Gary Unmarried – This Viewer Wants A Divorce

I've got some good news and some bad news for the people who are associated with Gary Unmarried. The good news is that it's not as bad as Do Not Disturb (and boy if you could have seen the typo I made on that title you'd laugh). The bad news is that it's not as good as Two And A Half Men. Say what you want about that show, at least it's funny, something that I can't describe Gary Unmarried as being.

I missed the pilot episode last week, preferring to watch House and trying to do my duty with the revival of Knight Rider so I don't know all of the details of the relationships. Maybe that's for the best since it means that I was dropped into a more typical episode than most pilots tend to be. Gary Brooks, played by Jay Mohr, is a recently divorced house who is starting a new relationship with divorcee Vanessa Flood (Jaime King) even as he deals with his ex-wife Allison (Paula Marshall) and her new fiancé Dr. Walter Krandall (Ed Begley Jr.) who used to be their couples councillor. And then there's Gary's relationship with his teenage son Tom (Ryan Malgarini), and his nearly teenage daughter Louise (Kathryn Newton). I shall now pause for people like Sutpen and Shreve to make remarks about Louise Brooks.

In Wednesday's episode, Gary and Vanessa have been having some very energetic sex, the net result of which is that Gary (who used to play football and surfs and as I mentioned is a housepainter) has thrown out his back. He doesn't want to tell Vanessa about this since he figures that she'll drop him for someone younger and "fitter" (if you get my drift). He wants help from Allison, who knows how to fix his back but isn't inclined to help him because of the way he threw his back out. Eventually he decides to go over to his old house (which Allison got in the divorce) and use the hot tub, believing that Allison won't be home. He's talking to Allison on his cell phone, lying about being caught in traffic as he goes to get a beer from her refrigerator. Trouble is that Allison's at home and catches him in the kitchen. For reasons which defy any sort of explanation, Gary drops his swim trunks and stands in front of Allison naked. And of course he's unable to put them on again – remember he can't bend down. Rather than touching either the swim trunks or her husband, Allison uses kitchen tongs to handle the shorts and then throws the tongs into the garbage. She also bans Gary from the house, though of course she feels free to go into his house whenever the fancy strikes her. And the fancy strikes her when for some reason she has to take their daughter's cello over to Gary's. I think it had to do with Allison being sure that Gary hadn't returned the thing and when Walter found it in the laundry room she "naturally" tried to sneak it into his house. Of course Gary's there and after a bit of sparring, Allison agrees to work on Gary's back...which consists of walking on it and taking out some of her own frustrations on him. It seems that she's worried about getting old and unsexy. Gary reassures her that if he were to see her in a bar and didn't know who she was, he'd pick her up. And, as it turns out, Gary's own worries about approaching forty and needing to have energetic sex with Vanessa isn't something he has to worry about – Vanessa's worried about being able to keep up with him in that department.

There's a rather pointless B-plot about Gary's son Tom and his new – hottie – girlfriend who wants to hold hands everywhere, which is starting to annoy Tom. Gary advises him to tell her about his annoyance about this and how he doesn't want to hold hands as much anymore. This leads her to start kissing instead.

I don't know that much about Jay Mohr as an actor. I know that he was on Saturday Night Live and that he starred in the FOX comedy Action, so I know that he can do comedy (I also know that the lucky S.O.B. is married to Nikki Cox in real life), and I recall some of his more serious acting, particularly from The West Wing where he played a right-wing talk show host who annoyed CJ on a regular basis. So perhaps I should give him the benefit of the doubt her and put the blame for this debacle on the writing. Despite what I regard as an overaggressive use of the laugh track, there really wasn't that much funny about this show. Paula Marshall had a couple of funny lines when she talks about how she suddenly feels old and unsexy: for the first time she hasn't been able to flirt her way out of a traffic ticket, and when the cop found out her age he asked her she knew his mother...and she did. A couple of good lines and the situation with the shorts and the kitchen tongs aren't enough to make a show though.

Worst of all is Ed Begley's character. First of all we are meant to believe that Begley (real age 59) is involved with Paula Marshall (real age 44). We are also meant to believe that Walter is still working as a shrink and councillor despite the fact that he entered into a relationship with one part of the couple he was working with, not to mention the fact that he name drops the famous people that he works with – like Sir Ben Kingsley. Either thing is enough in real life to cause a lot of problems for a person in his profession. Ah, but the character gets even worse. He is at times an unthinking self-centred jerk. He doesn't drive but rides a bike instead, so when Allison – who should know better – asks him to drop her kids off with Gary, Walter is able to ride Louise over on his bike...and forces Tom to run along behind. Beyond that, the guy is insufferable because he does everything perfectly, whether it's cooking or playing the cello. And we are supposed to believe that Allison can't see through this guy's line of B.S.

As I've said more than once, I have drifted away from sitcoms over the years. Shows like Gary Unmarried are part of the reason why. The writing is subpar and the laugh track is used to try to convince us that something funny is going on. And yet, as I said, it isn't as bad as Do Not Disturb because they at least try to do some funny material and occasionally they actually hit with it...just not as often as they hope to and certainly not as often as top comedies like Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother or – yes it's sad but true – Two And A Half Men. And I don't even want to mention edgy shows (by broadcast standards) like 30 Rock or The Office because this show is nowhere near the quality of those series. I'm not even sure that I could recommend a way to make this show work if I wanted to. I'm given to understand that this show isn't doing well in the ratings, thanks I suppose to Bones and (ugh) Knight Rider, so maybe we'll see something different, and probably better, in this time slot. On aesthetic grounds, this show isn't so bad that it has to be dumped as soon as possible. I can just barely see it limping along for the thirteen episodes the network has signed for – something that becomes more likely with the possibility of a SAG strike, but even with a SAG strike it won't go much beyond that. More importantly, unless the writers do something significantly different (and I can almost guarantee they won't) this show doesn't deserve to go further.

First Blood 2008

Well we didn't have to wait long for the first show to be pulled from the line-up. While the Fox Network is claiming that Do Not Disturb has only been pulled for the October 1^st episode, various entertainment journalists including Michael Ausiello and E! Online have stated that Do Not Disturb is done like dinner and won't be back. The action came just a few days after the show's producers sent a letter to Variety apologizing "for being the perpetrators of such bad television" even as they begged for viewers to give them a second chance because the show got better, honest. In the letter they wrote, "We here at Do Not Disturb agree that by airing the Work Sex episode — before airing the actual pilot — we created much confusion and we deserve all the criticism, the bad puns (i.e. 'an early checkout from the fall season,' 'Do Not Make in the First Place,' etc.) and, yes, even the accusation that it very well could be the final nail in the multicamera sitcom's coffin."

A mere three episodes of the series aired which had ratings which would be anemic even for The CW let alone FOX. The first episode – which was not the official Pilot for the series – drew 4.65 million viewers and a 1.9/5 rating among the 18-49 demographic. The ratings went down each week with the third – and presumably final – episode drew a mere 3.53 million viewers and a 1.4/3 rating in the 18-49 demographic. The show will be replaced at least on October 1^st, with a second episode of 'Til Death which hasn't exactly been drawing stellar ratings this season itself.

Do Not Disturb - The Writers Should Have Been

I've got good news and bad news for the people behind the new FOX comedy Do Not Disturb (yeah right, like they pay attention to me). The good news is that the first episode wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. The bad news is that my expectations for this show were so low that the only direction it could possibly go was up. Well that's not entirely true; my expectations for The War At Home was lower than this and that show managed to be even worse than I expected. Do Not Disturb really wasn't as bad as I expected but make no mistake, it was bad.

The show is set in a small, high end hotel in New York and focuses on the misadventures and foibles of the places employees. I managed to miss the first couple of minutes of the episode but quickly picked up the essence of the plot. An article came out detailing the sexual "adventures" of an anonymous member of the hotel staff in various parts of the hotel. This leads Rhonda, the hotel's head of human resources, to hold a sexual harassment class specifically directed at the hotel's manager Neal. Neal is a natural born horn-dog with a variety of "smooth" moves. Neal claims that he can stop his behaviour at any time and sets out to prove it. There are a couple of subplots along the way. In one Nicole, finds that she's been dropped by her modelling agency. It's important to her that she keeps working as a model for reasons that seem logical to her at least. In another subplot Larry, who is gay, worries that he's not being seen as sexually attractive since he's been in a committed relationship for some time.

Now I broke the discussion of the plots at this point because it's hear that things fall into a trap. The plots that I've outlined to this point are hardly daisy fresh, but there are ways to spin them in an innovative way. Too bad that the writers take them exactly the way that you'd expect them too. Naturally, as soon as Neal pledges not to get involved with anyone at the hotel he encounters a gorgeous woman named Tasha who is almost as eager to do with him what he wants to do with her. And naturally, at almost the instant that her sexual harassment class ends Rhonda gets involved with a member of the staff who is one of her employees, Billy the security guard for the hotel. Of course Rhonda and Billy have to sneak around to find a place to have sex, and naturally enough they get caught by Neal who has succumbed to the charms of Tasha. She has an excuse for what she was doing in the hotel's electrical room with the security man. But of course Neal attempts to bluff Rhonda into revealing that she's as bad as he is in this particular case by claiming that he had security cameras installed and those cameras have caught Rhonda's various trysts with Billy.

