NBC (Saturdays, 8:30 P.M. ET)
C
The season's first replacement series stars Brian Keith and Cloris Leachman as constantly bickering oldyweds who are watching over their grandson (Matthew Lawrence) because their sportswriter son (Christopher McDonald, Geena Davis's louse of a spouse in Thelma & Louise) is constantly on the road. This solid cast can't rise above the sitcom's thick artifice and rubber-crutch humor. Leachman suffers most, playing a woman with the most intrusive maternal instincts since Portnoy's Complaint. "There's not a blemish on his record," she squawks at Lawrence's school principal. "There's not a blemish on his whole body, and I've looked. OK, lately he's a little constipated."
The only remotely funny part of each episode comes when Keith gets together in a coffee shop to jaw with other retired salesmen. It turns out Walter and Stan and Albert is a better show than Walter and Emily.
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