Before each season, the major advertising agencies pick the likeliest new hit. This time they’ve picked “Home Improvement.” It looks like a long season.
Stand-up comic Tim Allen plays the macho host of a TV home-repair show who’s a klutz around his own house. The sitcom’s one original touch is a Robert Bly-esque neighbor, who tutors Tim in the ways of primitive males. “The ancient Malaysians used a turtle shell as an aphrodisiac,” he informs him. Tim: “Wouldn’t that hurt putting it on?” The rest of the hilarity is supposed to flow between Mr. Fix-it and his despairing wife (Patricia Richardson). He swaggers around with a “Raw Power” drill and a tool belt slung Matt Dillon style, yet can’t even label a fuse box. She does slow burns. It doesn’t help that four of Allen’s one-liners–delivered with an annoyingly smug leer–are about “butt cracks. " Memo to ABC: Toss out Tim, make the Bly guy the central character and retitle this mess “Hormonal Improvement.” You’re welcome.
“Good and Evil’ (ABC):
Talk about sibling rivalry. Earlier this year, NBC introduced a series about four dissimilar sisters living in Winnetka, Ill. Later this year, ABC will unveil a series about three dissimilar sisters living in Weehawken, N.J. In the meantime, ABC is giving us this sitcom about two very dissimilar sisters living in a state of perpetual antipathy.
The good news about “Good and Evil” is Teri Garr, who betwixt Letterman gigs is playing Denise Sandler, a thoroughly rotten heir unapparent to a cosmetics empire. It’s obvious where she gets it from. When Denise asks her mother (Marian Seldes), the empire’s Eve Ardenish queen, why she favors her sister over herself, Mom sweetly replies: “Because you’re a bitch.” Hatched by the same twisted minds that invented “Soap” and “Golden Girls,” this sitcom has been designed to appeal to the execrable taste in all of us. When’s the last time you encountered a show that pokes fun at mental illness, the blind, animal lovers and urinary-tract infections?
“Princesses’ (CBS):
It’s your standard New York scenario: a couple of working girls decide to become roommates and, with just a little luck, end up living rent-free in a fabulous penthouse overlooking Central Park. Oh, yes, the pad comes with a real princess (Twiggy), whose former in-laws once reigned over the Scilly Isles.
Now you know why this sitcom’s theme song comes from a Disney fairy tale. Still, “Princesses” is so unflaggingly perky, not to mention demographically correct, that it smells like a sleeper. The 41-year-old Twiggy does her aging-bird number with a glint of self-mockery, and Julie Hagerty is a natural as the Sweet One. But the straw that stirs this mix is Fran Drescher (Robin Williams’s costar in “Cadillac Man”), who plays a vintage Brooklyn broad. With her Mafia-doll bouffant and an accent nasal enough to slice a week-old bagel (“Don’t stawt wid me”), Drescher purloins every scene. She’s a witch made for the Big Apple.
Who says the one-hour drama is dead? Actually, just about everyone in the business, as network bottom-liners rush to embrace less costly, more lucrative sitcoms. All the more reason, then, to salute NBC for interrupting this season’s interminable laugh track with something not only serious but genuinely moving.
Set in a racially charged Southern town in the late ‘5Os, the drama focuses on a prosecuting attorney (Sam Waterston), his three children and their new black housekeeper (Regina Taylor). As the young woman discovers the dawning civil-rights movement, the family members are forced to confront their own biases as well as the injustices of the times. Obviously, “I’ll Fly Away” owes a lot to “To Kill a Mockingbird,” but at least it knows what’s worth borrowing. Executive producers Joshua Brand and John Falsey (“Northern Exposure”) also know how to marry small, illuminating moments–a white child’s curiosity about the nature of blackness–with those of physical sweep–a mass candlelight protest in which no one moves or speaks. Lyrically atmospheric, sensitively written and performed, “I’ll Fly Away” is the season’s only class act.
If nothing else, this mismatched-cop show represents an arresting development. It’s the first TV series to star a hearing-impaired heroine. Oscar winner Marlee Matlin portrays an assistant district attorney who teams with “St. Elsewhere’s” Mark Harmon as a police detective. She’s stubborn, idealistic and caring; he’s stubborn, hard-nosed and profane. (Heading off for the men’s room, he announces: “Gotta shake hands with Nixon.”) Naturally, they can’t stand each other, and yet…aw, wait for the shower scene. Harmon’s character learned sign language in his youth-he had a deaf (and stubborn) dad-which allows him to simultaneously converse with Matlin and verbally translate her lines for us. All well and good, if only Harmon didn’t seem such a boyish weenie. “You’re just like my father,” he huffs at his partner. “All over again.” Where are you, Nick Nolte?
It’s “The Wonder Years” by way of “The Twilight Zone” when a 13-year-old city dweller (“Dallas’s” Omri Katz) moves to a seemingly idyllic small town and begins noticing odd things. Did that raven have a glass eye in its beak? How come the fat teenage twins next door look exactly as they did in their school’s 1964 yearbook? What does the Foreverware Lady keep in those coffinsize food containers in her attic? Was that Elvis slurping a Slurpee at the 7-Eleven? Eventually, the kid discovers he’s living in “the center of weirdness for the entire planet”-though he’s the only one to realize it. The creators of “Eerie” say they’re out to scare young viewers and amuse their parents. To bring that off, they’d better make this a lot spookier and a whole lot funnier. For now, we’ll cherish one moment of unspeakable horror. Sifting through the morning mail, the boy’s big sister recoils with shock from a sweepstakes promotion. “Something,” she gasps, “has pecked out Ed McMahon’s eyes!”
The tribulations of a black garbage collector may not sound like a riveting comedy premise. Yet “Roc” should have worked, if only because of its impressive cast: three imports from Broadway’s “The Piano Lesson,” including Tony nominee Charles Dutton. Instead, the sitcom comes off as a trashy knockoff of “Sanford and Son.” Roc Emerson (Dutton) lives with the standard afflictions of blue-collar comedy: an exasperated wife, shiftless younger brother and cantankerous father. At least Dad (Carl Gordon), a black racist, doesn’t entirely fit the formula. When he announces that there are “no good white basketball players,” junior brings up Larry Bird. Shoots back Pop: “His real name is Abdul Mustafa.” When he’s not around, though, there’s nothing much to do except watch Dutton glower. Can’t blame him.
At last, a whiff of the unfamiliar. While this sitcom’s protagonist, a male magazine researcher, seems ordinary enough, there’s an ingenious twist to its setting. Much of the action takes place within Herman’s brain, where characters personifying four warring emotions–anxiety, rationality, lust and compassion–vie for control of his life. Talk about inside stories.
As Herman (William Ragsdale) struggles to impress an editor or score with a secretary, the voices in his mind analyze, bicker and sulk. Lust to anxiety: “If we ever become impotent, you can take a bow.” Rationality (watching Herman leave for a date): “Condoms! Don’t forget the condoms!” Alas, the show presents a viciously distorted picture of the magazine business, depicting Herman’s colleagues as ruthless, shifty, egomaniacal, sycophantic and workaholic. As everyone knows, magazine people don’t like to work hard.
Maybe Herman should be a network programmer–but then, the way things are going, he’d have rejected this series as dangerously original.