The other subplots unravel in the same sort of ways. While Nicole looks like the current trend in models (skinny to the point of anorexia) it is Molly who tries offers to help by hooking Nicole up with her modelling agent. Nicole doesn't believe that Molly (who is a heavy woman) is a model until she comes across a magazine with Molly's picture on the front – Molly is one of the busiest plus sized models in Indiana. Naturally Nicole gets a modelling job... as the new face of crystal meth addiction. Similarly, in the plot with Larry, his straight slacker co-worker Gus tells him that to regain his sense of being sexually attractive he should go to a bar and flirt with a guy. And naturally, the guy that Larry chooses to flirt with just happens to go to the same yoga class as Larry's partner. And while Larry reports that he and his partner fought at first, they had great a great time making up. Even the denouement to the main plot is predictable. When he reads the article Neal immediately states that he hasn't done have the things that are listed in the article. We then cut to the front of the hotel where Molly is talking to a young guy, telling him that the article could have gotten her into trouble...but they sex they'd had in the hotel was going to keep on happening!

You may have noticed that I haven't mentioned what most of the people that I've mentioned do at the hotel. That's because, except for Rhonda, Neal and Billy (whose security uniform consists of a tight fitting black T-shirt with the word "Security" on it in big white letters) I don't know what any of them do. That would have presumably been included in the actual Pilot episode of this mess, but FOX decided to air a "stronger" episode first and hold the Pilot for a later date. If this is FOX's idea of a strong episode of this series I am truly frightened by how bad the "weak" Pilot must be.

The acting in this show is about as good as what they're given to work with. I've never been a big fan of Jerry O'Connell who plays Neal. The only thing I've really liked him in is as Detective Woody Hoyt in Crossing Jordan, however I've found most of his other work going back to his Canadian series My Secret Identity to be quite annoying. Casting him as an arrogant, egotistical, womanizer doesn't exactly endear him, or really play to his strengths as an actor. I wasn't too aware of Niecy Nash before – I've never watched Reno 911 – but she does what she can with the material here. Too bad it's such pedestrian material. The other characters, with the possible exception of Jolene Purdy aren't given much more than basic "types" to work with – the airheaded skinny model (Molly Stanton), the slacker (Dave Franco), the insecure gay guy (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) – and they don't lift things above those "types." However it is the writing rather than the performances that is at fault here. The writers have set up a definite "good guy-bad guy" relationship between the attractive but superficial "upstairs" people, led by Neal, and the less attractive but smarter downstairs people who do the real work, led by Rhonda. It's just about as pat a solution as you are likely to find. They've also made the choice to go with the standard sitcom responses to the problems that the characters had. They took the path of least resistance as far as writing this thing and as a result haven't delivered anything special. But even then the writers are at least partially absolved by being forced to work within the constraints of the concept for the series. The producers are giving us yet another workplace comedy and not coming up with a way to set it apart from the mainstream beyond the theory that it's about an internal conflict between the "upstairs people" – the ones attractive enough to work with the public – and the "downstairs people" who aren't attractive but are at least as essential for the hotel to run properly. It's been done before and it's been done better. There are directions that the series could have taken that would have lifted it out of the realm of the cliche. One need only look to the British series Hotel Babylon to see what can be done can be done with the idea of a high end hotel and the staff who work in it that doesn't involve adversarial relationships or the same bog-standard stories and scenarios that were mined out years ago.

I mentioned in my review of Fringe that it is easy to write about shows that you feel are good and shows that are bad but that it was hard to talk about mediocrity. Nothing in this show rises to the level of mediocrity. Mediocrity implies that there are directions that exist that could improve a show if the producers were brave enough or innovative enough to take them. In the case of Do Not Disturb you might be able to improve the show, but that would take a new cast, writers who were willing to take different directions on standard plotlines, and a new concept might not hurt either. This isn't the worst sitcom that I've seen but the truth is that I have seen better sitcoms than this cancelled and even I will admit that those shows deserved to be cancelled. While this show doesn't suck as badly as I thought it would it also doesn't come at me with any reason why it should survive. If this show is still on at the end of the year I won't be surprised, but I won't be happy either, particularly if better comedies have been cancelled.

Guide Me Away

Once upon a time, a long time ago – back when television didn't have pictures and was called radio – there was a show called Our Miss Brooks. Our Miss Brooks – which in due time actually got pictures and became a television show – starred the fabulous and amazing Eve Arden as a high school teacher named Connie Brooks, Gale Gordon (who would later play Mr. Mooney on The Lucy Show and would appear in just about everything else that Lucille Ball did until one or both of them died) as Principal Osgood Conlkin, and Jeff Chandler (on Radio) or Robert Rockwell (on TV) as Mr. Boynton as the Biology teacher that Connie swooned over. I mention this show, which I've never seen but have heard courtesy of the old When Radio Was show that I used to be able to hear on KIRO in Seattle (until the idiots there decided I'd rather hear some moron who thought it was cool to say things like "comely Jewess" to describe Sara Silverman), because the producers of the new series Miss Guided stole the idea behind the older show but neglected to bring any of the wit or intelligence that the show that debuted over 60 years ago had.

Judy Greer, who played Kitty Sanchez on Arrested Development, is Becky Freely. Becky was one of the nameless, faceless mob at her old high school, who has come back as an adult to be the guidance counsellor. There she is surrounded by a gang of total incompetents. These include the principal, Mr. Huffy (Earl Billings). Let's just say that he's laid back to the point of being nearly comatose and while he wouldn't rather be anywhere else it's pretty clear that he'd rather be almost anywhere else. Then there's Bruce, the Vice Principal. Bruce, played by Chris Parnell from Saturday Night Live is one of those freakish human teachers that you only find in sitcoms set in schools. He believes that every student is up to something, that unless dances are strictly controlled – by him – there'll be a race riot and that students who are even slightly outside of the norm are carrying weapons or drugs or both. Tim (Kristopher Polaha), who used to teach auto shop is the new Spanish teacher. As he puts it, he's about one session in the language lab ahead of the kids in his class in speaking Spanish (and has to practice before Parent Teacher meetings with "real Mexicans") but he's just happy to have been asked to be something other than a glorified mechanic (the former Spanish teacher was arrested for something on his computer hard drive – the janitor was offered the job but he didn't want anyone checking his hard drive). And then there's Lisa Germain (Brooke Burns), the newly hired English teacher. Back when they were both in school, Lisa was Becky's nemesis – Lisa barely knew that Becky existed. Becky was the Homecoming Queen – Becky got stood up by her date – a cheerleader – Becky was going through extensive orthodontia – and was dating the quarterback that Becky had a crush on (after their one scene together in the high school production of The Sound Of Music). Naturally, Becky has feelings for Tim. Her way of expressing them is to nearly run over someone in the school parking lot in order to get a parking spot near his. Just as naturally Lisa, who is in the midst of a divorce from the quarterback, is also attracted to Tim, but is far more aggressive in going out to get what she wants.

The episode centred around the Homecoming Dance (and was cleverly titled Homecoming – a double meaning there since it was the homecoming as well for Lisa and all of Becky's not very well buried insecurities) which Becky was organizing and was supposed to chaperone along with Tim. Becky expected Tim to ask her to the dance and was shocked to discover courtesy of one of her guidance counselling sessions, that Lisa had asked Tim out. Now I'm not entirely sure how it happened (I was trying to do something else at the time) but somehow Becky ended up outside the gym where the dance was being held, hiding in the bushes with one of the "outcast" students, and watching things go well for the students who have come to her. And, of course, watching Tim and Lisa out of fear that Lisa will steal "her" man. In fact, after the dance Becky follows Tim and Lisa out to the parking lot and hides behind a car to overhear them talking. It all seems pretty stalker-ish.

It says something about the quality of a show when I find the person who is supposedly the antagonist – Lisa – to be a far more rounded, interesting, and dare I say it sane than any of the other characters on the show. That includes the lead character too. Lisa is more active than Mr. Huffy, more competent than Tim (she actually speaks Spanish since she lived on a cattle ranch in Spain, writing a novel) saner than Bruce (not that this is hard to accomplish) and way more confident in herself than Becky. Meanwhile Becky, who we're supposed to identify with, like, support and cheer for come across as unerringly happy and smiley to the point of near idiocy. As to her "relationship" with Tim, at times it comes desperately close to stalking behaviour anywhere except within the script of a TV series. It's kind of creepy really. That's not to say there weren't some nice touches. The two scenes with the janitor are fun as are some of the flashbacks to Becky's numerous high school humiliations. I particularly liked the one where her parents are videotaping the play and you can hear one of them say after she delivers her one line that they should go now since she's said her line.

Earlier I mentioned Our Miss Brooks. There are a lot of similarities in the plot; an unmarried teacher, a potential relationship with a fellow teacher who seems to be so desperately thick about figuring out that the woman is interested in him, a rival for his affections, and a principal who is at best aloof or perhaps obtuse (although I can't imagine Mr. Huffy exploding in the way that Mr. Conklin did in virtually every episode). The similarities are superficial though. Connie Brooks was aggressive, smart, sassy, sometimes sarcastic, and always ready with a comeback for whoever she was talking too. Mr. Boynton was so far from being the incompetent that Tim is that it bears mentioning only for completeness. Boynton wasn't stupid, he was just a painfully shy man who was far more comfortable with his bullfrog Mac than with any woman. As for her rival for Boynton's attention, Daisy Enright (played by Mary Jane Croft) is very much her equal, with the addition of a scheming nature. The latter sets her up as the antagonist as we are not meant to admire this quality. While Daisy's character might be considered "old fashioned – the conniving woman trying to get a man by whatever technique available – the rest of Our Miss Brooks seems far more modern than the characters on Miss Guided. Connie Brooks in particular is probably far closer to what a modern teacher is like than Judy Greer's Becky Freely.

The thing about Miss Guided that is so galling for me is that it's not hard to recognise that the producers are leaning much too far in the direction of farce than they should. They seem to be relying on the old trick of exaggerating situations way out of proportions to the material. This can work in some situations, but even shows like The Office and 30 Rock don't take farce anywhere near this far. It says something when the most human character of the lot is supposed to be the arch-rival of the protagonist. I think this is another colossal flop on the comedy front for ABC even if it should earn strong ratings when it is inserted into the Thursday line-up (against the first night of the NCAA Basketball championship by the way so this smells like a burn-off rather than a show the network hopes will come back), and frankly I don't think that it could happen to a more deserving show...even According To Jim. Or maybe I'm just an old fart with memories of the "good old days." Hey you kids, get off my lawn!

