Apparently, you can go home again. You can if you’re a thirtysomething professional featured on your own television series, that is. The trend started with Providence (starring Melina Kanakaredes), picked up steam with Judging Amy (starring Amy Brenneman), and continues with Ed (starring the affable Thomas Cavanaugh) and the John Goodman vehicle, Normal, Ohio. All these shows feature a key character returning home from the big city after experiencing disasters in love, work, or both.
A few pundits and insiders have speculated on the trend, and most parrot that it reflects an adult desire for second chances or to recapture a happier time. Well, perhaps one kind of adult. This adult finds the trend a tad infantilizing. I mean, come on, if the scenes with Providence‘s Kanakaredes in her girlishly poufy, childhood bedroom aren’t enough to make you gag, I don’t know what is.
At this point, I was going to launch into how and why these shows bug me, but then I had to stop and think — why is it that I, smack-dab in the middle of these shows’ target audience, find them so irksome? What am I watching that satisfies the same kind of wish fulfillment to return to a kindler, gentler time? The answer turned out to be two respected dramas, NBC’s The West Wing and ABC’s new medical drama Gideon’s Crossing, which is my favorite new show of the fall season for the week.
Multi-Emmy award-winner The West Wing is one of the best-written and -acted dramas on television. Week after week, it manages to draw viewers behind the scenes at the White House to show what makes the place tick in a way that’s always absorbing and always teaches or reminds us (me, at least) of how the whole machine is supposed to work. What makes the show compelling is not the civics lesson but the fact that the characters are so driven. The reason they’re so driven is because of their boss, President Bartlett, played by Martin Sheen. And this is where the wish-fulfillment takes place — Bartlett is the embodiment of an ideal president who makes the front-runner candidates of today’s current election look as exciting as paint drying.
Considering that I came of age during the Watergate era, Sheen’s President Bartlett provides an image of the president as he should be — charming, articulate, humane, and, above all, honorable. Old-fashioned ideals, perhaps, but the fact that these characteristics are embodied week after week with such skill makes The West Wing a much more satisfying return to the past — or maybe it’s better to say “dream of the past” — than Sydney Hansen’s bedroom in Providence.
As for Andre Braugher in ABC’s new medical drama Gideon’s Crossing, well, let’s face it — Braugher reading from the telephone book would be fascinating. As Dr. Ben Gideon, he’s in charge of experimental medicine at a Boston teaching hospital. He’s a dedicated physician, with an earnest classroom style and a wounded soul, as he recently lost his wife to cancer. He has the mind of a scientist, but the heart of a caretaker. All the more reason to have Dr. Gideon at your bedside, I say, unlike the bumbling, extraordinarily attractive young residents who scurry around him but haven’t picked up any of his passion. On the other hand, this is what keeps the show grounded. (I’ve only seen the pilot episode.) Watching the exhausted, chain-smoking residents decompressing on the roof of the hospital, discussing the fact that doctors contribute to humans’ mortality rate as much as anything else, is a sobering contrast to Braugher’s Gideon, who’s so steeped in his lofty notions of life and healing that, presented alone, he would sound ridiculous. Still, as the ideal physician, Dr. Gideon fits the bill.
Gideon’s Crossing‘s first episode was presented commercial-free on its premiere last Wednesday. But the effort was just a gimmick, as the program was assembled with the traditional breaks to accommodate commercials. The result was no more intriguing than watching a video-taped program and fast forwarding past the commercials once you finally sat down to review the tape.
Though Gideon’s Crossing hasn’t quite found its footing, it is promising and, like West Wing, it satisfies a deep-seated hunger for happier, idealized times, when honor, justice, and acts of conscience did not seem unattainable goals. At least the vehicle for dreaming of these things feels much more adult than in the current wave of returning-home series.
The West Wing airs at 8pm, on Wednesdays, on NBC. Gideon’s Crossing airs at 9pm, on Wednesdays, on ABC.
Not Ready for Prime Time
It’s a good thing Larry David‘s new series Curb Your Enthusiasm is on cable. It wouldn’t make it on regular network television. That’s meant as a compliment. Network sitcoms are calibrated to accommodate commercials, and some — even the better ones — clearly telegraph their “funny” moments. Not so with David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm. And that’s part of its charm.
In an unusual move, the series is unscripted. Instead, actors rely on an outline of what should happen in each scene. The actors’ ability to improvise is, therefore, an important element in the show, and watching actors work out the scenes is half the pleasure of watching the new comedy, which premiered on HBO last Sunday.
Curb Your Enthusiasm stars Larry David as himself, a schmuck who is somehow likable at the same time you find yourself shaking your head at each unfortunate predicament he inevitably sinks himself into. As it was in Seinfeld, the series which David co-created, the minutiae of everyday life is the springboard for larger events which drive the show.
Self-absorbed, yes. But very, very funny.
Curb Your Enthusiasm airs at 8:30pm, Sunday, on HBO.
Funniest Line of the Week
“Just remember, if Harry Potter falls to the floor, Harry will die and there will be no more books written.”
— Miss Patty (Liz Torres), the town dance teacher in The Gilmore Girls, as pink-leotard-wearing little girls pass her carefully while balancing a copy of the Harry Potter book atop their heads
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This article appears in October 20 • 2000.