

War (At Home) Is Hell

I don't watch many sitcoms. It isn't that I don't like sitcoms - well at least not entirely - it's just that they don't interest me. If the new Fox series The War At Home is an indicator of the quality of the new crop of situation comedies, then I'm not missing much. I didn't just find it bad, I found it difficult to watch.

Dave and Vicki (Michael Rappaport and Anita Barone) have three kids that they apparently don't like very well. They can't wait for them to go off to college - in fact Dave knows down to the day when each of his kids will be leaving the nest complete with a mental countdown clock. As long as the kids don't have a drug problem or kids of their own when they leave Dave and Vicki figure they've done a good job. Of course that leaves a lot of space in between for a lot of stuff to go on - the sort of stuff that Dave and Vicki did when they were teens.

As for the kids, well they're each a piece of work. The most normal is the youngest Mike (Dean Collins). All he wants is a Playstation 2 with all that "extra" money his parents bring in. He's easy to deal with - just keep telling him no. This sends him over to his friend's house - he's dull but he has a PS2 and a mom who just got breast implants. The middle child is Larry (Kyle Sullivan). Dave is convinced that Larry is gay because he doesn't seem particularly masculine. Larry isn't gay, he's desperate. In fact he's so desperate to get laid that he dresses up as his mother so he can drive her car over to some girl's house with the expectation that he and his friend Kenny will become "well oiled sex machines". Might have worked too if he hadn't forgotten to take his mother's blouse off after they got there. However thanks to Mike, Dave and Vicki find out about the cross-dressing. Caught between the prospect of being grounded for a year and never being able to get his licence and his parents thinking he's a transvestite he goes with transvestite. Actually, from what we've seen of his parents his father would probably offer him checklist of things to do before getting out of the car. Finally there's daughter Hillary (Kaylee DeFer) who describes herself as a "technical virgin" (as she puts it you could throw her into a volcano, but she wouldn't be your first choice). Mike, who besides everything else is a bit of a snitch, reveals that Hillary wants to go on a date with a senior who drives. Hillary says that it's not true, he's a freshman - in college. Dave and Vicki forbid it which leads Hillary to remind her mother that she went out on dates in cars when she was Hillary's age (flashback to a car with two legs sticking out of the sun roof, bouncing rapidly on its springs). In retaliation she introduces her family to her "new" boyfriend Tay - short for Bootay - who is black. Dad doesn't approve but Vicki sees it for what it is, a bait and switch move (and besides she had a few black boyfriends which starts a whole new area of interest/concern for Dave). Actually Vicki is doing Tay's homework which angers his dad because he went from being an "A" student to a "B-".

I thought that this show was horrible. The characters are thoroughly unlikable and while the situations may be familiar to most parents the responses come across as being entirely for comic effect. Although Barone has a couple of moments, Rappaport should stick to drama which he does relatively well. Of the kids Kyle Sullivan, who was a recurring character on Malcolm in the Middle, has the most television experience and it shows. He's the only one who doesn't come across as a sitcom brat. Still if you want to know the truth it isn't the acting that makes this show a dog or even the writing. There are some funny lines, notably Hillary's statement about her "technical virginity" which would presumably result in Dave acting on his "one simple rule for dating my teenaged daughter - she sees your dick and I'll slice it off." The problem comes in production and in the whole concept of the characters. There are a couple of interesting ideas including characters breaking the fourth wall to talk to the audience in the style of a reality show "confessional" but it's the sort of stuff that's been done before and better. An annoying problem which resurfaces repeatedly is the overly clumsy use of canned laughter. It's loud and it doesn't seem to vary much in intensity not to mention the fact that it frequently appears at points where the dialog doesn't warrant it.

