Sitcoms shoot for laughs but Wednesday night we were gasping. Since the train wreck returns the Dark Angel's female approximate, Patti Heaton, to TV, you know we were loving it.
Was Kelsey Grammer being a pain in the ass? That's what friends wondered after we noted the show in May. We had wondered it too until we watched. Grammer's on set gripes needed to be said. Actually, they needed to be heeded. But no one involved appeared to be listening.
Grammer's returned to TV post-Fraiser and, were we him, we'd be freaking out too. He plays anchor Chuck Darling (yes, the name alone gives qualms) on Fox's Back To You. He's trying really hard to give audiences what they enjoyed in Cheers and Fraiser but it's as though he's playing Sideshow Bob and you're stuck with an episode of The Simpsons starring all the extras and none of the leads. Coming off those two shows, he knows what works for him and a bit about what works on TV sitcoms. His gripes were valid.
Chuck is, remember this is Fox, surrounded by a host of uglies. Christopher Lloyd, who is one of the executive producers, seems unaware that Taxi was dropped by not one, but two networks. That freakish cast never managed to meld and had it not been carried, episode by episode, by Danny DeVito it never would have interested even one network for long. Back To You has no Danny DeVitos but Fox says it's sticking with the show for at least 13 episodes.
The cast is over the top from the beginning save one (we'll get to him) and everyone is so keen to utter their big (non-funny) line that you feel as if the camera's hopping around from one comedy club to the next as opposed to being in an office with co-workers. To demonstrate how over the top the show would be, the powers that be decided it wasn't enough for Chuck Darling to have an on air meltdown where he said a curse word or two. Instead, he was bleeped repeatedly as he used the f-word and just about any other word you could imagine. Was the humor supposed to come from Grammer's rage? If so, you'd have to give that space to grow. They didn't. They thought just having bleep, bleep, bleep would be funny. It wasn't.
Chuck gets fired from the LA market and ends up back at his old job in Pittsburgh. If you're expecting to see friendly faces like Murray, Gordy, Lou or Rhoda, forget it. There are no friends, just freaks.
Grammer has to pitch over the top (one of his complaints -- and it is valid) because the writing and the other performances are all over the top. Nothing ever builds, everything is hurled at you as though your TV set has morphed into a paint ball gun. Mary had Lou (The Mary Tyler Moore Show), Murphy had Miles (Murphy Brown). In fact, the big flip there was that Mary was Miles and Lou was Murphy. The big flip here, for the producer of the news show, is that he's obese and 25. He's obese and he has huge sweat stains and he's played by a Broadway actor who has yet to learn how to act for the camera so every time he comes on camera you're either thinking Julia Sweeny is back in her It's Pat outfit or you're just ducking for cover. The producer's name is Ryan Church and the actor over performing the part is Josh Gad or, as we like to think of him, Josh Gad-Zooks!
Ayda Field was brought in at the last minute to play the sketch that is Montana Diaz Herra. It's an offensive little stereotype (she's the token person of color on the newscast and inflates her Latina flavor). Like all the other characters on the show, she's obsessed with sex. Or is it the writers that are obsessed? It's so important that she gets in her multiple allotment of sex jokes each scene the camera finds her in that no one stopped to think that Montana explaining reporter Gary has a small penis makes no sense since the affair implied violates what little is known about Gary.
There may be a backstory at some point but a pilot shouldn't violate basic understandings. So concerned about making Montana the smuttiest of all, the writers forgot that point.
Gary is played by Ty Burrell. Gary is a nebbish. Burrell's trying really hard with a role that is out of his depths. In Out of Practice, he was amazing playing someone in the know and always in on the next con. Here he's supposed to a be stupid sadsack. We think those behind the camera are far more stupid than Gary. If there's a show to be saved in this unholy mess, it will revolve around Gary and Chuck.
We don't dislike Fred Willard but we don't know anyone who would question the use of "over the top" to describe his performances. So the question becomes why you cast him as sports commentator Marsh when you already have Gad-Zooks! and Field eating up every piece of scenery and spitting it out as confetti?
