Word: milieu
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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That's Life (CBS, 8 p.m. - all times Eastern) If the Italian American milieu in this comedy-drama were any more overfamiliar and phony, it'd be served at The Olive Garden with unlimited breadsticks and salad. In case you should ever forget the ethnicity of the characters, the soundtrack is packed with Frank Sinatra tunes, "That's Amore" and "Mambo Italiano," and there's actually a character with the surname Buttafucco (sic). That said, this series, about Lydia DeLucca (Heather Paige Kent), a 32-year-old New Jersey woman who ditches her troglodyte fianc? to go back to college...
Radio humorist Fred Allen famously said that imitation is the sincerest form of television. But usually it's different networks doing the imitating. How did NBC get two shows in the same unusual milieu in the same season? Apparently by coincidence. Fey, who had a four-year development deal with NBC, first pitched the network a sitcom about cable news. Kevin Reilly, president of NBC Entertainment, felt Fey was using the news setting as a fig leaf for her own experience and encouraged her to write what she knew. Sorkin, meanwhile, was shopping his return to TV with a show...
...something about sitting outside on a balmy California evening, munching on asparagus with wasabi mayonnaise and sniffing at a champagne flute to pick the precise flavors (the nose) out of the sparkly background that brings me home and sets me afire with passionate love for the California milieu...
...approached the end of the fellowship, Hall realized that the dazzlingly intellectual milieu of the Ivy League was no longer right...
...Wordplay should prove "a feline bite (6)" - catnip - to the millions of crossword addicts, and to lots of others who enjoy a tough game played with smarts and heart. For me, the movie and its milieu induced a little ache of nostalgia. For a decade or so I solved the Times crossword every day. Then, in 1981, I discovered Sondheim's book of cryptics, and the devious, luxuriant word play had me hooked. Now I search them out in Harper's, The Nation, The Atlantic (where they have been demoted to appearing only online - shame!), Games and the book collections...