The problem is that the actors don't create the character and the writers shape the characters in a way that the producers want them to be. Dave in particular comes across as intolerant. He doesn't like the idea that his son might be gay or that his daughter is dating a black kid even as a subterfuge. We've seen other families on TV who have been detached from their kids - the parents in Malcolm In The Middle come to mind - but they've always seemed to have had some redeeming quality that so far I don't find in Dave and Vicki or their brood. The Bundys from Married With Children were probably worse but it was absolutely clear that they were a burlesque of a family. This sense of burlesque doesn't come across in The War At Home. The worst thing may well be that the producers and the executives at Fox who okayed this thought the show was funny and that there'd be an audience for it. There may indeed be an audience for this show but I don't know who it might be.

I Need Gas

Canadians have never done situation comedies well. We know the basic concepts, and indeed a lot of American sitcoms have involved Canadians both as stars and creators. However making our own sitcoms has never been a strong point. And we've tried too but what's been tried has resulted in a notable list of ignoble failures: The Trouble with Tracy, Excuse My French, and Blackfly to name just a few. Indeed it could be argued that until recently there has only been one truly memorable Canadian sitcom: King Of Kensington. Now however theres a new contender. It is Corner Gas starring Brent Butt, which just recently completed its second season on CTV.

Until recently I hadn't seen Corner Gas. Part of the reason is that I'm normally not home on Monday night - it's my bowling night - and both of my VCRs are busy taping other shows. The end of the bowling season has allowed me to see more shows on Monday nights - when I don't feel the overwhelming urge to have a nap - and one of the shows that I've picked up is Corner Gas. Despite a lot fo rave reviews, I wasn't expecting much. After all it was a Canadian sitcom, but it's produced here in Saskatchewan so I thought I should at least give it a try. After one episode I became a fan.

There's a tendency to compare shows with something familiar. One person commenting on the show in its IMDB listing compared it to Seinfeld because nothing really happens. The truth is, as usual, much more complex. The show has a lot in common with Northern Exposure. Both series have a "fish out of water" character; someone from the "Big City" who has moved to a small town. The town has of course proven to be full of quirky characters. On the other hand, while Northern Exposure made the "fish out of water" the lead character, Corner Gas has made its fish out of water one of the principal supporting characters. Corner Gas has also adopted an aspect of King of Kensington not only by making the lead character a store owner but by making his gas station the place that people come to. All of the important characters show up either at the gas station or at Lacey Burrows' restaurant The Ruby - which conveniently is attached to the gas station.

The quirkiness of the characters is the key point of course. As the show's motto says, Dog River is 40 kilometres from nowhere and way beyond normal. Lacey (Gabrielle Miller), the transplanted Torontonian, is the character that we're supposed to identify with, but everyone in town thinks she's a little "odd". They don't have any trouble putting together a time capsule every year to replace the previous time capsule. They'd rather have "road cookies" - the little packages of cookies that Brent Leroy (Brent Butt) sells at the station - rather than the freshly made cookies that Lacey makes at the Ruby. When she brings in Biscotti they tell her that thos are "so 1997".

The cast is very much an ensemble. Besides Brent and Lacey there are Brent's parents, Oscar and Emma played by Eric Petersen and Janet Wright. Oscar can best be described as a born again grouch (yeah I know but believe me it fits) while his wife Emma moderates his irritability. She bares the brunt of his irascible nature. Lorne Cardinal and Tara Spencer-Nairn play Davis Quinton and Karen Pelly, the two person town police force. (Normally a Saskatchewan town like Dog River would at best have an RCMP detachment for local policing but given what Davis and Karen get up to I doubt that the real RCMP would approve the use of their uniforms and logos in the show.) In one episode Karen is suspended (she took a cold medicine that caused her to fail a drug test) so Davis has to take twice as many naps to make up for her absence. Wanda (Nancy Robertson) works for Brent at the gas station and is the town's resident genius. She has partial degrees in Physics, History, Biology, and Comparative Religion but took the low wage job at the gas station because the last girl quit. Finally there's Brent's best friend Hank. Even for Dog River, Hank is a bit unusual. His mind seems to work in ways not fully understood by anyone but him, and he seems to think that hanging out with Brent is a full time job. His life-long ambition is to be stunned by a stun-gun, but Davis beat him to it (he shot himself with his own stun gun).

