Tapes on this page: 0 new, 10 already catalogued (2494 on 20260907_123414; 2495 on 20260907_123414; 2496 on 20260907_123414; 2497 on 20260907_123414; 2498 on 20260907_123414; 2499 on 20260907_123414; 2500 on 20260907_123414; 2501 on 20260907_123414; 2502 on 20260907_123414; 2503 on 20260907_123414)
## LEFT COLUMN 2494. EMPIRE : Debut. TV-80. 3-Part Mini-series: Kenneth Welsh, Jennifer Dale & Mitch Martin. NOTHING IS EASY. 2/8/87 The Randalls of "Together We Stand" w/Dee Wallace Stone & Ke Huy Quan. 2495. VALERIE BERTINELLI: TV-81. SYDNEY 3/21/90 Series w/Bertinelli as a P.I. IN A CHILD'S NAME, 11/17/91 2-Part series of a murder case that broke in New Jersey in 1984. w/Louise Fletcher, Michael Ontkean and David Huddleston. 2496. KEYWEST (Debut) 1/19/93 TV-82. w/Fisher Stevens, T.C. Carson, Denise Crosby, Jennifer Tilly, Mariska Hargitay & Leland Crooke. CAMP 2497. WILDER (Debut) 9/18/92 TV-83. w/Mary Page Keller, Jerry O'Connell, Jay Mohr, Hilary Swank & Paul Sand. They call it 2498. Jack's (Debut) 5/26/92 TV-84. PLACE w/Hal Linden, Finola Hughes, John Dye and guests: You'll love the company Linda Purl, Sean Ryan, Cesar Romero, Shawn Weatherly, John Ashton, Robert Guillaume, Robin Strasser, Ed Flanders. Barbara Babcock. ## RIGHT COLUMN 2499. valerie (Debut) 3/1/86 TV-85. w/Valerie Harper. 2500. VALERIE : 2. TV-86. w/Danny Ponce, Jason Bateman Jeremy Licht & Josh Taylor. 2501. VALERIE : 3. TV-87. w/Sandy Dunkin 11/23/87 - 2/22/88 THE GREAT MOM SWAP. 9/23/95 w/Sid Caesar & Shelley Fabares. 2502. MAD ABOUT YOU. (Debut) 9/23/92 TV-88. w/Paul Reiser & Helen Hunt. Mad About You NBC, Wednesdays, 9:30 P.M. (ET) For his new sitcom, Paul Reiser got to be Adam in the Garden of TV and create a wife. He did great. Helen Hunt makes him a delightful wife—witty yet nice, pretty yet modest, slightly neurotic her- self, and the perfect pun to prick his ego and eccentricities. They make one cute couple—and that's what makes their show so good. Their chemistry is so potent it came alive even in their commercials this summer as Paul and Helen jockeyed for space in their too-small New York bath- room (and she dribbled toothpaste on his neck). Such mundane but funny scenes of real life are the best parts of Mad About You: He moans about wasting a Saturday in a de- partment store—"This is time you never get back." She mocks him for how he looked in the '70s—"'Are those sideburns or headphones?' He complains about her snoring—"'What could you possibly have in your nose that I don't?' In those small moments, Mad About You is in- credibly credible about married life. But that believability disappears in a flash when the show's writers resort to sloppy, easy gags: Paul and Helen make yippee in the kitchen while guests wait in the living room. (I don't know anyone who'd do that and I don't know any New York kitchen big enough for doing it.) Their nebbishy friend the gynecologist Costars and one fun couple: Helen Hunt and Paul Reiser. tells Paul he examined Helen: "She was in the stirrups when she told me about you." Paul faints. (Which means nobody could come up with a good line to end this bad gag.) When Paul wants to get out of seeing a quilt show with Helen, the only complaint he and his writers can in- vent is that folk art causes "wilding." (That is New York's new name for vio- lence; this is a very New York show.) Mad About You stum- bles when it forgets it's about a relationship and tries to be about clever and cool New Yorkers. There's too much New York on TV already: in Love & War (which has slipped since I raved about it here), Flying Blind (where Corey Parker is doing unfor- tunate and unabashed imita- tions of Woody Allen). and Seinfeld (the show they're all trying to copy, the one that ad- mits it's about nothing). I'm afraid this Gothamizing of prime time will do to young people today what old Woody Allen movies once did to me. He con- vinced me that New York was filled with quippers, not criminals, and so I moved there. But I quickly discovered that New York is no Gershwin tune. It's no situa- tion comedy, either. Mad About You is a damned good show that's getting better. It's best when it doesn't try to be New York hip but just tries to be a show about a subject Reiser—and the rest of us—know far better: that sitcom called marriage. 2503. LOVE & WAR TV-89. w/Susan Dey & Jay Thomas. Debut. 9/21/92