The good folks at WURG sure know their slapstick. It's been quite some time since I've seen good physical comedy on television, so what a thrill to see it make a comeback. Good slapstick, good slapstick. Now let's get to the better banter.I'm not sure we've had an episode yet that puts the whole crew in one situation, so this week was a change of pace. Little Gracie's 11th-birthday party was basically over before it started, because the only one of the six adults there who had steeled herself to find and catch the raccoon in the attic was Kelly, and Chuck wasn't about to let her do it. I understood his reasoning (Kelly's done everything for Gracie and Chuck wants to contribute, even if she doesn’t know he's her father), but that part felt a little far-fetched. Chuck strikes me as the kind who'll let anyone take a fall for him — in poor Ryan's case, quite literally — even Kelly, so why take a stand on this thing that he was obviously scared of?Either way, the guys on t...
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There is nothing more terrifying than having your 10-year-old classmates meet one (or both) of your parents, and I know this from experience. I felt for poor Gracie Carr, who so obviously wanted both her bully and her mother to disappear from this class trip to the station. She was probably thinking that the only upside was not having to have class.If only Kelly and Chuck knew that they were probably just making the situation worse for their daughter by wanting to confront the bully, whether through a "conflict resolution" session or the terrifying way that Kelly ended up going about it. (I'm well out of elementary school, but if tomorrow Patricia Heaton said to me, "I will come into your room while you are sleeping and I will rip your head off," I would probably faint.) As soon as Xander Tucker gets over his fear of Kelly, he's going to start bullying Gracie sevenfold. Perhaps by then Chuck will no longer be blinded by Xander's gorgeous, divorced mother and will actually be able to...
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Is it 1994? I think it must be, because lately Tia Carrere is popping up everywhere — well, if not everywhere, at least on two shows I cover, and I only cover three, so if she shows up on Friday Night Lights, I know something's up. Between her hanging out with Larry David (cocreator of Seinfeld, coincidentally on in 1994) and Kelsey Grammer (Frasier, also on in 1994) in recent weeks, I just have to wonder if I've been witness to a time warp. She did a cute job tonight, playing a woman — not a hooker, apparently — who almost managed to seduce Chuck, so it's a shame she was rather underutilized.Of course, had she actually managed to "take a ride on the Chuck wagon," as Montana so delicately put it, we wouldn't have been able to see that Chuck is, at heart, a decent guy. Sure, he only took Ryan out to dinner to prove to Kelly that he didn't donate the rude gene to Gracie, and yes, he did repeatedly try to hurry up and ditch this dinner to be with Carrere's unnamed hottie...
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Clunk. That's the sound this episode made as it hit the air. You may be wondering how a show could make a physical clunk sound, but (and imagine some dramatic flare here) they found a way! It's almost as if after last week's great momentum, the powers that be decided that they didn't want to give us too much funny too fast, and so they churned out an awkwardly paced and plotted car boot of an episode.On the upside, Fred Willard's Marsh was on fire tonight, and doing his proprietary shtick that I've loved since Best in Show. From his opening where, after reporting that Jason Shaw, a Steeler, was dating a supermodel, and exclaiming, "Now that's one person I'd like to trade places with for three hours," only to insist on explaining that he meant he wanted to exchange the football player, and very emphatically not the supermodel, I knew he was back in fine form. In fact, Marsh and Gary's shared scenes were, to borrow a term, "the adorablest," of the episode. Gary's robotic delivery in r...
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An alternate title for this episode could have been, "One fish, two fish, overfed fish, fried fish." I doubt PETA will be particularly thrilled with the outcome of the story. Me? I just kind of want to go out for seafood. While the fish-as-child metaphor was not exactly subtle (or original — they did it on Frasier in the episode "Flour Child," leading to Niles' wonderful line, "After all, a real child would have cried before it burst into flames"), it did create an almost Stooge-like backdrop for what was actually a pretty heavy topic: Is it healthy to everyone involved for Gracie to spend time with Chuck? It's obvious they will, and luckily for her, small as she might be, Gracie won't fit in a coffee cup.The writers could have had no idea that a story about tasers would be so relevant when this episode was in development, so this was quite fortuitous timing. I'm glad there's a force out there bringing such screamingly funny physical comedy around once in a while, reminding us...
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There's something about this show that reminds me of a glazed doughnut. It's nothing you haven't had before and something you know you should stay away from, but in the end, you choose it anyway, not only because it's comforting, but because as hard as you try not to, you can't help but enjoy it.Our setup (if the millions of promos that Fox ran didn't give it away first) is this: Chuck Darling and Kelly Carr were the dream team of Pittsburgh's local news scene. Now, 10 years later, Chuck's made it to L.A., where one disastrous on-air blowup regarding a supremely ditzy coworker results in his being bounced back to the minor leagues. Only (in that classic pre-Seinfeldian sitcom twist) it turns out that Chuck unknowingly, "left a part of [himself] in Pittsburgh," in the form of Gracie Carr. Cue the final credits.Now, I consider myself to be the kind of cool and with-it gal who loves the kind of hip, ironic, single-camera sitcoms that no one actually watches, but I'm also a child of the...
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Who's doing what for whom this pilot season (per Variety and the Reporter):• Emmy winner Christina Applegate, long wooed to return to network TV, has opted to star as an amnesiac woman in the ABC comedy Sam I Am. Jean Smart is Sam's mom, and Tim Russ (Star Trek: Voyager) is also in the cast.• As first scooped by the Ausiello Report, Judging Amy Brenneman and Merrin Dungey (Alias) have come on board the Grey's Anatomy spin-off, playing Violet and Naomi.• Melanie Griffith will guest on the pilot for the CBS musical drama Viva Laughlin. A conniving sexpot, Griffith's character could go recurring.• Drew Carey's Diedrich Bader is the loyal friend of CBS' Skip Tracer.• Jamey Sheridan (Law & Order: CI) is a wife-beater turned zombie in CBS' Babylon Fields.• Stephanie Childers (Studio 60) is the mother of ABC's American Family.• Ty Burrell (Out of Practice, indeed) is an ace reporter for Fox's Action News.
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