Corner Gas is unusual in that it doesn't give obvious clues when it's funny. The actors play their scenes dead straight to the point where, in the episodes I've seen, I've never seen Brent Butt smile. Beyond that, there's no laugh track, the closest they come is a musical sting at the end of scenes. And yet the show is undeniably funny. The show's humour is very verbal. The writing, by Butt, Mark Farrell and Paul Mather, is full of sharp and witty banter but with the exception of Oscar it's not humour based on put downs. The characters are portrayed as both human and absurd, but the writing isn't condescending either to the characters themselves or to the audience. It may be one of the best sitcoms in North America because of it. If you're in Canada, be sure to watch, and if you're in the United States well Corner Gas is out on DVD, and although apparently the transfer isn't as good as it might be, reviewers on Amazon.ca seem more than willing to look beyond that. This show is definitely worth making an effort to see even if you have to buy it.

Funny Women

I've stated before that I don't watch that many sitcoms. It's hard to explain why, but in part the sitcom has become formulaic, and for whatever reason I just can't get interested in shows like Arrested Development or Scrubs which apparently try to break the formula. Maybe I'm just unwilling to find the time for them. That's part of what makes Reba so unusual - I am willing to find the time to watch it.

Reba is the WB series starring Reba McEntire. While the average sitcom usually features a stand-up comedian with little or no acting experience (see Kevin James or Ray Romano) and surrounds them with talented actors with the hope that something will rub off, Reba McEntire is a country singer with more than a little acting experience - the movie Tremors and Annie Get Your Gun on Broadway - who is surrounded by reasonably talented actors in hopes that something will rub off. The result is in truth not as bad as some people seem to think.

Reba plays Reba Hart, a single mom who works too hard, loves her kids and never stops: who she is is who she wants to be - that's from the theme song if you couldn't guess. Actually Reba is divorced and got the typical TV divorce settlement - a big house and enough money that she doesn't actually have to work as hard as the theme song indicates that she does - at least not outside of the house. Not that life is all sweetness and light at home. Her eldest daughter Cheyenne got pregnant and married in her senior year of high school. As she put it "the three months between getting my drivers license and getting pregnant were the freest I've ever felt." Cheyenne married Van the high school football star who did a year of college before turning pro and having a career ending injury. They (and the baby) live with Reba. Middle daughter Kyra is a typical sitcom teenage girl - a smart-ass in other words. In an act of teenaged rebellion she went to live with her father and his new wife. Youngest child Jake is typically sitcom pre-teen cute both in looks and acts. Rounding out the cast is Reba's ex, Brock and his new wife Barbara-Jean who got pregnant with Brock's baby while Brock was still married to Reba.

If most of that sounds like a typical sitcom play book, well throw it out. For one thing the absolute best thing about this show is Melissa Peterman as Barbara Jean. Barbara Jean isn't stupid, but she is more than a bit dense. Somehow she doesn't grasp the notion that Reba might not want to be friends with the woman who broke up her marriage by getting pregnant with Brock's child. She is always showing up at Reba's house behaving as though she is not just a friend but Reba's best friend - which in a bizarre sort of way she is! What makes the character is not just the writing but Peterman's delivery and her rubber-like face. She is a hoot and her scenes with McEntire are some of the best in the show in part because Peterman seems to bring out the goofy side of McEntire. It happens somewhat with the other characters but Peterman and McEntire together just cut loose. McEntire proves that she can mug for the camera almost as well as Peterman and that's saying a lot. For once Christopher Rich as Brock isn't the dumbest person in the cast. He's frequently a little thick but not stupid. The dumb character is Van, played by Steve Howey, and in the grand tradition of comedy he makes dumb funny. Just as one example there's a scene where Barbara Jean says "And what is dog spelled backwards?" It takes Van 15 seconds to figure out that dog spelled backwards is God. It's obviously a scene that plays better than it sounds. Van's interaction with his wife Cheyenne, played by Joanna Garcia, is done to perfection, even though Cheyenne's IQ seems to go down in her scenes with Van. Even Scarlett Pomers (who first appeared as Naomi Wildmon on Star Trek: Voyager) as Kyra manages to make her smart-assed teen character funny even though she's usually given precious little to work with.