Captain's Not So Courageous...Or Funny

I had a sense of déjà vu watching Welcome To The Captain on Monday, but it's a sense that most viewers who aren't Canadian won't have. People who have seen the CTV series Robson Arms will understand what I'm talking about. For the rest of you – the majority I'm sure – the show will seem vaguely innovative but on the whole not particularly brilliant, and arguably not that great. Of course that's just based on seeing the first episode.

The Captain is the nickname for the El Capitan, a sort of aging glamour queen of an apartment building in Hollywood – beautiful and even stately on the outside but somewhat down on its heels on the inside. Josh Flum (Fran Kranz) is our entry into the world of The Captain and its eccentric inhabitants. Josh wrote and directed an Oscar winning short film five years ago but hasn't done much since. He's been working on a script but when his girlfriend left him he decided to move back to New York. Or at least he was planning to until his sleazy best friend and business manager Marty Tanner (Chris Klein) persuaded him to move into The Captain where Marty himself lives with his girlfriend. Once he decides to take the apartment (the previous tenant died) he meets Saul Fish, the first of the diverse group of residents, and Jesus, the building's doorman (actually I'm not sure exactly what Jesus is supposed to be as you'll see). Saul – who prefers that people call him "Uncle Saul" – is a long-time resident of The Captain. He wrote 79 episodes of a little show called Three's Company which I guess is supposed to be something of an in joke since Saul – sorry, Uncle Saul – is played by Jeffrey Tambor who was not only a frequent guest star on Three's Company but also one of the stars of the spin-off The Ropers. Quite obviously Uncle Saul is living quite well on his residual checks because he doesn't claim to have any credits beyond them. Jesus, played by Al Madrigal (who I have never heard of before this show) is supposedly the building's go-to guy; Uncle Saul tells Josh that if there's anything he needs, go to Jesus. On the whole though Jesus isn't particularly helpful – when Josh asks for some help with some boxes, Jesus says "No." On the other hand he does know everything about everyone in the building which might be good if it weren't for the fact that he will tell anyone everything about everyone in the building – he can't keep his mouth shut.

At a party that Marty claims is being thrown in honour of the new tenant but is in fact being thrown for the building manager, who just got out of hospital, who just got back after surgery, Josh meets the rest of the tenants in the building. There's aspiring young actress Astrid (Valerie Azlynn), who Marty claims is "perfect" for Josh. She is desperate to get Josh to help her study and get parts, in fact just about anything his Oscar prestige (which is minimal for a short film Oscar of course) can get her. Then there's Marty's girlfriend for now, Claire (Abigail Spencer). Next up is Charlene Van Ness (Raquel Welch), the building's resident cougar. Uncle Saul is clearly in lust for her – he says that she has an ass like a "buttery chardonnay – but Charlene's taste are for the younger things in life. Finally, as he makes a speech at what he still thinks is his party, Josh literally sees Hope across a crowded room. Hope (Joanna Garcia) is studying to be an acupuncturist. In fact she's just finished her certification exam. Josh arranges for a treatment for his sciatica at her apartment. Actually it's her brother's apartment, and is filled with "monster heads" – he designs creatures for the movies and is currently working in New Zealand. Hope is great, totally unaffected when Josh has a sudden erection during the treatment ("sets up a pup tent" as she puts it) and Josh is sure that he's found marriage material. The only thing is that as soon as she's certified as an acupuncturist, Hope is heading for New York. Impetuously Josh tells her he's going back to New York too.

Josh goes back to his apartment to find a note from Charlene, asking him to stop by her apartment. She tells him that she's got a "great" idea for an erotic story that she'd like him to write and that she's star in of course. It's really a ruse to get him into her apartment for a night of sex, as anyone but a complete moron would know as soon as he got the note. Josh emerges in the morning, exhausted, under the watchful gaze of Jesus and Uncle Saul who not appreciatively and mention that Jonathon Silverman – "he starred in Weekend at Bernie's" had spent his first night "in the 'House of Charlene' too." And pretty soon everyone else in the building knows including Hope. This makes Josh even more determined to go back to New York. He backs out of his lease with the building manager but when Hope returns that evening she tells him that she failed her certification (she left a needle in her instructor's buttocks – he discovered it while showering) and will be staying at The Captain, he makes a huge effort to stay. It's only after he's back in the place that Hope mentions that she has a boyfriend.

Earlier I mentioned the Canadian series Robson Arms as being similar to Welcome To The Captain. Both series tell the stories of an aging, once fashionable, apartment building with nosy Super (or whatever Jesus is). That's where the basic similarity stops though, and it's where – to me at least – Welcome To The Captain falls flat. Robson Arms is in its essence an anthology series that is frequently at least a dark comedy if not a dramedy. Each week different tenants in the building were featured. The only constant was the Super, Yuri, and even he isn't featured in most episodes. The sense I get from Welcome to the Captain is that they will consistently focus on the main characters of Uncle Saul, Jesus, Josh and Hope, with other cast members showing up as needed for support. And that's a shame because I don't find most of these characters to be at all engaging. Josh is essentially a straight man around whom the funny, eccentric characters revolve but while I find them eccentric I really don't find them to that funny. I've been a fan of Joanna Garcia since she was on Reba and her character seems to be one of the more down to earth among the characters on the show. Jeffrey Tambor's character of Uncle Saul is well beyond his character in last year's dismal Twenty Good Years but that's not saying a lot. It is light years behind such characters of George Bluth Sr. in Arrested Development (or so they tell me) or Hank Kingsley in The Larry Sanders Show to the point where you have to wonder whether he took this role (and the Twenty Good Years part before that) just to cash a pay cheque. Al Madrigal as Jesus is apparently supposed to be funny but so far I just don't see it. From what we've seen Raquel Welch is playing the woman a generation of us all hoped (prayed) she'd be like if we ever met her (horny, aggressive, promiscuous, and into "teaching" younger guys) even though in our heart of hearts we knew she wasn't. The problem is that she isn't so much playing a character as she is a caricature.

The script was nothing to write home about (you should pardon the expression). It felt flat and not funny at all, which is a bit of a problem in a comedy. Maybe – hopefully – it gets better and there is certainly a faction that says that "it must get better because it can't get worse...can it?" The show is quite deliberately airing without a laugh track and in a lot of cases that is a good decision. I don't think this is one of them. There didn't seem to be one unprompted laugh in this thing. The episode was alternately cringe-worthy and embarrassing. The sole exception in my view was the relationship between Josh and Hope but they weren't funny so much as sweet. As I mentioned with Robson Arms this would probably have worked as an episode – or a recurring storyline – within an anthology series, but here the relationship is the central plot point around which the entire series is built and I just don't think it is strong enough.

In most seasons even CBS would dump this unfunny mess fast. This isn't a normal year though; it is the year of the Writers Strike. The Writers Strike has in many ways given viewers what they've wanted – or said they've wanted – for quite some time; the opportunity to have time to settle into a series and decide over more than a couple of episodes before the network drops it like a hot potato. This hasn't been a bad thing although it also hasn't helped to build an audience for most new shows running against established hits. The networks have only pulled one series (Laughlin) before all of the episodes of that series have run. In many cases the result has been that shows have been kept alive long after they deserved to be around. Despite a couple of heavyweights in the cast Welcome To The Captain will, in my opinion be one of those shows that will stay alive because of the strike. I don't think it will be back after the strike and certainly not next season – regardless of when or how the strike is settled. I won't be disappointed because this show is ... well it's bad and I don't think time can save it.

Short Takes - March 12, 2007

A short one this time around. I've got a list of reasons for not writing much, mainly things I did today. We had a lot of snow over the winter and it is starting to melt. Which is good. On the other hand if the snow is packed around your basement windows then when it melts the water on the outside can very easily end up on the inside - of my basement. That's a bad thing. I also had to dig some channels to get melting water away from the part of my garage where most of my brother's stuff is stored, and also open the storm drain which the city so kindly covered with about four feet of snow. And then after that I assembled a flat pack desk for my mother. The door on the desk wouldn't open properly so screw it. So basically not much time to aggregate news about TV today.

Sitcom Wars: From my friend Teletoby over at Inner Toob comes word of a March Madness style survey from the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville to "Pick the greatest character in Television history!" At least that's what they say at the top of the survey although what they actually mean is the greatest sitcom character. And actually it is the greatest American sitcom character - no foreigners need apply. (Toby actually apologized to me for the lack of international representation but when it comes to Canada pickings are slim; Red Green and his nephew Harold, and Brent Leroy from Corner Gas leap to mind but there isn't much else - no one associated with Pardon My French or The Trouble With Tracy would ever be confused with great sitcom characters). Actually the big scandal isn't the lack of international representation but who isn't on the list. Only 64 characters were on the list but over 300 were considered and I'm still trying to figure out how you miss some of these people. Among the absent are:

• Dr. Johnny Fever, WKRP in Cincinnati
• Granny Moses (listed as Granny Clampett by the paper, but she was a Jed's mother-in-law), The Beverly Hillbillies
• Oscar Madison, The Odd Couple
• Maynard G. Krebs, The Affairs of Dobie Gillis
• Chandler Bing, Friends
• Fran Fein, The Nanny
• Niles the Butler, The Nanny
• Wilhelm Klink, Hogan's Heroes
• Bert Campbell, Soap
• Jessica Tait, Soap
  

and a host of others. The newspaper has it's reasons but frankly some of them seem kind of weak. But anyway go there and make your voice heard, and I'll respect you ... even if you do prefer Norm Peterson to Sergeant Schultz.

