Blue collar / white collar

Getting real in the sitcom universe

by Robert David Sullivan

Will and Grace

Bill Clinton is a sitcom-writer's dream. The guy screwed up and now is fighting to keep his marriage, his job, his house -- and his dignity. We've seen Ralph Kramden, Archie Bunker, and Roseanne's Dan Conner in such straits, and most of us have some sympathy for these characters even as we laugh at them.

These characters actually inhabit a particular type of sitcom, sometimes called "blue-collar" or "family" but perhaps best described as realist. It's about people trying to hold on to what they've got even while trying to get ahead.

In recent years, television producers have preferred the "ensemble" style of sitcom, often meaning a show in which an eclectic but generally upscale bunch of people hang out at a coffee shop or an office reception area. Much of the comedy comes from characters breezing in to share embarrassing tidbits about awkward situations that occurred off-camera: a horrible blind date, a run-in with a traffic cop, a malfunctioning sex toy. These sitcoms are easy to write and easy to cast (no chemistry is needed), and any member of the ensemble cast can be replaced without much disruption. The trouble is, most shows in this mold are excruciatingly unfunny, and debacles like last season's Union Square have convinced the networks that putting together another Seinfeld is a lot harder than it looks.

Now that Seinfeld is gone and Friends is foundering, realist sitcoms are getting more attention, and there are significantly more of them among this season's new shows. Part of the credit goes to the best example of this subgenre, Everybody Loves Raymond (CBS, Monday at 9 p.m.), which has slowly become a hit and is now starting its third season. Stand-up comic Ray Romano plays a nebbishy Long Island sportswriter (actually, his profession has become irrelevant, sort of like Ozzie Nelson's) with a stay-at-home wife, three prepubescent kids (who get very little screen time), and a very trying pair of parents who happen to live across the street with Ray's touchy younger brother.

As in the best realist sitcoms, Raymond is energized by a twin set of tensions. The characters love and value one another, so they desperately want to preserve their web of relationships. But because they see this web as permanent, each one is always trying to adjust it in his or her favor. In a classic episode from last season, wife Debra (Patricia Heaton, the best eye roller on television) puts in writing all her grievances against mother-in-law Marie (Doris Roberts) -- her unannounced visits, her constant criticism of Debra's housework -- and drops it in the mail, much to the horror of Raymond. There follows a summit meeting more delicate than any ever held at the United Nations. (Marie: "I don't feel like I'm welcome in your home." Debra: "Well, that's because you never give me a chance to welcome you.") By the last commercial break, all seems forgiven, but the capper comes at the closing credits, when Marie rescues the offending letter from the trash and, smoothing it out, warns her husband that it is never, ever to be thrown away.

Like All in the Family and Roseanne (and the most three-dimensional cartoon on television, King of the Hill), Raymond has an amazingly natural flow, even with its plot twists, that comes from people who have decided to stick it out together. The barbs are not as clever as those on NBC's upscale sitcoms, but they are far more effective because they're meant to wound rather than impress. For example: "These breadsticks look old," says Marie, prompting husband Frank (Peter Boyle) to cackle, "You are what you eat, Marie." She throws him a frosty glare, opens a pizza box, and responds, "Then have another piece of miserable bastard."

You know that a sitcom has arrived when the networks try to clone it, and The King of Queens (CBS, Monday at 8:30 p.m.) is an unapologetic copy of Raymond, right down to the acting style of the two leads (lovable schlub Kevin James and patient but sarcastic Leah Remini). Adding to the déjà vu is an overbearing father-in-law (Seinfeld's Jerry Stiller) and an insecure sibling -- in this case, the pushy in-laws are from the wife's side, and they live in the basement rather than across the street.

Still, being a competent ripoff of the best sitcom on TV gives Queens an edge over bad imitations of annoying sitcoms. And there are enough subtle differences to indicate that this show may develop its own identity. The Queens setting is a bit more working-class, and the heavy-set James is more of a physical comedian than is Romano, whose forte is nailing a line with just the right inflections. Of course, Stiller is a reliable source of laughs, as when he repeatedly tries to open a car door at the same time James is trying to unlock it from the other side. ("How about now?" Stiller keeps asking, obtuse as only a Costanza can be that he's the cause of the problem.) And the writers seem to have a handle on what makes Raymond funny; when James wonders aloud whether to talk to his wife about her weight, a co-worker responds, "Would you say your life is good right now? Good wife, good job, the whole thing? Don't pick at it."

The premise of The Hughleys (ABC, Tuesday at 8:30 p.m.) is that an upwardly mobile African-American family have rocked their boat in a way unimaginable to Raymond and company by moving into an all-white suburban neighborhood. D.L. Hughley (yes, same last name) plays the patriarch of the family, a vending-machine servicer who's constantly alert to signs that his business is in jeopardy or his skin color is attracting undue attention. His scenes with screaming kids in a mini-van suggest a pricklier, grammatically challenged Bill Cosby (he tells them, "Shut your foodholes") rather than a domesticated Chris Rock (who is co-producer of this series). The writing is underdone, and Hughley (yet another former stand-up comic) hasn't yet developed a rapport with the obligatory patient-but-tough wife (Elise Neal). But as with The King of Queens, there is an appealing vulnerability to the central character that has comic potential. In one episode, he tells an old friend that he feels isolated and unwelcome in the suburbs compared with the active social life he left behind. "That's bull," his friend responds. "You were the same way in the old neighborhood. I was your only friend there, too!"