On the set, Grammer attempted to make many valid points. Watching the show, the most valid one was that he cannot build a performance if the supporting cast has already pitched the scene so high that he has to yell every line just to fit in. That's what he basically does and he's gifted enough to provide some shading even at such a high pitch.
Patti Heaton has no gifts -- only the ability to suck the life out of the room. She plays Chuck's co-anchor (and one-time bed partner) Kelly Carr. When you can't shade, you're not a lead performer in comedy. If you're only ability to shade is to increase the volume, you're a character actor (if you're lucky). Patti yells loudly and frequently. She does the non-stop nag that she perfected offscreen but used repeatedly in Someone Must Love Raymond.
A Lisa Kudrow or Megan Mullally can do miracles in a scene merely with an inflection. They can tease a line, they can let it float. They are comic gems. Heaton is the cubic zirconia of comedy. Her lines are always read in the same monotone whose only variation comes via volume. We'd say she's lucky that she didn't try to act during the hey days of radio but, with that face, TV's really not any kinder to her.
Just as her voice lacks music, her body lacks grace. The part of Kelly is apparently supposed to be a dizzy whirlwind of motion as evidenced by the fact that the writers always have her entering a scene or exiting one. Since the actress lumbers (or is it waddles?) at the same rate regardless of what the character would or should do, that brief bit of writing inspiration/
character detail is wasted.
Before the show made it to air, two roles were recast and a reoccurring character became a one-shot. Why? They knew they had a dog. The answer wasn't in recasting token roles, the answer was in rethinking the show. Kelsey Grammer did not come to fame on the likes of King of Queens. He is an actual actor and one who's grown quite sure in his movements. He's fine tuned and evolved. What a nightmare it must be for him to show up on the set of Fox's latest attempt at a sitcom each day knowing that no line will ever be delivered in a mere shout when it can be screeched.
Heaton's convinced that she's funny loud. She isn't. (She isn't funny quiet or in what she would consider a normal range.) When Grammer politely (we're told politely) hinted that a scene could be taken down a notch, the point flew over her head. The scene that people involved with the show swear was the beginning of the end aired in the pilot. In it, Heaton is stomping her feet around in her character's home and Grammer's Chuck is supposed to be annoying and oblivious. The final portion will be his meeting the daughter that he didn't know he had. Grammer pulls off the last bit largely because Heaton has no lines (or screen time) during that exchange. That worked as did one other scene in full.
In it, Chuck speaks to Kelly about their daughter. He hits all the right notes of concern, ego and nerves. He nails it. It needs to be noted that he succeeds in that scene because Heaton is not heard or seen. Chuck's called Kelly on the phone. When the only scene to work in a thirty minute episode depends upon hiding the co-star a message should have been received.
It wasn't. Peri Gilpin could take everything on the page currently and make it come alive while also adding further dimensions to the character of Kelly. But Gilpin is an actual actress. Megan Mullally could spin the character in a completely different direction. Heaton doesn't know the first thing about inflections or about inhabiting a space. She thinks she's acting just because she's standing in front of the camera and people are calling her "Kelly" and not "Patti."
If the show last more than a season without ditching Heaton (we doubt it, but could be wrong), the Grammer and Heaton conflict will most likely provide great tabloid fodder. As other sitcoms have found out in the past, tabloid fodder tends to drive audiences away. Wednesday night's overnights looked impressive. That was partly due to no competition from any other new offerings and also to the fact that Grammer is well liked by the public. And Heaton brought her fans along for the first outing as well, all three of them. But that was the public's free sample. Up against real programming, having tasted Back To You, viewers will start going elsewhere.
A friend with the show asked what one thing they needed to do? (They know it's a mess.) We don't think one thing would fix it but the biggest problem is Heaton. They can create an actual character for Montana, they can move Gary to the foreground, they can work on getting the actors to grasp that louder does not mean funnier. But they'll still have Heaton and the show will always be off balance. Rose Marie showed everything she had as Sally Rogers and Heaton's shown everything she has as Deborah Barone.
"We're talking about," we explained, "a woman whom Pantene dropped. Whom even Albertson's finally dropped. The only spokesperson duty she pulls now is for Heifer International. That alone should have told you something."