Apparently Reba is either a show that people really love, or a show that people really love to hate. For me, while the writing isn't special and most of the characters aren't particularly original, the relationship between Barbara Jean and Reba and (more importantly) the way that Reba McEntire and Melissa Peterman play that relationship makes it a show that I try very hard not to miss.

I Love Franny

Let me start out with a disclaimer. I was predisposed to like Living With Fran, and that's largely because I like Fran Drescher. If The Nanny was a retread of I Love Lucy with different accents (and think about it: Max and Fran as Ricky and Lucy, Niles and C.C. as Fred and Ethel) it was still funnier than a lot of shows of the same period. Besides, Fran Drescher made me laugh during one of the darker periods of my life and for that I am eternally grateful. That said, I will now state that I am somewhat disappointed with Living With Fran. The WB aired two episodes of the show tonight (separated by an episode of Reba, a show which is a guilty pleasure of mine) and while it's not the worst comedy currently on the air, it doesn't live up to the standards set by The Nanny, at least not yet.

Drescher plays Fran Reeves. Fran has been divorced for a couple of years and of course lives in a typical TV divorcee's house - big and with lots of rooms that are in the process of expensive renovations - that indicates that she took her ex to the cleaners in the divorce. What sets Fran apart from her time slot neighbour Reba is that not only is she sexually active but she's living with a much younger man. How much younger? Well it's not explicitly stated in the episodes that aired tonight but at one point he was supposed to be younger than Fran's son, although that concept seems to have been abandoned. Riley - or "R-dog" as he suggests the son can call him - is a 26 year-old contractor played with a certain charming density by Ryan McPartlin, formerly of the soap Passions, while the son, Josh, is played by new comer Ben Feldman. In the pilot episode Josh returns home after being expelled from Medical School (he suffered a nervous breakdown after 72 hours and 46 cups of coffee, and attacked a male nurse with a bone saw). Josh has issues, and they aren't improved with the jock who is now sleeping with his mother, or that they've changed his old room into a home gym (based on the equipment in that room she must have hit the jackpot in the divorce). To top it off there's a bass player named Duane (Branden Williams) living in Josh's old closet. About the only thing stable is that - like all sitcom siblings - Josh and his sister (Misti Traya) couldn't agree on what colour the White House is.

Originally called Shacking Up the show probably should be more ground breaking than it actually is. Except for the fact that Drescher's character is in her 40s and living with a man almost half her age, this could be just about any current sitcom, the elements are all there. It's a good idea, particularly in a world where people are wondering if Ashton Kutcher is going to make Demi Moore a mother again, but the execution may not be up to the job. The writing, particularly in the pilot episode felt weak and consequently the laughs seemed forced. Misti Traya is good as the teenaged sister, but the character is the typical sitcom rebellious teen. Feldman is quite good as the neurotic son, but has to contend with writing that at times makes him seem like an obnoxious jerk. In the two episodes screened on Friday, Branden Williams played a minimal role in the first episode, and was totally absent in the second. Actually the writing seemed to improve in the second episode shown, which happened to be the tenth episode shot. It also benefitted from the presence of Marilu Henner as Ryan's mother, who is as set against the relationship as Josh is, although she softens her objections when she hears the story of how the couple came together.

Of course the series will live and die on Fran Drescher's portrayal of Fran Reeves. At various times she's a woman at her sexual peak with a younger man to make love to, a very Jewish mother (she almost seems to be channelling the Sylvia Fine character played by Renee Taylor in The Nanny), and a woman who is finally happy with her life. As Fran describes her life she went from her parents' house directly to her husband's house and only now has found happiness in her life. Her son even notices it - he says that he's never really seen her smile during her marriage, to which she replied that the only time she'd smiled was when she threw her husband out. Drescher has to sell us on that and also that she's the sot of woman who can attract and keep a man almost half her age. It's not just a question of looks - at 47 Drescher is gorgeous - it's also a question of attitude. I think she carries it off but the question is how long she can carry it. In The Nanny she had a strong supporting cast most notably the extremely versatile Daniel Davis and Lauren Lane to work off of. In the new series her supporting cast is much weaker meaning that the show is even more of a potential showcase for Drescher than The Nanny was. I expect that I'll keep watching if only to see Fran work, and hope that the show improves around her. For now it goes on the guilty pleasure list.

