Word: sitcoms
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...BOTTOM LINE: Jerry exposes life's little absurdities -- and just a little of himself -- in a smart and stylish sitcom...
Stand-up comics can get chewed up fast in TV. First they are squeezed dry of material by Letterman, Leno and the other talk-show bloodsuckers. Then, if they grow popular enough, they are plucked from their solo job and awarded a sitcom. There, major pitfalls await them. Some are exposed as Johnny-one-notes (Kevin Meaney in Uncle Buck); others are simply unable to make the transition from joke telling to character building (Richard Lewis in Anything but Love). Only a few -- Roseanne Arnold, Tim Allen -- succeed without selling...
...Dana Carvey, who won a sitcom deal partly on the strength of his drop-dead Perot impression...
...producer of St. Elsewhere, is another TV creator with a sudden fondness for the confessional first person. Each episode of his new NBC comedy, Home Fires, opens with the main characters talking to a family therapist. Again the technique seems merely a way of tricking up an otherwise routine sitcom...
...sadder disappointment. The ABC comedy comes from David Lynch and Mark Frost, who shook up network TV with their brilliantly perverse soap opera Twin Peaks. This time the pair have come up with a sitcom about a ragtag TV network in the 1950s. Must have sounded great in the story conferences...