THREE new sitcoms featuring big-name stars each illustrate the challenges involved in getting a new show in shape for the fall season.
One of them – NBC’s “Emeril,” starring TV chef Emeril Lagasse – was judged unfit for air and is being redone.
Another – ABC’s “Bob Patterson,” starring Jason Alexander of “Seinfeld” – was faced with reshooting every scene involving Bob Patterson’s wife, since the role has been recast since the pilot was made.
The third one – “The Ellen Show” on CBS, starring Ellen DeGeneres – presented its own unique set of challenges, although not specifically where the pilot episode is concerned. That will air as is.
And if the pilot is any indication, Ellen might be about to make a successful prime-time comeback. The reason: Four years after she came out of the closet on her old ABC sitcom, her sexual orientation is not nearly as important to TV audiences as it once was.
In “The Ellen Show,” she’s a lesbian “Ed” who decides to move back to her hometown after years of working for one failed dot-com after another.
The challenge was to position her homosexuality in such a way that both she and her audience would be comfortable.
In the pilot, she does just that by acknowledging that she’s gay and moving on. The end result is a comedy that doesn’t force viewers to ponder where they stand on lesbians.
And that makes it easier to once again enjoy Ellen purely on the basis of her formidable talent.
Look for “The Ellen Show” Friday nights at 8 this fall.
The makers of “Bob Patterson,” however, should have thought about scrapping a lot more than just the scenes with Bob’s ditzy wife.
Much of the pilot episode is just plain vulgar, particularly when Robert Klein, in the role of Bob’s manager, feigns constipation to craft an analogy for Bob’s writer’s block. Trust me – you don’t want to see this!
The title character played by Alexander is a motivational speaker and author who is suffering his own crisis of insecurity. It’s not a terrible idea, but in the pilot, Bob is really just George Costanza without glasses, right down to the way Alexander’s voice tends to whine at a high pitch when the character is exasperated.
Amazingly, the first two minutes of “Bob Patterson” were uproarious. If it were up to me, I would have kept that stuff and dumped the rest. “Bob Patterson” is slated for Tuesday nights at 9, up against “Frasier.”
As for “Emeril,” the pilot is being completely remade because the network feels too much emphasis had been placed on Emeril’s home life as a husband and father of three children.
In the reconfigured version, more of the action will take place in and around the production studio where he does his TV cooking show.
The real challenge here, though, is in transforming the TV chef into an actor.
Say what you will about the mediocrity that afflicts much of prime-time TV these days, but the acting that underlies the otherwise inferior qualities of some shows is generally among the best there is.
In the “Emeril” pilot, Emeril is such a rank amateur that he twice mispronounces “exclamation point” as “explanation point.” And when his fans get a look at him engaging in sexual banter with his TV wife, that’s a recipe for disaster.
“Emeril” is slated for Tuesday nights at 8.