This is Progress?

It says something about ... something that ABC decided to program two full hours of their new comedy Jake In Progress opposite the first night of the NCAA Championship. They showed two new episodes followed by the two episodes that aired last Sunday. I bailed about ten minutes into the second half hour, just after Wendy Mallick was corralled by a trivia spouting employee who, against her will, Mallick was trying to get to know a little. I was getting a headache and life is too short to watch shows that you think might be giving you a headache.

Maybe I'm not the right audience for this show, but I found all of the characters depressingly self-centred. A self-centred character isn't a bad thing really but when all of the characters are self-centred, there's no one to root for or identify with, no one to like. John Stamos plays Jake Phillips, a New York publicist to the stars who, according to the clips we've seen ABC use to promote the show, has reached the point in his life that all men (well at least straight men who haven't done something stupid like entering the priesthood or a monastery) reach, where he wonders what it would be like to settle down with one woman and raise a family. Trouble is that he's so used to being a serial dater that he's not sure about how he's supposed to go about this. Maybe my problem is that I didn't see that in the episode I caught. What I saw was a battle of one-upsmanship between Jake and another publicist and Jake getting a chance to do it with an actress he's lusted after for years. Jake came across as a self centred jerk. Then there was Jakes friend the performance artist Patrick, played by Rick Hoffman who wants to go to a party so he can insult magician David Blane and plans out in detail how he's going to do it, down to which T-shirt made him look angrier. Wendy Mallick's character of Naomi is merely Nina from Just Shoot Me in a new office and a pregnancy belly. I didn't see much interaction with Ian Gomez as Jake's long-time best friend Adrian or with Margaret Welsh as Adrian's wife Naomi, so maybe this episode was a bit atypical. ABC has also promoted the series as "Different sex, same city" but it really doesn't live up to that billing. Carrie Bradshaw had at least some redeeming features and there was always Miranda. In fact the only totally self-centred character was Samantha, and even she had sympathetic moments. In what I saw of Jake In Progress there was none of this.

The writing is sharp, one might even say barbed. There were some good satirical moments when Jake was dealing with clients. There was the comedian who was putting together a play that was an entirely non-comedic attack on American - sorry "A Murderer" - international policy, in five very long acts; and in a different episode the "Three Gaymigos" (who seemed suspiciously like the Queer Eye Guys) one of whom was coming out of the closet as a heterosexual and the older actress played by Mel Harris who was living with a somewhat dense adolescent star but wanted to break up with him to go live with a 50-something psychiatrist (I wonder which actress with two daughters and a boob job and which star of a Fox comedy set in another decade they could be a send-up of). This is good stuff, and if the recurring characters even once did something that made me actually like some of them, or even feel some sympathy for them, I might tune in again. As it stands I think I'd prefer to watch Survivor, or This Old House, or basketball or even Joey. Life is too short.

What Exactly Constitutes "Groundbreaking"?

When I was 18 I watched One Day At A Time religiously and I'll tell you the biggest reason: Bonnie Franklin. I didn't think much about her acting but for the 18 year-old me, who had little success with girls my own age, she was a fantasy - she was pretty enough, energetic, older and therefore more experienced, and she didn't wear a bra (they weren't big but the moved and that was good enough for me). I wanted her or her doppelganger to "teach me" if you get my meaning. 18 year-old boys are horny pigs, but I'm sure that comes as a revelation to no one, either former 18 year-old males or females of just about any age. She wasn't my first TV sex object - that would probably have been Margot Kidder from the short lived Nichols (thanks to those bar maid outfits) - but Bonnie lasted.

