On Television
KITMAN, MARVTN
OnTelevision ATHOUSAND FROWNS BY MARVIN KITMAN T JL. elevision comedy used to be funny. But what passes for hilarity nowadays is The Ropers (ABC, Tuesdays, 10 p.m.), a series that had a rotten...
...Just Friends, with Stockard Chan-ning (CBS, Sundays, 9:30 p.m...
...The jokes in this sophisticated liberated woman's comedy sound as if they were written by high school kids on drugs...
...The house blonde—Suzanne Somers—is like a Playboy centerfold...
...It's the story of a mother who has a baby without getting married, a modern version of The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne's rib-tickler...
...I don't even know them...
...troubles...
...But I do know that the full comic possibilities of Queens were not tapped...
...in 1968...
...Now get this: The street next to us is 68th Road and that is followed by 68th Drive...
...Yet that is exactly whai makes watching Fell and Lindley so difficult...
...Mothers talking about competing diaper products —the so-called "no shit school" of commercial making—are funnier than Miss Winslow & Son...
...Who knows, Freddy may this very moment be planning to sit down five top comics and have them do jokes about, as they say on TV, "not being able to do IT...
...after all, she's just as funny in her way as Shecky Green...
...We are slowly dying of no-laughing, a nutritional disease picked up from TV...
...This gimmick is a throwback to the days of radio when all a comedian had to do to get a laugh was say the word "Brooklyn...
...What hilarious confusion this could cause on a TV series...
...Or he may get Dr...
...Norman Fell's Stanley is all mugging...
...any number]" is intrinsically funnier...
...I'm from Kew Gardens Hills," Jay explained to me recently, "and my mother's house is on a street called 68th Ave...
...perhaps corporate research showed that the number 2800 belonged to a Bayside bordello...
...Ed—a CBS classic (1961-66)—in hopes of preparing a eulogy for the recently deceased star...
...You know what I'm talking about, comedy —something that tickles your fancy because you just hadn't thought about it before you sat down to listen to the laugh track laugh itself sick...
...The very latest wrinkle in this game is the introduction of specific street names—as in 13 Queens Blvd., another smash hit on ABC this season (Tuesdays, 10:30 p.m...
...Among the many others, one might isolate "funny places...
...A personal aside to Fell, perhaps something his best friends aren't telling him: Norman, you have some white stuff on your lips...
...On the other hand, you've probably guessed it anyway—yes, it's Stanley Roper's impotence...
...I know I shouldn't make fun of the handicapped, but poor Stanley is a real dummy...
...The people who put together The Ropers have gone a step further by completely taking the jokes out of the raunchy atmosphere, leaving us only with, alas, Roper's physical (psychological...
...Thus every week the premise is: Can a man who couldn't have an erection in an apartment house have one in a private house...
...Take my word for it, a horse that talks to a man named Wilbur is funnier than the chubby, loveable koala bear Channing plays...
...Have you seen Miss Winslow& Son...
...What it might be saying to a Freddy Silverman is that impotence is "in" today, not discos or radio stations...
...Kissena Blvd...
...Hence, thetoneof Tiiree's Company is cutesy-poo and leering, and everybody is pretty...
...There was much internal debate at the network about that breakthrough title...
...I'm sure it could even be better than The Ropers...
...For instance, the British (Thames Television) Man About The House— from which Three's Company and The Ropers spun off—is well written, loaded with raunchy jokes and played in the same spirit...
...People going to the wrong homes, mistaken assignations, improperly delivered mail, etc., etc...
...You get nothing for nothing in this world...
...could also inspire the laugh track to double over with laughter...
...For instance, "Passaic N.J...
...Mark my words: the never-ending onslaught of what Jonathan Winters calls garBAGE will soon turn our funnybone into just another useless appendage, like the appendix...
...It's too depressing to think about...
...As for Audrey Lindley (Helen Roper), she repeats from Three's Company her impersonation of Carol Channing in heat...
...Smart, trendy TV people call this the StockyardChanning Show, because it smells so bad...
...His otherwise constant pained expression must come from reading the scripts...
...Flatbush" was the punchline on CBS's Flatbush...
...The bit was hilarious when Eddie Cantor did it on radio, too...
...Can you still remember what great visual comedy is about?—the likes of Groucho Marx, W. C. Fields, Laurel and Hardy, and Fred Allen...
...is not funnier...
...a series that had a rotten debut on March 13 and has gotten steadily worse...
...Talk about your scathing satire...
...Unfortunately, this address-humor has its limitations...
...Whatever the reasons for its success, the program has made one thing clear: For insight and wonderful comedy based on human foibles you have to go back to All in the Family...
...she has no flaws, not even between the staples...
...Will anybody ever create a decent sitcom again...
...was the joke on ABC's Makin' It...
