Review

It's that old mediocre-show feeling

© St. Petersburg Times
published April 15, 2003

Sitting through two episodes of Seinfeld alum Julia Louis-Dreyfus' NBC comedy, Watching Ellie, my gut tightened with a familiar sensation.

I remembered it from Mary Tyler's Moore's 1985 sitcom bomb, Mary; Lucille Ball's ill-considered 1986 comedy, Life With Lucy; and more recently, Ellen DeGeneres' awkward 2001 CBS series, The Ellen Show.

It's the pain that comes from seeing a first-class talent stuck in a second-class show. And that, in a flash, is what ails Ellie, which starts its second season tonight.

Not that NBC hasn't tried mightily to prop up Dreyfus and this show, originally developed by her husband, Brad Hall, as a real-time comedy in which a minute onscreen was a minute for the audience.

Assuming that viewers didn't respond because of the concept -- NBC wishes -- the network has revamped the show as a conventional sitcom. It's now filmed before a studio audience, with laughs added later to "sweeten" more leaden moments. (Why is it that when a bold concept fails, the networks' first reaction is to go back to the stuff everyone else is doing?)

But this version, which airs for six consecutive weeks, suffers from the same problem as the original version.

It just isn't funny. Ever.

Ellie is a textbook case of what can happen when a pile of talented performers convenes around uninspired scripts and laughless concepts.

Dreyfus' comedic chops, on full display through many seasons of Seinfeld, are well known. And on Ellie, she has surrounded herself with other inspired players, including The Daily Show's Steve Carell (the annoying know-it-all guy from the Fed Ex commercials) and Fred Willard (the former Fernwood 2Nite sidekick plays a weirdo building superintendent).

As in the show's first incarnation, Dreyfus' Ellie Riggs is a neurotic, struggling professional jazz singer who dates her married guitar player and constantly trips over the other oddball men in her life.

In tonight's episode, the guitarist has left his wife and is considering an apartment in Ellie's building. The singer loves this until she gets a look at the curvaceous Icelandic babe staying across the hall with her uncle, the weirdo super mentioned earlier.

By the time it all comes to a head in a restaurant -- involving that old standby sitcom gag, the misunderstood dinner date -- Ellie has punched one guy and yanked off the prosthesis of another. And they say good TV comedy is dead.

Stretching for Seinfeldian absurdity and wit, Ellie instead offers bad John Denver jokes (next week) and a growing sense that somebody's just working off a contract obligation.

The real deal likely is that NBC hopes that if it makes the show conventional enough, appealing enough or familiar enough, perhaps viewers will stick around because they like watching Dreyfus. It's not a bad bet; CBS's sorta-hit Becker has stuck around since 1998 on that premise.

But for a performer of Dreyfus' caliber, it's a crime. The woman who once held her own in a roomful of guys on a show about nothing deserves better.

Watching Ellie returns for its second season at 9:30 tonight on WFLA-Ch. 8. Grade: C-. Rating: TV-14.

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