“The Nanny”Tonight at 8 on WCBS/Ch.2
WE hate to say it, but “The Nanny” takes its final bow with an over-long one-hour farewell that reminds us only that it won’t be missed.
It chokes on all its cliches long before the cast chokes up while Fran Drescher, wearing one of the least flattering outfits of her six-year run as Fran Fine, the Jewish American princess from Queens, thanks the studio audience that was drowned out by the laugh track.
All we need to do is get through the birth of Fran’s and Maxwell’s (Charles Shaughnessy) twins, C.C.’s (Lauren Lane) nausea at Niles’ (Daniel Davis) proposal and the move to Hollywood – where we, thankfully, shall not follow.
Not to mention a final montage that plays to the tune of a non-Streisand rendition of “Memories.”
The hour starts with a recap of what we were spared by CBS’ decision to skip five weeks and go straight to the end of a series that lost its way when Fran and Maxwell decided to take the employer-nanny relationship to the next level.
And yet, we pick up where we left off when CBS yanked the under-performer from the lineup, with the predictable jokes about how Jewish Fran’s family is and how Jewish Maxwell’s family is not.
Fran, who is eating for three but still trying to dress for one, says it’s not so weird to feel one of her pending twins kick.
“I was raised in a home where we ate pastrami and Heinz baked beans,” she says. “I’m used to movement.”
When she and C.C. get stuck in an elevator and she utters the first of her many screams, C.C. whines all together now: “I don’t know nuthin’ ’bout birthin’ no babies.”
To which Fran, speaking for too many disenchanted fans: says, “Well, frankly, Miss Babcock, I don’t give a damn.”