Tapes on this page: 10 new
## 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 WILDER (Debut) 9/18/92 2497. TV-83. w/Mary Page Keller, Jerry O'Connell, Jay Mohr, Hilary Swank & Paul Sand. They call it Jack's PLACE You'll love the company. 2498. (Debut) 5/26/92 TV-84. w/Hal Linden, Finola Hughes, John Dye and guests: Linda Purl, Sean Ryan, Cesar Romero, Shawn Weatherly, John Ashton, Robert Guillaume, Robin Strasser, Ed Flanders. Barbara Babcock. ## RIGHT COLUMN PARADISE 2499. (Debut) 3/1/86 TV-85. w/Timothy Busfield, Eliz Green Ryan O'Donoh w/Gerrie 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. Mod 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 herself, and the perfect pin 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 bathroom (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 department 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 incredibly 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 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 invent is that folk art causes "wilding." (That is New York's new name for violence; this is a very New York show.) Mad About You stumbles 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 unfortunate and unashamed imitations of Woody Allen), and Seinfeld (the show they're all trying to copy, the one that admits it's about nothing). I'm afraid this Gothanizing of prime time will do to young people today what old Woody Allen movies once did to me. He convinced me that New York was filled with quitters, not criminals, and so I moved there. But I quickly discovered that New York is no Gershwin tune. It's no situation 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