TIME: Almanac 1995

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<text id=89TT2410> <title> Sep. 18, 1989: Old Comics, Boy Wonders </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1989 Sep. 18, 1989 Torching The Amazon </history> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> VIDEO, Page 69 Old Comics, Boy Wonders </hdr><body> In a play-it-safe season, the networks stick with sitcoms By Richard Zoglin It was once TV's most exciting time of year, the start of the fall season. Strike up the band, roll out the new shows, make your picks, folks -- the hits, the sleepers, the hot trends, the stinkeroos. The trumpets still blare each September, but the sound has grown tinny and wan. For one thing, fewer people are paying attention. The three networks now draw only about two-thirds of the total primetime audience, down from more than 90% a decade ago. Those who do watch, moreover, may be too distracted this fall by their game cards from Sears and K mart (both of which are participating in network promotions) to concentrate on the shows themselves. Oh, yes, and the shows. Television critics can sound like a recycled videotape, annually lamenting that the upcoming season is the dullest, most conservative one yet. So let's get it out of the way fast: the upcoming season is the dullest, most conservative one yet. Pummeled by competition from cable, VCRs and syndicated fare, as well as by pressure groups complaining about excessive sex and violence, the networks have opted for caution. The days when a Hill Street Blues or Miami Vice or thirtysomething could burst onto the scene with a fresh approach to doing weekly television are fading fast. More and more, the definition of a promising TV series is one that comes on right after Cosby. The cautious network strategy is evident in the glut of sitcoms. Eleven new half-hour comedies are being trotted out this fall by ABC, CBS and NBC, bringing the three-network total to 36. Their attraction is easy to see: sitcoms are not only riding high in the ratings, they are durable as well. During the past four weeks of the summer-rerun season, every one of the ten highest-rated series was a half-hour comedy. The sitcom world is still a remarkably homogeneous one. Children are invariably cute and quick with a gag line, mothers have endless battles with teenage daughters over dating, and people habitually discuss intimate life problems at the office, usually in full view of the secretarial pool. Newcomers this fall range from a straitlaced Marine who marries a widowed newspaper reporter (Major Dad) to an inner-city teacher with a class of cuddly fourth-graders (Homeroom). The familiar genre, however, is being enlivened by three auteurs who have given personal shapes to the old cookie cutter. The most celebrated and influential of the three is Steven Bochco, the co-creator of Hill Street Blues and L.A. Law. Lately, Bochco has switched to the half-hour "dramedy" form -- with mixed success in Hooperman and even less success in this season's Doogie Howser, M.D. The ABC show's premise could define the TV notion of "high concept": the central character is a child genius who whizzed through medical school and, at 16, is a second-year resident at a major hospital. Doogie (Neil Patrick Harris, himself 16) has the skills of Ben Casey and the bedside manner of Marcus Welby, but emotionally he is still in the Wonder Years -- a kid coping with adolescent problems like getting the car on Saturday night and finding a girl who will "put out." Bochco hammers home the ironies. In the midst of a kiss at a high school dance, Doogie has to stop to answer his beeper. During morning rounds, he pauses for a water-gun fight with kids in the children's ward. This might be played for satire, but Bochco's dialogue only sounds like parody. "I do not need some 16-year-old snot-nosed genius telling me how to do my job!" snaps a surgeon who has a run-in with Doogie. Replies the boy doctor: "You're gonna kill him, and you don't give a crap!" The nadir of Bochco's naughty-boy humor is a scene in which a nurse lures Doogie into a deserted operating room and starts to seduce him. When he is half undressed, the lights go on and hospital staffers, watching from the gallery, surprise him by singing Happy Birthday -- then wonder why he's so upset. Scalpel, please. Hugh Wilson, creator of The Famous Teddy Z, takes fewer chances but hits his target more squarely. This CBS offering is a conventional workplace comedy with a show-biz twist. Teddy, a young eager beaver from a Greek working-class family, joins the mailroom of a Hollywood talent agency and stumbles into a job as a high-powered agent. The first episode, written and directed by Wilson, has its problems, notably some flagrant overplaying in the secondary roles: Teddy's doting Greek grandmother (Erica Yohn), the gruff mailroom head (Tom La Grua) and a manically insecure agent (the hardworking but miscast Alex Rocco). But Wilson, the former Atlanta ad man who created WKRP in Cincinnati, is a notoriously slow starter. His last series, Frank's Place, set in a New Orleans Creole restaurant, began as a pale Cheers knock-off and grew into a tangy and original slice of Southern life. Teddy Z makes some smart observations about Hollywood rituals and status. The kids in the mailroom are dressed-for-success brats who snub the gauche Teddy. His grandmother is puzzled. "What they make at this company?" she asks about his new job. "They make telephone calls," he replies. "What about?" "Mostly about lunch." As Teddy, Jon Cryer (Molly Ringwald's nerdy friend in Pretty in Pink) manages a rare feat among young sitcom stars: conveying high-spirited charm without depending on stand-up comedy shtick. On the other hand, stand-up shtick seems to be the newest ticket to success. The two biggest hits of recent years, The Cosby Show and Roseanne, are built around stand-up comedians whose humor shapes and dominates the shows. Now comes Jackie Mason as the star of ABC's most-heralded new sitcom, Chicken Soup. The mush-mouthed comic plays a fiftysomething Jewish bachelor who quits his job as a pajama salesman and becomes a social worker; meanwhile, he is dating the Gentile single mother who lives next door (Lynn Redgrave). The show bears the unmistakable trademark of the Carsey-Werner Co. (which also produces Cosby and Roseanne): a loosely structured, anecdotal format instead of the usual contrived plots. But the show's driving force is Mason, who will open and close each episode by talking directly to the audience, in character, from the roof of his apartment building -- a throwback to such early TV comedies as Burns and Allen and Dobie Gillis. Mason, the borscht-belt veteran enjoying an improbable revival, softens the harder edges of his ethnic material for TV. But Chicken Soup still has a stronger Jewish flavor than any other series since The Goldbergs in the early '50s. The program's toughest job is generating any romantic sparks between Redgrave (playing an Irish Catholic, no less) and Mason. In the opener, their affection is communicated mainly by reaction shots of Redgrave smiling sappily at his jokes. But the old stereotypes get some fresh dabs of paint. ("Why couldn't you be gay like everyone else?" pleads his nosy mother, played by Rita Karin, when she learns he is dating a non-Jew.) Mason, with his teddy-bear physique and befuddled mien, struts amiably into character, and Chicken Soup is the fall's most consistent laugh getter. Even if it weren't, Mason has no cause to worry. Chicken Soup has been awarded a time period even more coveted than the one after Cosby: the half hour following No. 1-rated Roseanne. That may not be a guaranteed recipe for success, but it ain't chopped liver. </body></article> </text>