Who does the PTC hate this week?: And the winner is CSI:Miami. The episode in question is the February 26 episode, described by the PTC as "a horrific display of sexual violence, murder, and political scandal." The episode is difficult to explain but apparently the PTC disliked the fact that one of the victims was a stripper/prostitute who was accidentally killed giving a blowjob (not of course the word the PTC used) to a guy who was sitting on her chest. Things are further complicated by the deliberate murder of the prostitute's bodyguard. Or maybe it was that Horatio discovers that - horror of horrors - a politician was patronizing the same service that provided prostitute who was killed. The PTC says that "Graphic dramatizations of strippers, murder and the dead bodies that result, earn C.S.I. Miami our pick for Worst of the Week." This is followed by the concluding statement "Graphic murders and prostitutes being raped are simply not appropriate for family entertainment. Such themes should be troubling to all who are exposed them, yet shows like this champion the effort to make them appear normal and even acceptable." Sorry but even for the PTC this is weak. For one thing I'm not entirely sure what they're objecting to. For heavens sake this is a cop show and more over it is a cop show that airs in the third hour not in the first or second. There wasn't that much about the episode that was particularly graphic. Let's face it, the PTC is grasping at straws in calling this their worst of the week and not doing a very good job of holding onto them.

New computer watch: Expected delivery date is March 19 (seven days!) but my mother's friend Mary (the one who persuaded me to buy a Dell) figures I should get it by the end of the week. Which means I have some files to transfer before it gets here.

This Class Gets A Failing Grade

(I should have written this yesterday, but a number of things kept me from doing much of anything Tuesday.) One of the things about reviewing a show that has entered a string of reruns - particularly if you don't or can't watch the show on a regular basis - is that you don't know whether the show has improved since the episode you're reviewing. Of course its the same with judging a show by its pilot or second episode. When a show is good that's not a problem because the expectation is that they'll keep up the standard, but when the show is bad or at least underwhelming then you wonder if it will get better or work out the problems. That's the problem I had with The Class. I don't normally get to see the show, since it runs on my bowling night but my current sojourn at my brother's place gave me the opportunity to watch it. I was less than pleased. The episode I saw was "The Class Blows The Whistle", which was the fourth episode of the series. In it Lina (Heather Goldenhersh) goes out on a second date with Richie (Jesse Tyler Ferguson), while her twin sister Kat (Lizzy Caplan) initially balks at and the decdes to fix Ethan (Jason Ritter) up on a blind date with a woman who is "really easy." Meanwhile Nicole (Andrea Anders) is dismayed to discover that her husband Yonk (David Keith) is becoming friends with her old high school boyfriend Duncan (Jon Benrthal) for whom she still has feelings (and maybe more - it wasn't clear from the episode). Finally Holly (Lucy Punch) is driving Kyle (Sean MacGuire) and his boyfriend Aaron (Cristian de la Fuente) to distraction with her efforts to to get her daughter Oprah into the exclusive private school where Kyle teaches. That's a very basic summary of the episode and I think it illustrates one of the major problems that this show has, at least at this stage of its development - too many storylines without providing a real focus for the episode, or even tying the stories together. There were four unrelated story sequences and except for a couple of phone calls between Kat and Lina there is nothing holding the elements together. It was as if the writer and producers decided that they had to use the entire cast in the episode even if there's really no reason for it. The Class was created by David Crane - who was the creator of Friends - along with his life partner Jeffrey Klarik. Seemingly he has forgotten one of the things that helped hold Friends together as a show. While the series had a large cast it usually had a primary story thread and a secondary storyline with at least some connection between the two. There are other problems with the show. The character of Perry Pearl (Sam Harris) who is married to Holly is so highly effeminate as to represent a gay stereotype, to the point where Holly seems to be the only person who doesn't realize that her husband is gay. It is a concept that gets very old, very fast. Another joke that got old fast was Holly's inability to understand Aaron when he was speaking. Although Aaron (who is Hispanic) speaks with little or no accent, to Holly he is virtually incomprehensible. Either this is an effort to show how stupid Holly is, or whether it's meant as a way for Holly not to interact with Aaron, it's not terribly funny. The acting here is adequate even though none of the actors really delivers a standout performance. That in itself is vaguely disappointing, given that the cast contains a number of reasonably good young actors including Ritter, Anders and MacGuire. They have the ability to deliver strong performances but at least in the episode that I saw they were betrayed by the less than stellar writing and the format that the producers decided to impose on the episode. With all of the elements taken together (and remember I was only able to see one early episode so there is the chance that this show might have improved from what I saw), it's hardly a series that I can recommend. Find something else to watch in this half hour. It's better than some of the comedies that debuted this season but there are plenty of shows that are superior to this.

This Is The One

We look for it every year, we TV fans and don't deny it. We look for the worst new show on TV. As a group we search high and low for the successor to According to Jim or The War At Home; the show that we would be too embarrassed to call a guilty pleasure because it would reveal that our taste wasn't in our mouths it was was somewhere nearer to our gluteus maximus. In other words the show that makes us cry (with real tears mind you): Oh God, oh God, make it stop, make it sto-o-o-o-p!!!!

Like many of you I expected that the show this year that would make me writhe with despair would be Fox's Happy Hour but then a funny (well not so funny really but you get my drift) thing happened - I watched the pilot. There, amidst the bad writing and the characters drawn with what seemed like a broken crayon was a redeeming quality. Her name is Beth Lacke and and any time she is on the screen in that show you suddenly forget that there is anyone else on the screen. She dominates like a colossus among pygmies. Oh don't get me wrong, the show is terrible and there's only so much she can do to save it by force of personality, but at that it's better than 'Til Death and light years ahead of the abomination that is Twenty Good Years.

This isn't just because I don't like John Lithgow. Actually I loathe him, particularly when he's doing comedy - or in this case allegedly doing comedy. Lithgow is the inveterate scenery chewer and while someone like James Woods will from time have softer moments - in Shark these are usually the times with the character's daughter - for Lithgow there is no off switch. In Twenty Good Years he plays Dr. John Mason. Mason is a surgeon's surgeon with an ego that thinks that not only do surgeons think they're God, the most over achieving surgeons think that they're John Mason. Mason is an arrogant Lothario (he makes a suggestive comment to his scrub nurse after a surgery despite having several ex-wives) who imagines himself to be the indispensable man at the hospital where he works. It's a delusion shattered at his sixtieth birthday party at the hospital when the hospital administrator (played by Tim Russ from Star Trek: Voyager, who I only recognizes by his voice) presents him with a putter and tells him that he's going to have plenty of time to use it because he's being forced to retire. For two years he'll be working part-time before the hospital no longer needs his services.

John's best friend, Judge Jeffrey Pyne (played by Jeffrey Tambor), has his own problems. He's an exceptionally timid and indecisive man. This plays into the hands of his overbearing girlfriend Gina (played by Judith Light). She has told him - nay, ordered him - to propose to her that night at the party that Jeffrey is throwing for John's birthday and Jeffrey is more than cowed enough by her to do it. At the party we meet the other two regular characters in this show; John's daughter Stella (Heather Burns) who is extremely late in a pregnancy, and Jeffrey's son Hugh (Jake Sandvig) an improbably scrawny male model who is in a full page ad. Jeffrey scurries around his apartment worrying about what he should tell people who are asking about the father of Stella's impending child - she went to a sperm bank because she got tired of waiting for the "right" man - and about his son's chosen career - he wants Hugh to go back to college and tells him "I used to look like you!" as a warning. When John shows up at his party he is drunk on a bottle of vodka and having had a revelation. He has realized that he has never done any of the things that he wanted to do when he was a young man except be a surgeon. He tells Jeffrey that they have just twenty good years left and they should live them to the fullest. It isn't entirely clear that Jeffrey wants to be included in they but what John is saying is enough in the emotion of the moment for him to tell Gina - in front of all their friends - that he was dumping her. Gina reacts by slapping Jeffrey and then, for good measure, slapping John.

The morning after the party Jeffrey is full of regrets (to the point where he wants to reconcile with Gina) while John has decided that their first great adventure will be a polar bear swim and he has the Speedo "banana hammock" on under his coat that he intends to wear - after he moves into John's apartment of course. Jeffrey throws him out but essentially relents when Stella tells him that now that John is only working half time he can't afford his alimony payments to the several ex-wives and his apartment. She persuades Jeffrey to let John live with him; just before her water breaks. For once Jeffrey is decisive enough to keep Stella calm and ask his bailiff to get the emergency services. Stella gives birth to a baby girl who of course enchants John. The experience and bonding seems to be enough to get Jeffrey to go along on John's lifestyle change, and the next day they are seen charging into the frigid Atlantic.

Where to begin on what's wrong with Twenty Good Years? Oddly enough I won't start with the writing or the acting. Instead I will come down on whoever decided to add the laugh track for the episode. You do not add laughs when someone says something. Note that I didn't say something funny, I just said something. Whoever was adding laughter to this show apparently decided that any statement at all was worthy of at least a little laughter. Of course that might be because it was a little hard to tell when there was something to laugh at. There were a couple of moments that were genuinely funny, like after Gina slapped John and he said "Well that was just rude," or the moment when Jeffrey told his son "I used to look like you." Unfortunately those moments were far too few and far to far in between. Most of the time my reaction to the supposed jokes (the ones where the laugh track guy gave us the really bigger laughs than he did with ordinary lines) was "uh huh" with the occasional "that was supposed to be funny?" thrown in for good measure. As for the cast, setting aside Lithgow and Tambor for a moment, it's clear that Burns is the more experienced member of the two person regular supporting cast but I have to think that her job is going to be the most thankless one on the entire show, since I think we'll be seeing a lot more of her than we will of Jake Sandvig.

