Near the end of Bill Brioux’s podcast interview with legendary TV writer Ken Levine, Bill asks his guest what TV he’s watching these days. Levine – whose writing credits include M*A*S*H, Frasier, The Simpsons, Everybody Loves Raymond and many others – could only come up with baseball and Jeopardy!
I feel your pain, Ken. The classic TV situation comedy, as exemplified by the brilliant comedies by Levine and his writing partner David Issacs, is on life support. Oh, it’s still out there (the networks have hours of airtime to fill) but they mostly suck. But I’m always mildly optimistic that network TV can still pull off a great classic sitcom. I’m hoping for a repeat of the hallelujah moment when I discovered a comedy called Superstore, the last excellent network sitcom.
So, with an open mind, I’ve sampled four network sitcoms, hoping for that Superstore moment.
First, I tried Happy’s Place (NBC, CTV) starring country music legend Reba McEntire.
Reba plays Bobbie, a divorcee who inherits a popular Tennessee bar (yes, Happy’s Place) when her father passes away. She discovers that her father had another child Bobbie didn’t know about, Isabella (bland Belissa Escobedo), who inherits a share of the bar. Isabella immediately tries to change the bar, which creates some light friction between Bobbie and the requisite wacky staff members. McEntire is charming and does her best, but the show is painfully bland. I have a hard and fast rule for watching a comedy for the first time. If I laugh out loud – even once – I’ll give it another try. I didn’t laugh once, so Happy’s Place wasn’t my happy place.
Georgie and Mandy’s First Marriage (CBS, CTV) is the latest from the merchant of mediocrity Chuck Lorre. It is, I have read, a continuation of sorts of the The Big Bang Theory/Young Sheldon story oeuvre, but I don’t know what that might be; I’ve never watched Young Sheldon and gave up on The Big Bang Theory years ago. So I went into Georgie and Mandy’s First Marriage cold, and left the same way. The background laughter, just like The Big Bang Laughter, was cranked up to eleven. Hey, I know the show is filmed in front of an audience, but there is no conceivable way that any crowd laughs as hard at the lame jokes on this show. I watched about 10 minutes of Georgie and Mandy, stopped, went back, watched a few more minutes, then quit. It’s still waiting on demand if I choose to finish it. I do not.
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Poppa’s Place (CBS, is a collaboration between Damon Wayons Sr. and his Damon Wayons Jr. Senior plays Poppa, a very successful radio host, and Junior plays his son. Junior is doing quite well at his job, which is – and I kid you not – selling foam rollers, but he wants something better. Poppa’s Place is mildly amusing, good enough that I made it through the entire episode. But the second episode’s opening featured a joke so tasteless that I am shocked that it made it to air. Senior is in his kitchen, trimming gray hairs, and putting them in a coffee cup (sure, who doesn’t put stray hairs in a coffee cup?). Junior comes in and asks if the stray hairs came from his nose.
“Lower” says dad.
“Your back?” says son.
“Lower” says dad. “My butt.”
Dad then blows the hairs in son’s face, to which son recoils, asking, “Do you even wipe?”
And with that, I turned off Poppa’s Place.
So I was zero-for-three, but there was hope: St. Denis Medical, co-created by Superstore creator Justin Spitzer. Finally, something to laugh at.
A mocumentary in The Office mode, St. Denis Medical (NBC, CTV) is a small, underfinanced hospital in Oregon. Allison Tolman is a workaholic nurse, Wendi McClendon-Covey (The Goldbergs) is the ambitious exec running the place. David Allen Grier is the cranky senior doctor on staff, Josh Lawson the arrogant trauma surgeon. The pilot episode went too heavy on the mocumentary format – the shaky camera and zooms were very distracting – but by the second episode the camera became steadier. The writing is crisp and often laugh-out-loud funny, the characters quickly endearing.
The first two episodes had some unnecessary sappy moments, which is a little disturbing if the trend continues, but overall St. Denis Medical has the potential to be regular viewing. It might even have the potential to get the network sitcom off its deathbed.
