`Suddenly Susan’s” Kathy Griffin once said if she ever got her own comedy, she would never do one of those “special episodes.” You know, the ones in which a deep, meaningful, heavy-handed message bogs down the laughs.
“I love that `Seinfeld’ never had a `Very Special Seinfeld,’ ” said the Chicago native and standup comic, and she makes a good point. A lot of times these episodes are treated with such seriousness and reverence that the message comes off forced. You want to smack your head and say, “Hey, where are the jokes?”
ABC’s “Grace Under Fire” has never had the problem of being ham-fisted whenever serious subjects are injected, mostly because the series’ premise itself is fairly downbeat.
Grace Kelly (the character, not the late movie star/princess) is a single mother and recovering alcoholic raising three children, making a life after spending years in a physically and emotionally abusive marriage. Let the laughs begin.
The life of the actress playing Grace somewhat mirrors the hard life of the character. Standup comedian Brett Butler is a recovering alcoholic and drug user who survived an abusive husband to forge a successful comedy career.
(Butler entered a rehabilitation clinic in August because of an addiction to painkillers, which she took for a bad back–temporarily shutting down production on the show, which debuted in 1993 but served this year as a midseason replacement.)
Unlike other so-called “dramadies,” such as “Doogie Howser, M.D.” and “Frank’s Place,” “Grace” always went directly for the laughs, and let the drama, if there was any, smoothly flow through. This Tuesday’s episode is no exception.
Airing at 7 p.m. on WLS-Ch. 7, the episode deals with teenage promiscuity, specifically, Grace’s moody 16-year-old son, Quentin (Sam Horrigan). Quentin leads his mother to believe he and a new girlfriend haven’t done anything more serious than hold hands, something that doesn’t jibe with what Grace learned on a visit to the pharmacy owned by her friend Russell (the glorious “SCTV” veteran Dave Thomas). It upsets Grace for more than the obvious reasons: She gave birth to another son out of wedlock at the age of 16 and gave him up for adoption.
“You know that birth control display Russell’s got right next to the counter . . . my oldest son’s been shopping there,” Grace tells Dot, the owner of a hair salon played by new cast member Lauren Tom.
Later, Grace confronts Quentin, who responds angrily: “Some things are private; I never ask you about your sex life.”
“What do you want to know?” Grace responds.
“Nothing! I thought that would stop you!”
The issue of Quentin’s emerging sexuality is handled almost matter-of-factly, as if it’s just another rocky component in the life of Grace Kelly. In fact, it’s a little ambivalent, partly because Quentin never comes out and says whether he’s actually having sex.
Still, the humor and drama come naturally. Which, when you think about it, is sometimes the way life works.
– Recount! FX’s Thanksgiving Day marathon of “The X-Files,” with episodes voted on by viewers, was a feast to fans of the science fiction series. But it almost seemed as if the tallying was done by some Chicago ward committee person.
How could these alleged voters have selected only the pilot episode to represent the first season? Where were the wonderful shows from that season that featured murderous mutant contortionist Eugene Tooms? Or “Beyond the Sea,” a touching episode surrounding the death of Dana Scully’s (Gillian Anderson) father?
And how could voters have skipped the two-part episode from the second season introducing viewers to Fox Mulder’s (David Duchovny) long-lost sister and the alien bounty hunter? Or that notorious genetic freak, the man-size worm known as the Flukeman?
On the other hand, it was heartening to see that voters liked “Humbug,” which found the agents investigating murder in a traveling freak show. And the No. 1-requested episode was the shocking and fantastic “Home,” starring a family for whom inbreeding was a way of life.
Incidentally, an informal survey of readers found the Emmy-winning “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose” the top vote-getter (Internet correspondent Todd Stouffer called the writing “clever and funny”), followed, interesting enough, by this season’s two-part premiere, which many have called too convoluted.
Reader Phillip Rattner disagreed: “What a wonderful start for the best show on TV.”
– Where’s the remote: Airing an hour earlier Tuesday is one of the pleasant surprises of this season, “Just Shoot Me,” a wickedly funny NBC comedy set at a women’s magazine starring Laura San Giacomo, George Segal and our favorite sarcasm ace, David Spade. “Shoot,” which started out as a limited-run series earlier this year, is subbing this Tuesday for another beautifully sadistic show, “NewsRadio,” at 7:30 p.m. on WMAQ-Ch. 5.
