Tuesday, June 22, 2010

'TIL DEATH, AND THEN SOME: It made me irrationally mad when 'Til Death premiered, because it just looked like (and, as it turned out, was) just another by-the-numbers sit-com about a squabbling family. It made me a little bit irrationally irritated that the show kept getting renewed, because I assumed that meant people were watching it.

As it turns out, I was wrong -- almost nobody was watching. And, to hear Todd VanDerWerff tell it in the greatest article I've read about television yet this year*, the show became almost a laboratory for what bizarre things you might do with nobody watching. So in a Brad Garrett vehicle openly attempting to recreate Everybody Loves Raymond, this happens:
Perhaps realizing that the role of Ally (Joy and Eddie's daughter) had been played by four actresses over the course of the series (including Krysten Ritter!) while the role of boyfriend/fiancee/husband Doug had been played by only [Tim] Sharp, the series embarked on an astoundingly bizarre story arc: It had Doug realize he was a character in a sitcom whose wife kept getting recast, then sent him to psychotherapy to make peace with this fact.

...

The Doug story arc was one of the more unexpected things on TV last year, including ... Doug slowly coming to realize he could neither swear nor have actual sex, and a whole episode where Ally was recast yet again and Doug had to come to terms with it before realizing the actress playing his new wife was much friskier in the bedroom (even as he realized that the camera would cut away before anything would happen).

But wait! There's more! Doug went to therapy with a therapist played by Mayim Bialik, who was gradually revealed to be the actress Mayim Bialik, who was filming a reality show based on her practice, all the better to further disorient Doug. ...
I can't decide if I'm more astounded that this happened or that apparently nobody knew that it happened until VanDerWerff happened to watch a Hulu highlight reel. This just makes me incredibly happy.

Via Sepinwall

*With the possible exception of the news that Leno's Tonight Show is underperforming Conan's on a week-to-week basis.
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5 comments:

  1. Devin McCullen8:25 PM

    Two extremely vaguely related things:

    1) When exactly did Krysten Ritter become so popular, at least among people who watch a lot of TV?  I know it wasn't on Veronica Mars.  But now she seems to be something of an "It Girl".

    2) If you were following Mr. Van Der Werff on Twitter, you might have seen a link to something that I think a lot of ALOTT5MA readers would enjoy:  <span>http://catdeeleyfacts.tumblr.com/</span>

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  2. Matt8:46 PM

    I believe the big role for Ritter (or at least the first time I noticed) was on Gilmore Girls.  She's awesome--kind of a less twee, more likely to curse version of Zooey Deschanel.

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  3. Meghan8:51 PM

    This is a whole post of awesome, complete with charts.

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  4. Robin9:10 PM

    That was a fantastic article.  I enjoyed those clips even more because I just re-watched Undeclared, featuring Timm Sharp.

    Also, re: Krysten Ritter as It Girl, were her appearances on Breaking Bad instrumental in that at all? I haven't watched the show yet, but I know it is beloved by all.  Also, to refer more items from Baruchel's body of work, she was hilarious in She's Out Of My League.  But it is possible no one outside of Pittsburgh saw that.

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  5. isaac_spaceman9:15 PM

    I originally was going to mention that Sharp was from the beloved Undeclared (though the second m escaped my attention), but the post was getting pretty dense. 

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