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Shows I Once Liked Which Are Hurtling Toward Well-Deserved Death
Roseanne
Hard to believe I once liked this show. The first year, Roseanne couldn't act but it didn't matter because it felt fresh and sharp and funny. Now, in its death throes, it's just a rich woman with a facelift ramming politically correct claptrap down our throats. Roseanne delivers her lines better, but they're not worth hearing.
Ellen
This comedian's shtick is to get into a potentially embarrassing situation and, in order to avoid embarrassment, stupidly make it worse and worse and worse. It worked for her in stand-up, but here it becomes too painful to endure. Now and then the hero has to be something other than a bumbling oaf surrounded by malice and stupidity.
Lois and Clark
A fantasy, even a comic one, has to have and keep a core of truth and anguish in order to continue to delight an audience. The writers have lost their way, and this show has lost me. The likeable cast deserves better than their writers have been giving them. A show killed by the search for ratings at the expense of integrity.
Chicago Hope
Gone soap. Even though I admire Christine Lahti and several other actors, the writing is spinning around inside the bowl ready to go down. The problem with the show was epitomized by Mandy Patinkin in a clown suit. What did that have to do with the hospital? The clown suit may be gone, but the characters seem to be stuck at that level of irrelevant histrionics.
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