Which brings us to Lithgow and Tambor, and the basic concept of this show. I've watched Jeffrey Tambor off and on since he was on The Ropers and Hill Street Blues, and while I was one of the many who never watched arrested Development I know that Tambor is a very good straight man and can be quite funny. In this show though I think the producers have chosen the wrong path by making his character indecisive and at times almost timid. As for Lithgow, well he'd probably be better served if he used his indoor voice a bit more. The man seemed to be shouting through most of the episode. Maybe it's Lithgow's interpretation of his character's overwhelming - or overbearing - personality. Together the two men do seem to have a sort of chemistry together - they reminded me most of Tony Randall and Jack Klugman, or Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. Of course that's only appropriate since deep down at the heart of the matter this series is nothing more than The Odd Couple with some cosmetic adjustments. Instead of everyday lives as fortyish divorced men, this show is about guys in their sixties living out some rather stupid adventures of the type that people usually get out of their way in their twenties. At its heart though this show is about two guys who are polar opposites forced by circumstances to live together. We've already seen Jeffrey cleaning up his apartment (after the party); if John turns out to be a slob the comparison will be complete.

The concept of this show could work if the writers and producers brought something sufficiently new to it but the notion of living life to the fullest while you can, just isn't enough for me. When you balance the small number of "pros" for this series with the very large number of "cons", I have to say that of the new sit-coms that I've seen (I confess to not seeing them all) this has to be the worst, which I'm sure is not a distinction the people involved were hoping for.

Shows That Make You Go Yawn

Every so often you come upon a show that is either extremely good or mind numbingly bad. Fox's new comedy 'Til Death is neither. It is on the whole a rather pedestrian production with a couple of bright shining points. Those points are Brad Garrett and Joely Fisher.

The thing about Garrett and Fisher is that they look like they could have been married to each other for twenty five years. This is a good thing because they are in fact playing a couple who have been married to each other for twenty five years. All to often in modern sitcoms you come upon people who look like the only reason they could possibly have gotten married is because of failed birth control. Who would believe that Leah Remini would fall in love with Kevin James or that Courtney Thorne Smith would end up with Jim Belushi in real life? That's what made TV couples like Ray Romano and Patricia Heaton or even Tim Allen and Patricia Richardson work; you could easily conceive of them being a couple. The same is true of Garrett and Fisher. Plus they're both solid talents - I was never a fan of Everybody Loves Raymond but in the parts of episodes that I did see it was Brad Garrett not Ray Romano who I found funny. Having two solid performers in the mix is essential because this series really has a cast of four. There's Garrett and Fisher as Eddie and Joy Stamm, and Eddie Kaye Thomas (from the American Pie movies) and newcomer Kat Foster as Jeff and Steph Woodcock who have been married for all of twelve days.

It's hard to say much about a show with a cast of four people. Eddie and Joy are a couple in the stage of their relationship where, while they still love each other, the spark is basically gone. They're comfortable with each other but the passion is gone. For Eddie marriage is now so that you'll have someone to drive you to the hospital, and happiness is driving home with a warm bucket of chicken on your lap. Beyond that, Eddie's a cynic about marriage. It is the job of women to suck the fun out of everything. Jeff on the other hand is a young and idealistic to the point of naivete guy from Minnesota (for some reason sitcom producers equate Minnesota with idealistic to the point of naivete - Marshall on How I Met Your Mother is from Minnesota). He believes that if husbands and wives communicate marriage can be a equal partnership and love can triumph over all.

The show opens with Jeff & Steph moving into the neighbourhood and meeting their new neighbours, Eddie & Joy. As it turns out Jeff is the new Vice Principal at Winston Churchill High School, where Eddie teaches History, so Joy suggests that they car pool into work together. While they're getting to know each other in the front yard, Jeff suggests that since they probably aren't going to do much formal dining maybe they could have a pool table in the formal dining room, and Steph seems to agree. On their drive to work Eddie tells Jeff that he won't be getting the pool table and explains exactly how Steph will go about letting him know. Arriving at home Eddie finds that Joy wants them to go jogging - which goes against their fortieth birthday present to each other to allow themselves to get fat - but is soon persuaded to watch The Ellen DeGeneres Show instead (Joelly Fisher of course was a regular on Ellen's sitcom). More to the point Joy has invited Jeff & Steph over for dinner that night. Sure enough Jeff tries to show Eddie that communication and compromise and love has already allowed him to get his pool table for the formal dining room. As if it were scripted (!) Eddie's explanation of exactly how Steph would steal Jeff's fun - by not letting him have the pool table - plays out and the younger couple have their first fight. This amuses Eddie and horrifies Joy. They "catch" Jeff & Steph's fight when Eddie explains his theory about women sucking the fun out of life and giving as an example the hot tub he'd wanted years ago which Joy denied him. She in turn reminds him that in all their years of marriage they have never taken advantage of the free trips she can get as a travel agent because he refuses to travel outside of the USA. The next day at work Jeff is triumphant. He's getting his pool table! All it took was understanding and great make up sex - twice. The make up sex part really interests Eddie and when he gets home he decides to make up with Joy. Unfortunately his attempts are rather clumsy and only serve to reheat the argument. Eventually Eddie walks out to go over to Jeff's to play billiards. It turns out that Jeff got his pool table all right, complete with purple felt (Steph thinks purple's a nice colour...if you're a pimp), but it's not in the formal dining room but rather in what must be the house's smallest bedroom. The size of the room and the table make it virtually impossible to shoot a game. Still, in his anger Eddie tries, but only manages to bring the rack of cues down on his head. Joy takes him to the hospital and the argument is basically resolved to the point where they actually consider the idea of make up sex once they get home, but pretty quickly decide against it. In the final scene of the episode, Jeff tells Eddie that he really wants to get rid of the pool table because the room is too small. Eddie tell him that he can't get rid of it immediately because that would mean admitting that Steph was right. Jeff's just going to have to wait until the first child is born.

There's nothing special about 'Til Death. It's the sort of show that - with minor variations - the other three networks have at least one of. This show being on Fox there seems to be a bit fo a tendency to go for the low joke. Thursday's episode featured several repetitions of jokes or implied double entendres related to Jeff & Steph's last name - Woodcock - and Jeff's decision, which he believes is hip but is really incredibly naive, to create a website called mywoodcock.com (Sony Pictures, which produces the show, has actually set up that website; whether they do anything more with it than what you see is a whole other question). But that's not the big problem. The big problem is that this show just doesn't stand out from the crowd. At its heart it's a domestic comedy about a couple who have been married long enough that they basically take each other for granted even though deep down they love each other. It's the sort of show that gets stamped out using a cookie cutter. That's unfortunate for a lot of reasons but one of the big ones is that Brad Garrett and Joelly Fisher deserve to be working in something a lot better and a lot more original. While I don't see this show being cancelled quickly, I can't see it being renewed for a second season either. Then again no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public in general or Fox viewers in particular. That may explain why Arrested Development was cancelled and The War At Home not only wasn't the first series cancelled last year but was actually renewed for a second season. But, given just how competitive the first hour of Thursdays is, with Survivor, My Name Is Earl, Ugly Betty, and Smallville up against it, I don't expect a ratings stampede towards 'Til Death. It's a show that makes you go enh.

Classic Comedy Lookback - Soap

Parody: a work that imitates another work in order to ridicule, ironically comment on, or poke affectionate fun at either the work itself, the subject of the work, or another subject.

They say that dying is easy; comedy is hard. If that's the case then I think that parody might well be the form of comedy that is hardest of all to pull off consistently. You do it right and you come up with a Blazing Saddles or a Young Frankenstein. Do it wrong and ... well can you say Men In Tights? (Although I confess to the following - I liked Men In Tights better than I liked Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.) I think it's probably easier to do parody in a one off situation as in a variety show. Wayne & Shuster and Carol Burnett were always pulling off great parodies - Carol Burnett's takes on Sunset Boulevard and Gone With The Wind are classics. I can't imagine how hard it must be to pull off a parody for 22 half hours a year for four years the way the writers and producers on Soap did. Of course parodying a style of program the way that Soap did with soap operas is probably easier to do than a specific show or concept. Of course that's not to say that things for Soap were easy.

Even before it began Soap was mired in far more controversy than it ever really deserved. In a June 1977 article in Newsweek called "99 and 44/100% Impure" (which unfortunately I haven't been able to find online) it was reported that the show would feature, among other things, a woman seducing a priest in a confessional, and a gay man who would undergo a sex change. Apparently the writer never actually saw the pilot for the show and either got the facts wrong or thoroughly misinterpret them by not seeing them in context. The net result was one of the most amazing alignment of forces against one TV show imaginable. It was probably the only cause that could bring the Christian Life Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, the National Gay Task Force and the International Union of Gay Athletes together, with support from the National Council of Churches, the United Church of Christ, the United Methodist Church, and the National Council of Catholic Bishops (although to be fair these groups asked their members to do something radical like actually watching the show first). ABC received nearly 32,000 letters of complaint before the show even premiered. Could it possibly have lived down to the expectations of the protesting groups? Well of course not.

