NBC, Sunday, 8-9 p.m.
Starring: Tom Cavanagh, Michael Ian Black, Lesley Boone, Julie Bowen, Gregory Harrison, Jana Marie Hupp, Josh Randall
Maybe it’s because as I get older and my tastes mature, my aesthetic appetite has simply outgrown television, but ever since George Clooney left ER for wider, more silver-hued pastures, it seems like (with the exception of Survivor) TV continually disappoints. This year’s industry-touted “best new series” Ed is no real exception. While certainly sweet and unquestionably cute, Ed is no Northern Exposure – the piece of perfection the show obviously aspires to.
Created by the producers ofThe Late Show with David Letterman, including David Letterman himself, Ed stars Tom Cavanaugh, who had the misfortune of portraying the dog-loving eccentric on NBC’s insufferable melodrama Providence last year. Prior to the start of the show, Ed loses his job (a superfluous comma cost his firm millions of dollars) and his wife (she slept with a mailman). In a state of despair, he visits his fictional hometown with the unfortunate appellation of Stuckeyville. After an enchanted evening spent kissing his former high school crush-turned-English teacher Carol Vessey (Julie Bowen, the blond vixen who played Carter’s insurance-selling girlfriend back in the Clooney days of ER), he buys a bowling alley (which will eventually double as his law office) and moves in with his best friend Mike (Josh Randall), his best friend’s wife Nancy (Jana Marie Hupp), and their newborn baby.
Of course, life in Stuckeyville isn’t exactly going according to plan – if it were, there would be no premise for the series. Carol, it seems, is already committed to a pretentious and loathsome co-worker who thinks of himself as one part Hemingway two parts Indiana Jones. So Ed, sweet Ed, has been forced to spend a good portion of the first three episodes struggling to impress Carol, who clearly likes him, but, for the sake of intrigue, will probably wait until the season finale to surrender to him.
This hackneyed “will they or won’t they” recipe is only part of Ed’s problem. You see, when Ed bought the bowling alley he also acquired a group of kooky misfits: Phil, Shirley and Kenny. Kenny, whom we discovered last Sunday is a not only a bowling alley employee but also a pediatric nurse (wacky), is basically an innocuous character. Phil and Shirley, however, are more annoying than Alf and Blossom combined.
But there is some good news. Watching reruns of Northern Exposure on A&E, I’ve noticed that the characters who I eventually grew to think of as friends (Marilyn, Shelly, Holling, Chris, Maggie and Joel) were, in the show’s early days, gross caricatures of wacky television characters. So, maybe after a couple of seasons, stereotypes will mellow, plots will blossom and Ed, like its predecessor, will provide millions of Americans hours of entertainment. Or maybe it will wind up in the entertainment industry’s version of the great place in the sky, late night syndication on low-budget cable stations.
– JoAnne Steglitz