...Utopia Pkwy...
...In all fairness, I should note that these two are not the usual comedians appearing on sitcoms today...
...He still believes that Jack is—uhh (roll eyes here)—"a girl...
...But in America, all the raunch gets taken out...
...You see, the Ropers, whom you remember as Chrissy, Joyce and Jack's landlords, have sold the apartment house where they all lived...
...It is incredibly embarrassing to watch such humor and to listen to gags about Stanley's inability to have normal sexual relations with Helen...
...Joyce Brothers to do a non-fiction Lifeline-type show at a Masters and Johnson sex clinic...
...it would look good, especially with a pastrami-colored logo...
...The Ropers is the kind of show that gives double entendre a bad name...
...It isn't funny either...
...This is something big," my lab notes read...
...the latest disaster from the once respected House of Comedy...
...Sleaze—as people in the know refer to the Number One network for its many contributions to culture—is still on the air, let alone in the Top 10...
...M__ an idea for a new series that is bound to be terrifically funny by today's standards...
...It's hard to believe that this offering from A.B...
...Nevertheless, I can't help wondering what the success of this series reveals about American society...
...They are major actors—they should have more pride...
...The genre can be very amusing, with the right script...
...Lately I've been studying reruns of Mr...
...The program is dull, trite, predictable, and banal...
...I am reminded of critic Harriet Van Home's remark after viewing the first episode of Bride and Groom: "Why should 1 go to those people's wedding...
...Is it a new roll-on deodorant you're trying out for a sponsor...
...The latest batch of sitcoms lead me to conclude that there is a national laughter crisis in the country...
...The rolling eyes he should never have introduced in Three'sCompany are right out of the silent films...
...The most serious failing of The Ropers, however, is that it lacks what we traditionally think of as comedy: good jokes, novel sight gags, funny characterizations, surprises, or odd ways of looking at things...
...Oh, the show is bearable, I guess, if you watch it with the sound off—an experiment I tried one week as homework for this essay...
...The dawning of a new, silent-TV era...
...Their memory grows dimmer everytime we watch A. B. Sleaze...
...The show also has strong roots in Rhoda (what might have happened if Rhoda Mor-genstern had to deal with a baby, instead of marrying Joe...
...Creatively, 13 Queens Blvd...
...went downhill faster than a runaway shopping cart high atop Cambria Heights in Queens...
...Why ABC changed its mind, I don't know...
...Union Tpke...
...Good God, will it never end...
...Forget about what is happening to your children's idea of real comedy...
...He suggests there are a lot of impotent people out there...
...Phylis Schlafly and her crusade against the ERA is funnier than this Rhoda Winslow...
...When the next-door kid enters the room and starts talking, Stanley can't see him...
...is wry...
...The premiere, in fact, went through the ratings roof, achieving the highest score for a sitcom since Mayberry R.F.D...
...Unfortunately, once you hear what the characters are saying, it is the absolute pits...
...The Ropers makes Three's Company—the laugh-riot it was spun off from—seem like a drawing-room farce by Feydeau...
...Actually, the program does have one joke, but I don't know whether I should give it away...
...In Man About the House, the women were extremely resistable...
...Compare the two shows and you get an accurate index of the decline of television comedy in the 1970s...
...I mention Grun-feld's idea in public to give him proper credit, for I'm sure NBC or CBS has "68th Avenue," "68th Drive" and "68th Road" in the works...
...I would like to keep this review as mindless as the show I am discussing, and that precludes getting into anything substantive...
...Do you see what I'm driving at...
...Originally the show was called "2800 Queens Blvd...
...Comedy without jokes, though, is not the only trend in TV sitcom today...
...Anne Roiphe—tell me when to stop—and her religious views in the New York Times are funnier...
...Knowing what the one-line joke is going to be, they may be tuning in to get some insight on a problem that can't be discussed in private with their loved ones, but is OK to laugh about on national TV before an audience of millions...
...They are not spray-painted androids from the High Impact Polystyrene School of Acting, clones who play vapid ethnics and sappy characters in fatuous stories...
...CBS, Wednesdays, 8:30 p.m...
...Bedrooms don't interest Stanley," Helen says as she rolls her eyes in the upstairs direction of the new house they buy in the premiere...
...That's because it never occurs to him to look down...
...The dismal comic performances turned in by the two stars contribute to the problem...
...An ABC executive I spoke to had a slightly different explanation of why The Ropers is a hit...
...We always used to receive mail (and visitors) that was supposed to go to either of the other 68th streets...
...Rona Barrett on love and sensuality is funnier...
...Oddly, the producers and creators of The Ropers—Don Nicholl, Michael Ross and Bernie West—are alumni of the All in the Family shop...
Vol. 62 • April 1979 • No. 9