Soap focussed on two families, the wealthy Taits and the middle class Campbells. They were linked because the matriarchs of the two families were sisters. Jessica Tait was an optimistic bubble brain while Mary Campbell was down to earth but perhaps a little frustrated. Jessica's husband Chester was a philanderer who couldn't keep his pants zipped but then it seemed as though no on in that family could, with the possible exception of "The Major" - Jessica's senile father who spent his days in his army uniform and addressed Chester as General. Supposedly frigid daughter Eunice was carrying on an affair with a married congressman, while the only thing holding youngest child Billy back was an inability in finding a girl willing to put out. In the first episode Jessica had sex with Peter, the new tennis pro. Shortly after she left her daughter Corrine came into his room and assertively said "Take of your clothes." As for Mary, her new husband Burt was apparently impotent (because unknown to her he killed her first husband); her eldest son from her first marriage, Danny, was an aspiring Mafia hitman - just like his late father - while her younger son Jody was gay and determined to have a sex change operation to be able to openly live with his lover, an NFL quarterback. Rounding it all up was the only apparently normal person in the whole cast, the Tait family's sarcastic butler Benson Dubois who hated Chester but was devoted (in a non-romantic way) to Jessica. Yes there was sex. Yes there was a homosexual planning to get a sex change operation. There was even a priest. But what the infamous article missed was a couple of things. Corinne's repeated efforts to seduce Father Tim occurred because she had been in love with the man since they were in school, it wasn't some effort to seduce a priest because he was a priest and thus the ultimate challenge. And the gay character was neither an effeminate stereotype or someone who was going to be "cured" by the end of the season as the Gay groups accused (although as the series went on the Jodie character was repeatedly attracted to women, to the point where I've often suspected that he was a closet bisexual) and probably was one of the better portrayals of a homosexual man in a comedy in this period or some later periods. More to the point the concepts and plot lines, while exaggerations, weren't that much different from the material being shown each day on real soap operas. After all, during the run of Soap Laura Webber Baldwin (on General Hospital) was raped, divorced her husband and married her rapist Luke Spencer, but of course to censors - then as now - that wasn't important because it wasn't on "prime time" even if it was on at a time when children and teenagers were likely to be watching.

Much of the credit for Soap has to go to series creator Susan Harris who wrote or co-wrote every episode of the show. The humour was quite sophisticated and betrayed an understanding of the underlying structure of soap operas as multi-levelled structures. Thus you had plot lines that ran the length of a season, like the murder of Peter Campbell, while others ran for most of the series, like Jodie's ongoing struggle to gain custody of his daughter and keep her. Still other plot lines were dealt with over a relatively short period of time. As a result the show not only had and maintained continuity - a must in any attempting to parody a form where continuity can stretch back ten or twenty years - but also had a depth in the story telling. Some story lines existed that initially seemed innocuous but grew in importance as the series progressed. There were other, less obvious nods to soap operas. While no characters went up stair and didn't come down for years, none of the three pregnancies on the show (Carol's, Corinne's or Mary's) actually lasted more than a few weeks, and while Jodie's daughter Wendy apparently doesn't age from the time she's introduced until the last episode where we see her, Jodie's half-brother Scottie - who was born after Wendy - is a year old by the end of the show. Jessica's son Billy turned 18 a mere seventeen episodes after he turned 15. While some may consider things like these as continuity errors they're the sort of things that happened all the time in soap operas.

And yet it wasn't just the writing that worked for Soap. Of necessity the show had a large cast, some of whom were regulars and others guest stars who appeared for extended periods of time. It was an excellent cast, a mix of young talent and veteran performers. Both Robert Mandan and Donnelly Rhodes had appeared in real soap operas, while Mandan, Katherine Helmon and Cathryn Damon had extensive Broadway experience. Mandan brought a perfect blustery quality to the role of Chester Tait, the supposedly smart patriarch of the Tait family who lorded his superiority over everyone else but wasn't nearly as smart as he imagined. Soap represented a breakthrough role for two members of the cast. Robert Guillaume, who had primarily been a Broadway actor with a few film and TV roles was able to make the role of the sarcastic Benson stand out so strongly that he not only won an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy for the role in 1979 he was also given a spinoff series called Benson which ran seven seasons - three more than Soap - and earned him five more Emmy nominations including one win. Billy Crystal's portrayal of Jodie, which was done with considerable sensitivity and which highlighted a number of contentious issues including a gay man winning custody of his child, earned him notice even though it was his year on Saturday Night Live that was really the springboard for his success.

For my money however the biggest reason for watching Soap was the performance of Richard Mulligan as Bert Campbell. Mulligan was a TV veteran who had done drama as well as sitcoms, including the lead role in a short run show called The Hero and a supporting role in the Dianna Rigg comedy Dianna. However he may have been best known at the time that he appeared on Soap for playing General Custer in Little Big Man opposite Dustin Hoffman. His version of Custer is the gallant if somewhat pompous leader on the surface but under the surface is thoroughly and hilariously insane. While the strength of Soap was in the writing and the crafting of the story lines, Mulligan brought a tremendous physicality to the part of Bert that had something of the quality that he gave to Custer. You could never be sure that Bert was entirely sane even when he wasn't trying to appear insane. Mulligan was particularly good when reacting to others. Bert was a collection of physical tics that were waiting to be unleashed. It's astonishing to me that while Muligan was nominated twice and one once as Outstanding Lead Actor In A Comedy at the Emmys, he earned three nominations (including one win) and all of his three Golden Globe nominations (including on win in a tie with Judd Hirsch and Michale J. Fox) for the far more sedate and conventional role of Harry Weston in Empty Nest.

Soap was very much a product of its time. The show didn't play it safe but pushed the envelope of the acceptable which was what got the show into trouble in the first place but also what got it noticed. The show wasn't grounded in the sort of realism that you found in All In The Family or other shows of this period, which was sort of the point. The characters were for the most part caricatures - whether it was Jessica blithely sailing through the perils of her everyday life, Chester blustering and scheming to keep his latest infidelity from his wife, or Bert being Bert - and the situations they found themselves in often exaggerated as much as the characters. The show truly was a parody, and a brilliant one. Although cancelled prematurely (in my opinion) after four years I can't help but wonder how much longer the show could have maintained the quality it showed in its first three seasons in particular (the fourth season was something of a mess because of the SAG and AFTRA strike and some decisions by ABC which seem intended to kill the show). But it was fun while it lasted.

Classic Comedy Lookback - All In The Family

I'm not sure when it happened but somewhere along the line I started feeling sympathy for Archie Bunker. Or maybe not sympathy, maybe just empathy. I mean I don't like the guy, and I think that his attitudes on race ethnicity and sexuality are about as repugnant as you can get, but somehow I can muster at least a little feeling for him. Maybe because I've known people like him all my life. Not the bigotry and racism part - although I've known people like that too - but the whole sense of Archie as a hard working average guy in a world over which he has no control. And worst of all, Archie has to deal with his son-in-law the Meathead.

All In The Family came to CBS at a very interesting point in the history of the network and television, the rise of Demographics. At the time CBS had a string of extremely successful shows including, but not limited to, The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, Mayberry RFD, The Ed Sullivan Show, Gunsmoke, Gomer Pyle USMC, The Jackie Gleason Show, Hogan's Heroes, and Hee Haw. The networks were starting to become more interested in who was actually watching their shows - demographics - and at CBS what they were discovering was that the people watching their shows were older and a higher percentage than with the other networks lived in rural areas. Then as now these groups tended to be less attractive to advertisers so that while the shows were still popular they weren't attracting the people advertisers were interested in. (I've read that there was a sound technical reason for the high rural viewership of CBS, although I don't know if it is entirely accurate. At the time many of the CBS affiliates were Channel 2 in their local markets and the frequencies assigned to that particular channel carries further than frequencies for stations higher on the dial.) What CBS TV president Robert Wood proposed was to sweep out the older skewing rural based programming and introduce newer, more sophisticated programming focussed on winning the urban market. When head of programming Mike Dann objected to cancelling shows that were still successful he soon found himself replaced by a young executive named Fred Silverman. Of the shows named above only Gunsmoke survived the infamous CBS "rural purge". Among the shows brought on to replace the rural shows were M*A*S*H, Mary Tyler Moore and All In The Family.

Based on the BBC series 'Til Death Do Us Part, All In The Family had in fact started at ABC in October 1968 as a pilot called Justice For All (the family name at the time was Justice) and a second pilot was shot in February 1969 as Those Were The Days, but ABC became nervous about the content of the show and passed on the concept. CBS picked it up and shot a third pilot retaining Carroll O'Connor and Jean Stapleton - their characters now renamed Archie and Edith Bunker - but adding Rob Reiner as Michael Stivic and Sally Struthers as his wife (and Archie's daughter) Gloria. Although the basic conflicts between the bigoted and conservative older man and his more liberal son in law were retained from the British series, by the time All In The Family debuted in January 1971 there were other, uniquely American sources of conflict arising. All In The Family wold be one of a rare breed, a relevant topical network situation comedy.

Archie Bunker is clearly meant to be the antagonist of the piece. He's a combative, uneducated, opinionated, bigoted and whiny blue collar worker, a man who demands to be the lord and master of his home ruling from a well upholstered throne placed squarely in front of the television. He uses the whole gamut of racial slurs, including on vary rare occasions the N-word. He verbally bullies his wife, the naive but goodhearted Edith, who has a significantly less well-upholstered chair next to his in front of the TV. The principal irritant in Archie's happy home comes in the form of his son-in-law Michael who is all the things Archie hates - a liberal, a Polish-American, and an unemployed college student who is eating Archie's and having sex with Archie's daughter. It seems relatively clear that not only aren't we supposed to like Archie, but that Archie was created to ridicule bigotry by making him such an unattractive character and one who generally loses because of it. Indeed the network sought to make this clear in a disclaimer that ran before the first episode: "The program you are about to see is All In The Family. It seeks to throw a humorous spotlight on our frailties, prejudices, and concerns. By making them a source of laughter we hope to show, in a mature fashion, just how absurd they are." However CBS did a survey after the show had become a hit and writers were suggesting that by making Archie Bunker and his prejudices a figure of ridicule it would reduce prejudice. The survey showed that All In The Family actually reinforced prejudices; William S. Paley, had it repressed.

