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CBS (Wednesdays, 8 p.m. ET)
C+
Oh, the mood swings. In a dingy New York City apartment, a working-class couple battle, bicker and make up with equal ardor. He's a bumptious beanbag who wears a blue uniform to his union job. Just in case you're missing the TV legacy here, the producers have even named the wife Alice. Got it now?
Still, The Honeymooners it ain't. Alice is played by Cathy Moriarty (Raging Bull). And her Ralph Kramden (here a postal worker named Burt Clayton) is Andrew Clay, the infamously foulmouthed comic who has dropped his middle moniker, Dice, and cleaned up his act for TV.
Well, sorta. In the opener, Clay happily slurps up water from a bidet, confusing it for a fountain. Aside from its abrasive edge and a subtext of class bias, this sitcom has far more sexual candor than it really needs.
On the plus side, the punch lines are occasionally inventive, and the cast includes a prime-time rarity: an engaging adolescent (Raegan Kotz as the sassy daughter). And Clay and Moriarty sound great as they energetically deliver their lines. In fact, Bless This House is the first TV show I've ever seen that would work better on radio.
CBS (Wednesdays, 9 p.m. ET)
B
At the center of this Manhattan-based serial from Melrose Place creator Darren Star is a flawed if fabulously wealthy family: the Fairchilds. The clan's Prince Charming (dashingly played by John Barrowman) is a virtuous, hardworking assistant DA who keeps getting distracted by women who swoon in his path. His sister (Mädchen Amick) is a very different kettle of piranha. Amick is sharpening her claws for the new editor (Mariel Hemingway) at Communique, the upscale magazine where Amick pulls down $200,000 a year as the nightlife columnist. Just for spite, she sets out to seduce Hemingway's hubby (Tom Verica), a failed novelist. While Amick feasts on her bad-girl role, Hemingway makes for a bland side dish: as a hard-charging executive, she's unbelievably vacuous.
Other roles are ably filled by Michael Michele, Justin Lazard, Kylie Travis (a former Models Inc. vixen who sashays into the third episode), Ron Leibman and Lauren Hutton (who also has her own syndicated talk show starting this fall).
The tone of Central Park West is so facile, glossy and brittle that its visual style often resembles some frosty Eurotrash perfume commercial. But the first episodes hit the ground sprinting—and that alone makes CPW an inviting address to visit.
WB (Sundays, 9:30 p.m. ET)
D+
The opening scene of this crude sitcom neatly encapsulates its major themes. Sitting at a restaurant table, plump Jackie Guerra surreptitiously bites into a roll and then throws the remainder under the table to hide the evidence. Next her blind date turns up and starts loudly barking phrases like "Big slug" and "Hurt me right now." (Hey, a Tourette's syndrome gag. How novel.) There you have First Time Out in a nutshell: fat jokes and dating nightmares.
Guerra, who resembles a Latina Rosie O'Donnell, has two roommates: a ditsy psychobabbler (Mia Cottet) and a junk-culture weirdo (Leah Remini). We are introduced to Remini when she walks into the living room, whining, "This sucks. I forgot to tape Jerry Springer." Actually she's the funniest character on this show. But that's hardly an accomplishment when the major competition is a perpetually horny slob in a goatee (Craig Anton). A woman he has just hit on replies, "You should come with a barf bag." Actually, that sentiment applies to the whole program.
ABC (Sun., Sept. 17, 9 p.m. ET)
B
In this thriller, Tiffani-Amber Thiessen (the hellcat Valerie on Beverly Hills, 90210) plays a withdrawn artistic type who is swept off her feet by the perfect guy (Eric Close). A Navy recruit, he helps her get over the aftereffects of a rape. ("Marry me," he vows, "and I swear no one will ever hurt you like that again. Not ever.")
They wed, and Close, of course, turns out to be Not What He Seems. One hint: the police arrest him as a Peeping Tom at the same time Thiessen finds out she's pregnant. Though the plot is transparent, it still unspools suspensefully.
Fox (Mondays, 9 p.m. ET)
B-
What we have here is a gender-confused, love-triangle sitcom. Just what you've been waiting for. Maria Patillo and Jon Cryer have joint custody of Tate Donovan. That is, Patillo is Donovan's fiancée, and Cryer is his oldest friend and business partner. Neither is too thrilled about having to share their fair-haired boy with the other. The result is a testy tug-of-war. When Patillo and Donovan explain the derivations of their cutesy pet names for each other, a querulous Cryer interrupts, "I've heard this story 300 times." Meanwhile, it's hard for the almost-newlyweds to establish intimacy when Cryer keeps bouncing into their apartment as if he were Howard, the next-door neighbor on The Bob Newhart Show.
The show is wittily written and well-directed but still falls short of being appealing because none of the relationships seem authentic, and both male leads lack the presence to carry a show. But Patillo is charming, and Catherine Lloyd Burns is amusing as the obligatory eccentric: the guys' calamity-prone secretary.
Fox (Tues., Sept. 19, 8 p.m. ET)
C+
A funky Dreamgirls, this film follows a female singing group as they hustle onto the Seattle club scene, hoping for a record contract. En route they encounter the usual hurdles—squabbles, jealousies, personal sacrifices and exploitation. And that's before they finish getting their hair coif fed backstage, girlfriend! Still, the movie has its sharp moments. "Monte says you sang with Paula Abdul," the new recruit, Nicole Ari Parker, says to her soul sister. "What was she like?" "Short," snorts Fatima Lowe. Tammy Townsend and Lisa Carson are the other singers. Khalil Kain is impressive as the group's impresario, a master of crisis management. (It should be noted that the group's music isn't original: the breakout hit, "Ain't Nobody," that Kain "writes" for them is, in fact, an old Chaka Khan tune.) The choreography and performance scenes are lively, but the drama hits too many flat notes.
>TUBE: The new season kicks off with a glitzy soap (Central Park West) and sitcoms naughty (Bless This House) and nice (Partners)
SCREEN: Spike Lee's Clockers spends time with a young Brooklyn crack dealer; The Usual Suspects is an unusually twisty crime thriller 27
SONG: Lenny Kravitz goes to the Circus; the band Dishwalla makes a splash; Pebbles' album kerplunks 31
PAGES: The Lost World, Michael Crichton's sequel to Jurassic Park, could be a dino-mite movie 37
BYTES: Three guides shed light on Windows 95 57
>SCIONS FICTION THE MOST WATCHED CAMEO OF THE year, of course, will be John F. Kennedy Jr.'s appearance on CBS's Murphy Brown (Mon., Sept. 18, 9 p.m. ET). But he isn't the week's only small-screen scion. On the season opener of TV's most surreal sitcom, Nickelodeon's The Adventures of Pete & Pete (Sun., Sept. 17, 6:30 p.m. ET), Patricia Hearst plays a relentlessly cheerful character she describes as "Donna Reed gone berserk." With roles thus far limited to two warped John Waters films (Cry-Baby and Serial Mom), Hearst is grateful to "finally be doing something safe for my 11-year-old to watch." The taping was taxing. "It was the hottest day of the summer," she recalls, "and I couldn't take my wig off. After a while, it felt like fresh roadkill on my head."
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
