Quotes of the Day
When times are good, life is good for the shoe salesman. When times are bad, life is good for the shoe repairman. In the network-TV business, times are not so good. Its biggest hits are aging and atrophying, with no breakout smash among the fall's new shows. So the networks have hung on to several high-profile series, each with a potentially fatal flaw, to see if they can buff them up and get a few more seasons' use out of them.
Long-running series always evolve, of course: Law & Order may soon have gone through more generations of actors than Cats. But rarely are TV shows remade as fundamentally as 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter, The Practice and The West Wing have been, let alone all in one season. The most drastic retooling starts this week with the first episode of 8 Simple Rules (ABC, Tuesdays, 8 p.m. E.T.) since the death of star John Ritter in September. Sitcoms have lost stars before (recently, an ailing Michael J. Fox on Spin City), but 8 Simple Rules is a special case — a light comedy, with Ritter as suburban dad Paul Hennessy, that suddenly has no dad and little to laugh about.
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But it's also one of the few modest hits on a network in a ratings slump. After some deep thought — and a Diane Sawyer-hosted Ritter tribute that won the nightly ratings — ABC decided to carry on, with Ritter's character dying and James Garner and Suzanne Pleshette guest-starring as the grandparents. "Ultimately," says ABC entertainment chairman Lloyd Braun, "we felt there were still great stories to tell." Sure: M*A*S*H told moving, even funny stories about death. But 8 Simple Rules was no M*A*S*H. It was an innocuous family show based on you're-not-going-out-of-the-house-dressed-like-that jokes and sentimental, pat endings. ABC did not preview new episodes for critics, but 8 Simple Rules will have to become a far better show than it was.
Rules' producers can take inspiration from The Practice (ABC, Sundays, 10 p.m. E.T.). Last spring, with the legal drama — once a top-20 hit — bleeding viewers, writer-producer David E. Kelley fired four of its stars — Dylan McDermott, Kelli Williams, Lara Flynn Boyle and Lisa Gay Hamilton (who were negotiating raises) — and started afresh. Kelley blames himself for the decline; over seven seasons, the show was mired in melodrama. "It was difficult to juxtapose a personal story line and explore relationships," he says, "while trying to show a murder and the search for a missing head."
The new cast is headed by James Spader as defense lawyer Alan Shore, an ethically challenged former embezzler who uses his powers of sleaze to help his colleagues, his clients and his self-interest. The gamble seems to have worked. The show topped NBC's heavily touted Rob Lowe drama, The Lyon's Den, and Spader's complex, even sympathetic performance gives the show more interest than it has had in years. (A stunt casting turn by Sharon Stone helped too.) The old characters, Kelley says, "would always do the right moral thing at the end of the day. That occasioned me to start with just the opposite."
No characters on TV have been more dependably moral than the White House wonks of NBC's The West Wing (Wednesdays, 9 p.m. E.T.). That was the vision of Aaron Sorkin, the series' creator and producer, who wrote or heavily rewrote nearly every episode for four seasons. When Sorkin left last spring — taking the show's rapid-fire, talking-while-walking voice with him — many thought that Wing, already sinking in the ratings, was doomed. But the ratings have firmed, and in some ways the show is better. Producer John Wells, now heading up the writers' team, kept the core of Sorkin's show but toned down the piety. The heroes are more self-doubting and fallible, and their adversaries more human. Last year President Bartlet (Martin Sheen) ran for re-election against a Republican so dim and loutish no one could have voted for him unless tricked by a butterfly ballot. This year — resolving a cliffhanger set up by Sorkin — Wing gave us John Goodman as a G.O.P. House Speaker (stepping in for Bartlet after his daughter was kidnapped), who was inspiring, even noble, and the new Vice President (Gary Cole) is a wily, underestimated foil to Bartlet.
It may be in poor taste for 8 Simple Rules to continue, but in TV, good taste is what they talk about in beer commercials. The Practice and The West Wing at least demonstrate that by challenging its complacency — and the audience's — a crippled show can not only survive but also improve. There are few rules for that, however. And none of them are simple.
- James Poniewozik