I watched "bouncing Bonnie" bounce for the full eight years that the show was on the air. I enjoyed the show even as, in an odd way it grew increasingly mainstream. Valerie Bertinelli went from a cute kid to an extremely attractive woman and lost her virginity long before her character did, and we watched Mackenzie Phillips go from skinny bitchy teen to drug addicted near-cadaver. Anne Romano went from struggling divorced mom to successful business woman and all three women married. And as the show pushed more towards the centre other shows were doing stuff that was even out there in terms of breaking ground. About the most outrageous thing One Day At A Time was able to do towards the end was have Anne marry her son-in-law's father (which meant that Anne became Barbara's mother-in-law as well as her mother).

So I wasn't going to write anything about the One Day At A Time reunion show - beyond my desire to "sleep" with Bonnie Franklin (or Anne Romano) until I read a comment on the show's IMDB entry. The person writing the show was venomous in his attack on Bonnie Franklin to the point of calling her "one of the worst actresses in television history" and that "her act would get gonged on The Gong Show but it was one line in particular that started me thinking. The line in question was "Why did they think that D-I-V-O-R-C-E was edgy? The show was five years behind the times." What makes a show edgy and groundbreaking?

I can only assume that the writer of this diatribe never saw the shows of the period except in reruns which is not seeing it in the context of the time. Back in the day - and the day was thirty years ago - divorce was a big taboo on television. Actresses might get divorced, but you didn't see divorced or separated women on TV. Women living alone were single or widowed. If an unattached woman had kids then she was a widow. (And of course there was Doris Day: on her sitcom she went from a widow with kids living on a ranch with her father, to a widow with kids living in San Fancisco to a single woman with no kids. In fact she was probably a virgin again!) About the only divorced women on TV at the time were also Norman Lear creation, Maude Findlay (a three time loser) and her daughter Carole, but on Maude, Maude was married and Carole was just a subsidiary character, not the lead.

Another thing about Anne Romano was that she was an independent woman. She'd gotten out of one marriage and unlike so many characters on sitcom even at that point her objective in life wasn't to get married as soon as possible. She didn't want to be controlled the way she had been in her first marriage, which caused her first post-marriage relationship to end - he wanted kids with her, she didn't want any more. She struggled with being a single parent and trying to balance finding work and then working with a family. And like a good feminist, when she felt that she was being held back at work because she was a woman she started her own business and made a success of it.

And then there was sex. Anne Romano got laid. It was less than five years before that people were scandalized that Mary Richards stayed out all night with men on very rare occasions (and to protect herself took the pill). Mary Tyler Moore was supposed to be an even more groundbreaking show - Mary was supposed to be a divorced woman, but the network objected to the idea because they said that people would think that Laura Petrie had divorced Rob. Anne didn't just discreetly come home the morning after like Mary, you saw her heading to the bedroom, from the bedroom, and on occasion in the bedroom. Not all of her affairs were long term relationships either - she had at least a few one nighters sprinkled in among her list of bed buddies.

So was One Day At A Time groundbreaking? To a degree I think it was. It wasn't All In The Family or Maude or even The Jeffersons in terms of innovation, it broke a few taboos in a gentler fashion. It even makes me wonder if a show like this could be made today by a major network. I don't watch sitcoms today, but it seems to me that the typical sitcom can be boiled down to this sort of recipe. Take one guy (usually overweight - think Kevin James or Jim Belushi), add one wife who usually looks to good to be with him (Courtney Thorne Smith or Leah Remini), mix in one or more kid or funny adult relative who needs to be cared for (have to say that to include Jerry Stiller) and some goofy friends. Blend well and pour into molds. As nearly as I can recall the only show with a female lead character in a sitcom who is a divorced woman with kids is Reba, and that's not even in the same league as One Day At A Time.

What is Las Vegas?

