Word: cbs
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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When you're a big star, you don't pass gas for just anybody. But then the star of CBS's most hyped new sitcom is hardly just anybody. So when the writers of Bette conceived a new gag--a celebrity breaks wind in an elevator and blames it on the leading lady--they sent Bette Midler to work the phones herself...
...never let it be said Bette Midler doesn't have cojones. The woman who used to be lowered onto her stage show half-dressed on a clamshell has a famously unembarrassed willingness to say or do anything. It's around that bawdy, brassy presence that CBS built Bette, an old-fashioned star showcase that calls on her to sing, pratfall and generally serve up more ham than at an Easter dinner...
...counting on her to deliver more than celebrity methane. This season the networks have recruited scads of established celebs to draw viewers (see box), always a risk. (Nathan Lane's crash-and-burn in 1998's Encore! Encore! hovers like Marley's ghost over star vehicles.) On Bette, CBS has placed a huge, um, wager, running it opposite Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (which provides a cute running gag in one early episode). "It's probably the most anticipated show of the new season," says CBS television president Leslie Moonves, "and that's a huge burden...
...CBS plugged Bette heavily during Survivor and hopes it will draw some of that summer hit's young viewers. That seems iffy, not because its star was born in the middle of the past century but because its premise was. From her start belting '40s show tunes in the '70s, Midler has been a revivalist at heart, and her hooray-for-Hollywood vehicle is Jack Benny redux, a wannabe I Love Lucy with Midler as both Lucy and Ricky but without the innovation of its forebears. That said, it has the ingredients of a much better show. The writing...
With NBC's ratings less than stellar and Dennis Miller already ensconced in the booth at Monday Night Football, it cannot be too long until a network in the U.S. lets loose one of its wags on the Games. The smug mug of Craig Kilborn from CBS's Late Late Show seems to just beg to be dispatched to make light of the kayaking and women's discus in Athens. On the other hand, The Daily Show's Jon Stewart seems more of an archery...