The show debuted to controversy about everything from Archie's language and bigotry to the fact that for the first time on television we actually heard a toilet flush, things which also CBS chairman William S. Paley. However in the first season - or rather half season since the show debuted in January - the show did not perform well, finishing in 34th place and facing the possibility of cancellation. The next season though the show finished in first place, and for the remainder of its run it never finished lower than 12th and that was only in one season 1976-77. The 1971 ratings can probably be explained by noting that in that year the show was airing right after CBS's rural block of The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, and Hee Haw while for the 1971-72 season it let off the Saturday night lineup, a lineup remade to eliminate the rural shows.

Archie Bunker has been referred to as "a lovable bigot" and it's probably true. There were people who could identify with him, and people who knew people like him who were basically good people except for some of the views they held. The truth is that Archie was a basically good person who held views that more "enlightened" people found repugnant. Archie worked hard, sometimes driving cab at night in addition to his day job at the loading dock in order to support his family. For all that he told Edith to "stifle yourself" he was devoted to his wife and wanted only the best for his daughter. He was ecstatic the first time that Gloria got pregnant even though it meant another mouth to feed and when she suffered a miscarriage he was there for her. Perhaps the most absurd thing that I have seen from time to time about Archie is that the character was a bad father. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

While Archie was clearly meant to be the show's antagonist because of his views the character who was meant to reflect the "more enlightened" viewpoint was Michael. And yet viewed over the course of the series and a bit beyond, Michael is essentially a mirror image of Archie and not necessarily any more attractive. Through most of the series their relationship is combative. Michael always seem to be poking Archie, attacking the older man's preconceived notions with his own positions, which in their own way were just as preconceived and biased in their self-righteousness as Archie's. There were other sources of antagonism. Michael's education fuelled his self-righteous side - he was smarter than Archie and so knew better on the "important issues." It entirely ignores the root causes for Archie's lack of education; like many men who came of age in the 1930s he was forced to quit school to work to help support his family during the Depression, after which he found himself in the military during World War II after which he had to get a job to support himself and his wife and eventually his daughter. And I suspect that that is another reason why Archie has problems with Michael - he doesn't believe that "The Meathead" is good enough for his "little goil" and in the end (although it is long after All In The Family ends) we find out that he's right. While Michael works on his Masters and his PhD in whatever he's studying, Gloria is the breadwinner for her family. She has bought into the notion that so many women did of supporting her man while he goes through school, and even though she considers working to be "liberated" behaviour in the end she doesn't benefit, particularly since his attitudes towards women aren't nearly as progressive as his positions in other areas. At times he makes her feel stupid and inadequate because she doesn't have his level of education, even though he had promised that she'd get the chance to go back to school once he completed his degree. Eventually, established in a home of their own in California and away from Archie and Edith, Michael and Gloria's marriage crumbles. Although there had been signs before the true rift is first seen in the two part episode "California Here We Are", where the couple have separated because Gloria has had an affair, and later - after the show become Archie Bunker's Place - we learn that Michael has abandoned his wife and son and taken up with a "flower child" on a commune (this was part of the set-up for the short lived Sally Struther's spin-off series Gloria).

All In The Family was one of the truly great television shows of all time. Although it was followed by a number of socially relevant series over the years, some adapted from British originals - notably Sanford And Son which had originally been the British Steptoe And Son - All In The Family seemed consistently willing to tackle taboos, more so than other shows. All In The Family did episodes about menopause, breast cancer, miscarriage, rape, homosexuality and the right to die. For that it's noteworthy, but for the creation of a character like Archie Bunker it shines. If the show had simply been Archie and Michael squabbling, with Archie being perceived by us as just a stupid bigot then the controversial material wouldn't have been enough for it to become the most popular show on TV and stay there for several seasons. The writing was excellent, and the cast one of the best in television then or now. But for me, perhaps the most important aspect was that Archie wasn't a static character. He evolved. While he may have remained a bigot he grew increasingly accepting of people and their differences. In the end that sort of character development is what sets All In The Family apart from so many other series

Classic Comedy Lookback - Hogan's Heroes

There's something I find vaguely disturbing about Hogan's Heroes and more specifically one character on the show. It's difficult to put into words and I expect to get some comments along the lines of "you're nuts" when I explain things. It's not a big thing really but if the way this character is written is intentional - which I sort of doubt - then it may prove that the writers of Hogan's Heroes had a bit more understanding than they're given credit for.

Hogan's Heroes isn't one of the great sitcoms. It's a first rate show and has a timeless quality that does well in repeats, but when compared to series like I Love Lucy, The Phil Silvers Show and The Dick Van Dyke Show it doesn't come up to standard. The writing is less than spectacular, in many cases the characters are stereotypes rather than fully developed (mostly the Allied characters by the way) and there's nothing really innovative about the show. That doesn't make it a bad show by any means, but it doesn't break new ground.

The series is built around Colonel Robert Hogan, who has made the German prisoner of war camp LuftStalag 13 into a base for covert operations against the Nazis. It's supposed to be obvious that the entire camp is involved in Hogan's operations but we really only get to know five of Hogan's men: Sergeants Kinchloe and Carter (and after Ivan Dixon left the show, Sergeant Baker) and Corporals Newkirk and Lebeau. Hogan is Bilko working for the common good rather than personal greed, except that while Bilko could undoubtedly work his con games and other activities against any officer in the Army (with the possible exception of Ike) and not just against Colonel Hall, Hogan and his men are desperate to insure that they don't get someone who is actually competent to command Stalag 13. For their operation to continue to run smoothly they need Colonel Klink and go to extremes to protect him from any threat that will take him from them.

There is a stereotypical quality to Hogan and his men. Hogan is of course the devilishly handsome young Air Corps officer whose a fast talker and of course any woman who walks within fifteen feet of him. Sergeant Carter is one part mad professor mixed with one part naive farm boy. Not only doesn't he get the girl, you get the distinct feeling that he wouldn't know what to do with one if he did get one. Corporal LeBeau is French so of course he's a gourmet cook, a frustrated lover, a cabaret performer, and of course a hyper-patriotic resistance fighter who knows France is down but not out (this was in the decades before the French came to be stereotyped as "cheese eating surrender monkeys" by Americans who sixty years after the war are coming to hate the French). Corporal Newkirk is one extreme of the British stereotype, the good hearted cockney with a "fag" (cigarette) almost perpetually dangling out of his mouth whose acquaintance with honesty is so remote that he probably never learned to spell the word in school because the teacher didn't think he'd ever need to know it. Newkirk is balanced on occasion with Colonel Crittenden, who represents the other side of the British stereotype, the upper class eccentric who is damned if he won't play the game strictly by the rules - he'll do everything he can to escape as is his duty but won't go along with the sabotage operations and other camp activities because that wouldn't be the right thing. In large doses Crittenden, played by the great Bernard Fox, wouldn't work with the show.

Which brings us to Sergeant Kinchloe, played by Ivan Dixon, who is effectively Hogan's second in command even though there are other American officers seen as prisoners in the camp on occasion. Kinch is an African American. The character is essentially a product of the aftermath of the Civil Rights Movement rather than any sense of historical reality. The US military during World War II was strictly segregated. The Army Air Corp's single bombing unit made up of Black pilots and crews wasn't deployed to Europe during the war (the 99th Fighter Squadron was sent overseas before the Italian Campaign in 1943 but any members of that unit who were in a situation where they could be captured would have been officers). If we're to believe that Kinchloe was an Air Corps Sergeant then he's an impossibility. Willing suspension of disbelief is enough for us to accept Kinchloe in the same way we accept other historical inaccuracies, like German soldier carrying Tommy guns or RAF officer Crittenden being called a Colonel when his actual rank would have been Group Captain. Would an American audience have wondered why a Group Captain was superior to Colonel Hogan?

Of the four continuing German characters on the show three are stereotypes who are by design are difficult to warm to. Werner Klemperer's Colonel Klink is the main antagonist but of course he's not really that much of a danger. He is a man who has risen well above what the Peter Principle would term as the level of his own incompetence. There's nothing there to be sympathetic to. About the only time we can feel anything resembling sympathy for Klink is when he's being browbeaten by people with real or imagined power over him like General Burkhalter or Major Hochstetter. Burkhalter at least has good reason to browbeat Klink - he knows him. Burkhalter himself can best be described as a pseudo-Goering. Leon Askin gave him the feeling of a bon vivant living very well off of the spoils of the German conquests - but someone who would as comfortable under the Kaiser or serving the post-war People's Republic as he is under Hitler. For a real Nazi you have to look to the Gestapo officer Major Hochstetter. I find it interesting that of the recurring German characters the only one played by an American (Howard Caine) is really the most vile, and the only Nazi true-believer of the lot. Hochstetter never speaks when screaming will intimidate his enemy. And everyone is his enemy, a potential spy or a possible traitor or just someone who is not up to his standards of loyalty to the Fuehrer or the Fatherland (in Hochstetter's view there is no difference). No wonder when Klink says "I hate that man", Burkhalter replies "So do I." There's not nothing sympathetic about Hochstetter which is why Hogan's triumphs over him are so much better than his victories over Klink, Burkhalter or the various one time German opponents.

