Casual
Casual ... And Fred Barnes as the Beaver Ido a lot of television, but there's a world of difference between a public-affairs program and a network sitcom. The tipoff for me came shortly after I...
...The next day, he tried to kill that line, then relented...
...He persuaded the honchos to let him say: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses . . . Not...
...The idea wasn't really to get me...
...I have no shame," he joked...
...I don't blame the writers...
...Kimbrough, who plays Dial, is a wonderful actor...
...Now, I know what purists in the media will say: We're once more blurring that important line between news/commentary and entertainment...
...That means whatever they do or say on TV doesn't matter...
...In fact, they are very witty and deserve credit for keeping Murphy Brown a hit for eight seasons...
...I shudder at the thought...
...I was asked (and they pay...
...I was wearing it...
...But it's not as if Murphy and Jim are preparing to oust Paula Zahn and Harry Smith from CBS This Morning...
...He didn't want to begin the segment on immigration this way: "Immigration...
...studio in Burbank to rehearse for an appearance on Murphy Brown...
...As print reporters who appear on TV say, it's only television...
...Won't they...
...I plead guilty...
...So I went, willingly, along with John McLaughlin and Eleanor Clift...
...Naturally I was sympathetic to Murphy's foil, whom McLaughlin refers to as Jim (Don't Touch That) Dial...
...He played Jerry the dentist on The Bob Newhart Show...
...What's important is what they write...
...No, not on the chat show itself-Brown and Dial are fictitious characters, after all- but on a mock version that will take up about 5 minutes of a Murphy Brown episode in November...
...People know Murphy and Jim aren't real...
...He also altered the Middle East segment to begin with "Yassir, that's my baby...
...Or maybe it's just the sitcom sensibility has successfully invaded chat shows...
...It's hardly ennobling...
...The line between news and fun barely exists anymore...
...A fellow asked me if I'd brought my wardrobe...
...On Murphy Brown, I was a conservative slug...
...Maybe sitcoms aren't so different after all...
...Maybe they know a good line when they hear one...
...Douglas Wyman got the writing credit for the script...
...McLaughlin could claim a writing credit, too...
...Peter Bonerz, the director, said having us there "legitimizes" Murphy (Candice Bergen) and Jim (Charles Kimbrough) as being "like Eleanor and Fred...
...To my surprise, every time he called me this on the Murphy Brown set, the crowd of writers, directors, and assistants laughed uproariously...
...Sounds weird...
...So what do I say in response to one of his outbursts...
...I approved the election of an aging Bob Dole...
...But, hey, it's only television...
...Very simple...
...He's a great director...
...I didn't have anything to lose by doing Murphy Brown, other than my reputation, credibility, and self-esteem...
...The writers for the show didn't let me down...
...Whoever had the brainstorm of putting Murphy and Jim on The McLaughlin Group came up with a show Candice Bergen predicts will be a Murphy "classic...
...Spare me the indignation...
...Besides, the 20 million viewers of Murphy Brown will understand that John, Eleanor, and I are real people doing a gig on a sitcom...
...By the way, Bonerz is famous in his own right as an actor...
...Indeed I had...
...He makes Dial convincingly pompous and huffy and petty...
...The tipoff for me came shortly after I showed up on October 17 at the Warner Bros...
...On his chat show, McLaughlin refers to me as Freddy (The Beadle) Barnes...
...Everyone watching is bound to think he's a dork...
...Why should he...
...Why would a journalist be doing a sitcom...
...I was coldhearted, mean-spirited, and hysterical-you know, just like all conservatives...
...He fumes and grimaces...
...This was all in the script...
...I extolled hypocrisy as the glue that holds civilized society together...
...I base this on the fact he kept telling me how well I was doing...
...Come to think of it, Bergen suggested that McLaughlin run a snippet of the sitcom McLaughlin Group, the one with Murphy and Jim, on the real McLaughlin Group, and see how they compare...
...But my transgression doesn't amount to much...
...I advocated rolling up our borders to keep out welfare-hungry immigrants...
...In the first rehearsal, he proposed to rewrite his lines-not to change the gist, but to make them more McLaughlinesque...
...Literally, all we're trying to do is make people laugh," Bonerz said...
...On political chat shows, conservatives deliver more than their share of compelling lines and zingers...
...On sitcoms, they're stuffy and humorless...
...Or to be truly accurate, it was to have Murphy Brown and her prissy colleague Jim Dial from FYI appear as panelists on The McLaughlin Group...
...Jim makes a very good point...
...It was to get The McLaughlin Group, of which I'm part...
...I believe him...
Vol. 1 • October 1995 • No. 7
