I’m envisioning a new slogan for the prime-time TV season: Bring out your dead.
Here’s a recent TV-land body count: In February, Lucy Knight (Kellie Martin) died of stab wound complications on “ER” and Maude Flanders succumbed to a projectile T-shirt on “The Simpsons.”
In March, Billy Alan Thomas (Gil Bellows) went to heaven on “Ally McBeal” while Richie Aprile (David Proval) presumably got an express ticket to the other place on “The Sopranos.” In just the first few nights of CBS’ “Falcone,” so many mob guys got whacked that Brooklyn may lose a congressman after the current census.
Without getting too macabre, I’m enjoying most of these dearly departures. Yes, death, as a core human experience, can make for wonderful TV drama or comedy. Remember Bobby Simone’s passing on “NYPD Blue” or Chuckles the Clown’s untimely crushing on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” Mostly, however, these passings are entertaining because this is the unreal world of TV, where death can resolve a contract impasse or boost a slumping series.
Sometimes, a character must die so the show may thrive. Take “ER’s” Lucy Knight. That annoying character, poorly developed by show writers as a weak clone of the earnest Dr. Carter, had to go — stat. Lucy was a drag on the show and her stabbing allowed Martin to leave the show and gave “ER’s” producers a grabby theme, and the show’s fifth-highest ratings, during the February sweeps.
Actually, “ER,” which needs a creative fix, might want to consider a few more surgical strikes on poorly developed characters. Feel a mysterious hospital infection coming on, Dr. Dave? One can only hope.
The best byproduct of killing Lucy Knight is that she can’t come back. The same can’t be said of “Ally’s” cartoonish Billy, who spent one whole commercial break in the great beyond before reappearing as a ghost. If the world of “Ally McBeal” had a benevolent God, Billy would be banned in Boston.
Billy was ripe for rigor mortis — Bellows is leaving the show — but he suffered an ultimate indignity: dying outside of sweeps. His death was strangely plain too. He simply sat down in a courtroom and passed away. A quiet, simple death from writer/creator David E. Kelley? This is the guy who once shocked us — when we were still shockable — by dropping a lawyer down an elevator shaft on “L.A. Law.” Why couldn’t Billy have died in a unisex bathroom accident? Or at the cute, little hands of the dancing baby?
Kelley’s characters responded to the death in a sincere and caring way, which would have been sweet if any of them had ever shown the ability to think about someone other than themselves. “A very special episode” works OK when Grandpa dies in his sleep on “Full House,” but when “Ally” characters feel empathy, a lawsuit for ego whiplash must be just around the corner.
At least they got to dress up for the funeral, which looked like an Easter parade at an avant-garde film festival: beautiful dresses, big bonnets, all in black. Kelley’s one funny move was to give the ghostly Billy back his true hair color and style, not the blond-dyed Caesar cut that symbolized his transformation into a live-action cartoon.
Speaking of cartoons, Maude Flanders got the ink drained from her veins for a good, old-fashioned reason: an actress’ departure. After the actress behind Maude’s voice, Maggie Roswell, left the show, producers decided that her passing — caused by falling from a racetrack after being hit by a T-shirt shot from an air tube — would make a nice sweeps stunt.
Maude was expendable (why are most of the female “Simpsons” characters not half as funny as the men?) and some of the jokes were good, but there wasn’t much heart in the enterprise. In its early years, “The Simpsons” handled death better, treating saxophonist Bleeding Gums Murphy’s passing humorously and with feeling.
The saddest recent killing was that of Richie Aprile on “The Sopranos.” The vicious thug was prime-time’s candidate most deserving of a violent end, but he was also one of its best characters, a painful thorn in mob boss Tony Soprano’s (James Gandolfini) side. The nicest touch was that Tony’s sister, Janice (Aida Turturro), beat him to the hit. Don’t you love sibling rivalry? But Richie will be missed.
With its hit parade, “Falcone” brings new meaning to the term cameo appearance. How did they cast this show? Director to actor: “You have six lines of dialogue and then you get killed. Would you prefer to be shot, stabbed or ice-picked? We still have a wonderful garroting scene available.” Have they been stealing plot lines from UPN’s “WWF Smackdown”?
Network hits aren’t as violent as mob take-outs, but the end result can be the same: Shows just disappear, as NBC’s smart but low-rated “Freaks & Geeks” discovered. Its place was taken by another edition of “Dateline NBC.”
