EVEN if our lives will never be the same again, the one thing you can count on to always stay the same are TV sitcoms.
In fact, even though the language this season might be more raw, and the clothes more risque, the formula remains pat.
Even the scenarios are scarily similar to those in the past. And we’ve got at least one line-for-line ripoff with just a little extra nip, tuck and ruffle here and there.
What’s also interesting is that all three networks have decided to hitch their wagons to former and current TV stars, each one hoping the stars will drive their vehicles home. Good luck, pals.
ABC’s got Jason Alexander (George of “Seinfeld”) in a show called “Bob Patterson”; CBS has got Ellen DeGeneres, of “Ellen” fame, as yes, Ellen again in “The Ellen Show,” and NBC’s got Emeril Lagasse of the hit “Emeril Live” show in a new show called “Emeril.”
Not exactly a clever bunch of titles, for starters. I mean, can’t they do better than naming shows after real people, and then pretending that those real people aren’t really those people? It’s really crazy.
First “Ellen.” If you thought watching Anne Heche deconstruct – or pretending to, at any rate – on TV two and a half weeks ago was painful, it’s nothing compared to the mess her former paramour Ellen DeGeneres has put together in “The Ellen Show.”
For reasons too bizarre to imagine, the formula for “The Ellen Show,” is exactly the same as the doomed former mess, “Normal, Ohio,” starring John Goodman. In that one, Goodman played a small town guy, Butch, a gay man who decides to leave Los Angles to move back home to Ohio into the bosom of his miserable family.
On DeGeneres’ new show, she plays a small town girl, Ellen, a gay woman, who decides to leave Los Angeles to move back home to the bosom of her family who aren’t miserable, just really dumb. Like the equally tiresome “Ed,” where the guy leaves the big city to go home again, there are all those wild and crazy small town characters. Oy vey, as they say in small towns.
The show is brutally unfunny. It’s painful to watch DeGeneres and Cloris Leachman wade through the material, which has been exec produced by Degeneres. And in the wake of what’s happened here in New York, it becomes even more irrelevant than it was before.
Jason Alexander’s turn on “Bob Patterson,” on the other hand, is somewhat better. In this one he plays a self-help guru who has tons of insecurities of his own. His right-hand man, Robert Klein, is also pretty good.
The frenetic activity, however, needs to be calmed down. It’s like watching an old bedroom farce with people running in and out of doors and screaming. What saves this show – or what could save this show – are the couple of laugh-out-loud lines. More lines and less old-time farce and they might have something here.
Then there’s Emeril Lagasse and his new sitcom, “Emeril,” which should stink up the joint, but doesn’t.
I mean, the guy’s a cook – not an actor. But he’s pretty funny. His sidekicks are more than adequate to cover his can (oh, clean up your mind; I mean green beans!! Green beans!!!). In his new sitcom, Legasse plays yes, Emeril the chef.
It’s very confusing to separate reality from the show here. Anyway, it’s supposed to be the funny goings-on of Emeril’s crew behind the scene. In the premier, a very awful, corporate female exec, (don’t writers ever get beyond 1950’s stereotypes of working women?) decides that Emeril is too fat and isn’t appealing to the GQ types.
The whole crew goes on a diet and he tries cooking low-cal food on TV, much to the disgust of his audience. For whatever reason, it works. Sort of. But that might just be because the season, so far, is such a dog, that this seems like a cute mutt.