Tuesday, April 15, 2003

WHATEVER WE'RE DOING, WE'RE NOT WATCHING ELLIE: Why not? Oh, this is like having Jose Lima pitching against your favorite team at Coors Field.

Anita Gates of the New York Times bats leadoff against Julia Louis-Dreyfus' revamped "comedy":
The show's creator is Ms. Louis-Dreyfus's husband, Brad Hall, but he hasn't done her any favors. Unless you believe Guy Ritchie advanced the career of his wife, Madonna, in remaking Lina Wertmuller's "Swept Away" (a movie he seemed to think was about pouring pasta over people's heads).

Batting second, Natalie McFarland of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
What began as a demonstration of good actors adventurously struggling with a badly written script has been revamped into a demonstration of good actors desperately struggling with a badly written script, with a chortling studio audience thrown in for good measure.

In other words, when "Watching Ellie" returns at 9:30 p.m. this evening on KING/5, it will be just another 30 minutes of midseason stupidity that got a second chance either because of its star, or because NBC believes you and I are dumb enough to forget how bad it was last spring.

Phil Rosenthal of the Chicago Sun-Times grabs an RBI here:
Harry Anderson used to joke before juggling a knife, a meat cleaver and an ax that his ax once belonged to that famous cherry-tree feller, George Washington.

Anderson noted that the handle had been replaced, as had the blade. But, ever the hustler, he insisted the ax still occupied the same space as the original.

That convoluted reasoning--coupled with the stubborn unwillingness of NBC Entertainment boss Jeff Zucker to admit he made a mistake--is about all that explains the return of Julia Louis-Dreyfus' "Watching Ellie," a hopelessly unfunny *1/2 vanity project she and her hopelessly unfunny husband, Brad Hall, will resume inflicting upon the American viewing public at 8:30 tonight on WMAQ-Channel 5.

Zucker swore this show wasn't an abject failure last season, and to prove his point, he renewed it. But first he made certain that it would be a very different series.

And it is. It's worse.

Robert Blanco of USA Today hits cleanup:
[H]ere it is again, time-clock free and even less amusing than it was the first time around.

What's worse, the new version has achieved the one thing the old version avoided. Ellie is now a Seinfeld-curse embarrassment for Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who survived the first, failed attempt with her reputation and charisma intact.

No more, I'm afraid. Louis-Dreyfus has either decided, or been convinced, that the way to save Ellie is to barrel her way through every scene, mugging and pushing so forcefully that she makes Michael Richards look subtle. She's not just in constant motion; she seems to be in a state of constant rage.

Ellie was built for Louis-Dreyfus by her husband, Brad Hall, who is best known for creating the sitcom that epitomizes NBC's multiple post-Friends failures, The Single Guy. . . .

The sad fact is, despite that star, Ellie shouldn't have made it to the air once, let alone twice. Can't anyone at NBC tell a good show from a bad one anymore? What are those people watching?

Finally, Eric Deggans of the St. Petersburg Times clears the bases with this dinger:
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. . . .

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

It just isn't funny. Ever.

The Seinfeld Curse continues . . . .

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