TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/091889/09188900.011

Text File | 1990-09-17 | 8KB | 131 lines

VIDEO, Page 69

Old Comics, Boy Wonders

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.