No, not the city in Nevada, I'm talking about the TV series on NBC on Monday nights. It's an hour long, has people punching each other and stars James Caan, so it must be an action-drama, right? Actually, after careful consideration, I've come to the conclusion that Las Vegas is the latest hour-long situation comedy and more accurately an action-comedy. I do know that anyone who actually thinks this show is even remotely realistic in its depiction of operations at a major casino resort - something I saw in a user commentary on IMDB while I was researching this little piece - should have their heads examined.

There have been hour-long comedies practically since the inception of network television but virtually all were variety shows with a large component of comedy or sketch shows like Laugh-In or Love American Style. Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz did some one hour shows Desi-Lucy Comedy Hour - in fact one episode ran 75 minutes - with them in character as Lucy and Ricky throughout not just the episodes but the series. The first really modern hour long sitcom was probably Moonlighting, although both the Directors Guild of America and the Television Academy followed the "traditional" definition of a drama being any hour-long show (although I mentioned in an earlier post that this definition only really became accepted by the mid-1960s) when giving out awards. Only the Golden Globes put Moonlighting in their comedy-musical category. Northern Exposure won Emmys as a dramatic series as well when, given the quirky nature of the characters and the situations that faced the lead character, Dr. Joel Fleischman, it could only be described as a comedy. At least the Screen Actors Guild and the Directors Guild recognised that the show was a comedy in their awards, although the DGA only switched the designation for their 1994 awards. The first hour-long show to be fully recognised by the Emmys, the Directors Guild and most other award giving organizations was Ally McBeal.

So why do I think that Las Vegas is a comedy? For me the big thing is that although there have been episodes that are primarily dramatic, most of the episodes are largely comedic. Take Monday's episode. From the title, "To Protect And Serve Manicotti" it was played broadly and with a definite comedic pacing. In the "A" plot, casino boss and former CIA agent "Big" Ed Deline (James Caan) and his friend Frank (played by Sylvester Stallone) try to stop a protection racket directed against the mother of a showgirl. The interaction between Caan and Stallone is not unlike that in a Hope and Crosby "Road" picture. In the "B" plot, Security Chief Danny McCoy (Josh Duhamel) tries to track down a customer who cheated the casino out of a hundred thousand dollars before Big Ed finds out that they gave the guy a marker without checking with him. In the "C" plot Nessa, Sam and Delinda (Marsha Thomason, Vanessa Marcil and Molly Sims; Nikki Cox as Mary Connell - Danny's best friend and occasional love interest - didn't have much to do in this episode) each go to extremes to get Joe Rogan to pick her over the other two to represent the hotel on an episode of Fear Factor. The "B" plot is perhaps the only one that could possibly be considered as dramatic, and the way Duhammel carries himself and his character make that a rather absurd assertion.

The best reason for watching Las Vegas is to see James Caan play his tough guy image for a laugh. It's abundantly clear that Big Ed is not someone to be trifled with but his bluster is just a little too showy to be taken seriously by the audience, and he does tend to range between chewing the scenery a bit, and playing a low key "dese, dem and dose" kind of guy. I'm also willing to bet that Caan is the reason what the show has been able to attract actors like Stallone and Alec Baldwin to do a TV show. Duhamel is frequently quite watchable as the titular lead player, and has some meaty dramatic scenes to sink his teeth into (notably Danny's return from military service in Iraq) but is charming enough to pull off the comedy scenes. James Lesure as Danny's pal Mike (an MIT engineer who worked as a hotel valet because he earned more money that way and then was forced to take a pay cut when Big Ed needed him to work in security) is a techno-wizard but in a cool way. He doesn’t have a lot of funny moments, but plays off of Danny and Ed well. Although the women as individuals may have serious storylines, a lot of the stuff that they do individually and together has a comedic aspect to it.

Las Vegas will probably never win any major awards, but on the whole it is an attractive, well-made, and funny series that uses the frequent absurdity of the title city most effectively. It certainly doesn't belong on any list of guilty pleasures. Best of all, the producers, having decided that the show needed an Elvis Presley song as the title music, resisted the temptation to use "Viva Las Vegas" and went instead for "A Little Less Conversation". What's not to love about that?