But it's one of the show's greatest creations Sergeant Schulz that I find vaguely disturbing. Schulz initially started as the corruptable guard, not unlike the one played by Sig Ruman in Billy Wilder's Stalag 17 (also Sergeant Schulz). In a relatively short time Hogan's Schultz, played by the marvelous John Banner, became more. Schulz is the common man - in fact short of naming him Sergeant Schmidt they couldn't have made him more common. He's a World War I veteran where he fought with some gallantry, but now his primary concerns are keeping out of trouble, his sore feet and getting strudel or chocolate from Lebeau and the prisoners. Over time we get the feeling that he'd much rather serve under Colonel Hogan than the man he dismissively refers to as "the Big Shot". The writers and producers went to extremes to let us know that Schulz is a "good German"; at one point he mentions that things were so much better when the Kaiser was around and at another he tell Hogan that he voted Social Democrat - an option that was far from the Nazis but at the same time not communist. We, as the audience like Schulz, we want him to be more competent than Klink, and on those rare occasions when he has real power he does show himself to be more able than Klink (but who wouldn't be) much to the dismay of Hogan and his men who have to restore the established order to survive. Thus of Schulz's various pre-war occupations - I remember him saying at least once that he had been a baker before the war and he may have mentioned working in factories - the one that fans of the show and fans of Schulz seem to latch onto as the "truth" is one that is revealed in an episode where the Germans think that the war is coming to an end, where it's revealed that Schulz owns of the Schottsy Toy Factory which was taken over by the government when the war started. It's accepted, despite all of the vagaries of sitcom continuity, because we want Schulz to be successful and to be able to hire - and of course fire - Klink after the war ends. Schulz is a "good German."

Here's the disturbing part for me, an idea that occurred to me only in the past week or so. The concept of the "good German" is one which looks at the bulk of the German people during the rise of Hitler and the wartime period and asks why they did nothing to stop him. Schulz's oft repeated tag phrase "I know nothing! I see nothing!" is not unlike the protestations of the Germans who were paraded through the concentration camps by the British and the Americans at the end of the war and said that they didn't know what was going on there and and didn't see anything unusual. And if Schulz really did own the Schottsy Toy Factory it really was taken over by the government for war work then the factory might well have used slave labour. Schulz in the camp is analogous to the "good German." If he reports on what he sees and hears then Hogan and his operation are destroyed in the same way that if the "good Germans" hadn't been silent and had taken action soon enough they might have been able to stop Hitler before he started a war and created concentration camps. True, the comparison between Hogan and Hitler is odious if for no other reason than the character of Colonel Hogan is clearly a heroic figure on the rights side of things but nevertheless, while I doubt that the parallel was intentional or that the writers of Hogan's Heroes were even conscious of these sorts of issues, I think they can be uncovered in a deeper examination of the show's significance.

Classic Comedy Lookback - The Dick Van Dyke Show

(Note: I had every intention of getting this out on Tuesday but circumstances required that I spend the night at my brother's place to look after my nephew in case Greg was called out to fix a traffic light. Which in fact he was. It is being posted now (Wednesday night I hope) because I was too tired to work on it when I came home. My brother's couch is not terribly comfortable to sleep on.)

The 1960s were something of a golden age for the sitcom, a golden age that stretched into the 1970s although with considerable changes. Shows that were huge at the start of the 1960s wouldn't have been given a greenlight by any network executive at the end of the 1970s. After all who would be willing to believe a comedy about hillbillies living in a Beverly Hills mansion?

I mentioned the Beverly Hillbillies because that was the original Blogcritic article that inspired this little project listed The Beverly Hillbillies as one of the best sitcoms ever and the writer was right. The show works on a great many levels both in terms of creating great characters - Milburn Drysdale, Jane Hathaway, Jethro Bodine, and "Granny" in particular - as well as using it's "fish out of water" format as a springboard for social satire. And Max Baer Jr. in drag as his twin sister Jethrine is a hoot (Jethrine's voice was provided by producer Paul Henning's daughter Linda who would later appear as Betty Jo in Petticoat Junction). I have a feeling that the show - which was cancelled in 1971 along with the rest of the CBS "rural shows" because Fred Silverman believed that the audience was too "sophisticated" for these shows - could have continued until Irene Ryan's death in 1973. And yet, as much as I love the show I couldn't find an angle to base an article on. Now the Dick Van Dyke Show is a whole other story.

What can you say about a show which starts being funny in the credits? The classic credits scenes for The Dick Van Dyke Show were funny. While the first season's credits were pedestrian - pictures of the cast and clips from the show - the three variants of the later credits were gems. In one you have Rob tripping over the ottoman when he enters the house (to see the people he's been working with for 8 hours sitting there), in the second he sidesteps the ottoman to the congratulations of everyone, and in the less often seen third version he sidesteps the ottoman and then trips on the carpet. About the only thing you can say is that this little display of slapstick visual humour gives both a taste of what's to come and the wrong impression about the show. While there was some visual humour - Van Dyke was excellent at physical comedy - what The Dick Van Dyke Show really specialized in was great writing and a nearly magical cast chemistry.

The Dick Van Dyke Show was based on series creator Carl Reiner's experience working as an actor and writer with Sid Caesar on Your Show Of Shows and Caesar's Hour. In fact the characters are based on Reiner himself (Rob), his wife Estelle and son Rob (Laura and Ritchie), writing partners Mel Brooks, Selma Diamond and Lucille Kallen (Buddy and Sally), and Caesar himself (Alan Brady, played by Reiner himself). The series splits between the office where Rob heads perhaps the smallest writing staff ever to attempt to put together a one hour variety show and home where he has to deal with his wife, son and neighbours Jerry and Millie Helper (Jerry Paris and Anne Morgan Guilbert). The office format allows the characters a chance to be actively funny - they're writing a comedy show after all - while the at home material deals more with funny situations that arise in every day life, like your son giving lectures on the facts of life to other kids (and giving out the version his grandfather told him because the truth is sort of boring). The show's writing sparkles. It's fast paced, sometimes even frenetically paced, and the home portions of the show work because the stories are often drawn from life experiences, to the point where Reiner was asking cast members to supply him with anecdotes from their own lives. These parts of the show have a real sense of authenticity that is missing from a lot of shows then and now.

What really makes the show work though is the chemistry between cast members. Dick Van Dyke's chemistry with Mary Tyler Moore is palpable. Despite the fact that he was 11 years older than Moore that their relationship seems eminently plausible (in fact both actors have apparently admitted that they had crushes on each other while the show was in production). It didn't hurt the show that Moore was an incredibly sexy woman in her mid-20s whose sex appeal was enhanced by the fairly simple wardrobe that she frequently wore - usually a white blouse and black Capri pants that emphasized her shape. One of the sexiest scenes in the whole series is Moore lying on her stomach atop a pile of walnuts that had erupted from the hall closet (that's the picture I wanted to use for this article!). Much the same could be said about the relationships at the office. Van Dyke fits in well but there's also a sense that something we don't know about exists between Buddy and Sally. In fact the show even did an episode where the two seem to be sneaking off together for an affair - in fact they're sneaking off to a hotel in the Catskills to perform an music and comedy act because they miss performing. Rose Marie and Morey Amsterdam were long time friends and she was the one who suggested Amsterdam, who was often billed as the "human joke machine." Amsterdam had done a lot of early TV including Broadway Open House, a predecessor of The Tonight Show. Added to the mix was Richard Deacon as Mel Cooley, the producer of "Alan Brady Show" who was also Alan's brother-in-law (and by default his chief lackey). The relationship between Cooley and the writing staff was mixed - Rob had to work with him, Sally basically ignored him, and he was that target of Buddy's most creative work - insults. In truth though Mel's biggest nemesis was the egotistical Alan Brady, played in what I suspect was a dead on caricature of Sid Caesar.

The show is not without it's weaknesses. I found the character of Ritchie Petrie to be one of the most annoying children in the history of TV kids. From an adult perspective the fact that Rob and Laura slept in twin beds is one of the great absurdities - who would willingly sleep in a separate bed from her! Of course this sort of thing was common in TV at the time; except for The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet married couples didn't actually share a bed until Bewitched broke that "taboo". Perhaps that explains why Rob and Laura only had one kid. Another problem was one that was quite common in this period; there was little if any continuity between episodes, even when something a big factor in an episode like Ritchie getting a dog, who was never seen again. In one episode Rob had a huge rock jutting into his basement that kept him from having a pool table, but in a later episode is hustled in a pool game by Buddy's brother in the same basement. It's maddening, but also depressingly common in 1960s sitcoms.

The Dick Van Dyke Show ended after five seasons in which the show's ratings and network support increased every year. There are different stories about how and why it ended. Carl Reiner has stated that he never intended the show to last more than five years and resisted pressure from CBS to continue the series. Morey Amsterdam claimed that the show had been renewed and would have been shot in colour in the 1965-66 season but Van Dyke wanted to move into the movies and Reiner made it clear that he wouldn't be returning as producer. Rose Marie claimed that the series could have continued for at least two more years, in colour (I have to say that I find it nearly impossible to imagine The Dick Van Dyke Show in anything except Black & White - sort of like Casablanca). I suspect that Amsterdam is at least partially correct in that Van Dyke was anxious to move into movies after his relative success in Mary Poppins in 1964, but I have no real doubt that Reiner wanted to end the show and was probably edging towards burnout. Today we have a lot of shows that try to imitate The Dick Van Dyke Show but try to "update" it by giving the characters lower social standing and making the characters less "perfect". All too often the results are, to say the least, less than perfect. Instead of witty and well paced shows you frequently get something like According To Jim where the lead character is obnoxious and not nearly as smart or in charge as he thinks he is. Worse, in trying to "humanize" the male lead they've tended to make the situation absurd. Can anyone believe that in real life a woman like Courtney Thorne Smith would give a second look to someone like Jim Belushi? Or that Leah Remini would be with Kevin James? A lesser series would make Buddy & Sally younger and probably have them as both people Rob worked with and the next door neighbours, eliminating Jerry & Millie. The fact is that The Dick Van Dyke Show was one of the greatest shows - comedy or drama - ever, a show that has often been imitated but rarely equalled by those imitators, so maybe it's a good thing that Carl Reiner pulled the plug on the show before it degraded into something imperfect.