Although the most successful realist sit-coms are grounded in interdependency, the networks frequently try to take a short cut by plopping a wisecracking single character into a blue-collar setting. (The Drew Carey Show almost falls into this category, but it relies too much on slapstick to be called realist.) All three of the new sitcoms centered on women in working-class settings use this premise. The cancelled Southie-based Costello (its last show was Tuesday on Fox) suffered poor ratings and generally savage reviews. Maybe the accents and the references to the T were just too alien for the rest of the country. I didn't think the crude language and class-resentment attitude were so different from Roseanne or Grace Under Fire, but the same lines may be easier to take with Brett Butler's sugary drawl than with Sue Costello's hahsh shouting.

Maggie Winters (CBS, Wednesday at 8:30 p.m.) takes a similar situation and puts it in the more palatable setting of Anywhere, Indiana. Faith Ford (of Murphy Brown) is a recent divorcee who slinks back from California to live with Mom. The premise is that she gets reacquainted with all her old high-school pals, some of whom resent her for leaving in the first place. It's not clear how long this string can play out; eventually everyone is going to get sick of talking about Maggie's return, and Maggie will have to become a believable portrait of an American small town, the kind of show the networks don't like and don't do well anymore. For now, the best thing on the show is Clea Lewis (dropping the annoying voice from her days on Ellen) as a rageful ex-classmate of Maggie's.

NBC is trying for an even cuter blue-collar look with Jesse (Thursday at 8:30 p.m.), starring Christina Applegate of Married . . . with Children. In contrast to that venomous portrayal of white-trash America, here we get contented proles who pronounce the "g" in gnome (no one has Archie Bunker's knack for entertaining malapropisms). The heroine is a single mother in Buffalo who works at her father's German-themed bar. The writers are way over their heads with the eight regular characters, including a brother who has taken a vow of silence for no good reason. The beefy, hockey-loving father (George Dzundza) enters one scene with, "Hey, did you know that William Shatner is Jewish? I never pictured those people in space." It's safe to assume that the writers did not research any bars in Buffalo for authentic dialogue.

In the first episode, Jesse sounds just like any of NBC's Manhattan heroines when she explains why she she's blowing off the hunky next-door neighbor after their first night together: "I didn't want this man to leave, ever . . . It was so unbelievably terrifying. I just don't want to go through this again." If this were Roseanne, we'd wonder whether there's something realistically wrong with this guy. (Does he drink? Does he get violent?) But Jesse is lighter (yet so much less funny) than Roseanne, so look for more LA-style angst on the shore of Lake Erie.

Most of the other new sit-coms are set in the tastefully decorated world of Frasier, one of the most delicately calibrated comedies on television. Frasier works because its central character has such a tortured relationship with himself that he doesn't need to be in a couple to create comic tension. But you won't find such a complex character in either of the new shows about single men trying to put their lives back together after career setbacks. Encore! Encore! (NBC, Tuesday at 8:30 p.m.) has Nathan Lane as a flamboyant opera star who's lost his singing voice and retired to his family's vineyard. This is like Sunset Boulevard with a Norma Desmond who has blithely accepted that her film career is over and is content to trade one-liners with her kooky household staff. Even more pointless is The Brian Benben Show (CBS, Monday at 9:30 p.m.), in which the divorced central character has been demoted from TV anchorman to a feature reporter covering stories like "a priest who can burp the Ten Commandments." In the first episode, he also does an unbelievably cheap-looking commercial for portable toilets. Is this supposed to be a satire of television in Azerbaijan?

Another pair of white-collar sitcoms rest on the assumption that friendships can be as dysfunctional as families. The Secret Lives of Men (ABC, Wednesday at 9:30 p.m.) is about a trio of divorced 40ish golfing buddies. There's a ring of authenticity to this all-GQ group, unlike the implausibly diverse knot of friends on a typical sitcom. What's needed here are the shared jokes and attitudes that bond a group of friends to the exclusion of everyone else in the world. But so far there are too many lines meant to prove that these guys are just like Al Bundy underneath their expensive suits (e.g., the best part of living alone is taking "a nice, peaceful dump"). If there's one show on television that shouldn't try to emulate The Honeymooners, this is it.

Will & Grace (NBC, Monday at 9:30 p.m.) is the most likely success of the season, as well as the most Frasier-like in its ability to transcend a contrived premise. A gay man and a straight woman, long-time friends who have both recently ended long-term relationships, try to live together without driving each other crazy. In the opener, Will (Eric McCormack) nags Grace (Debra Messing) into calling off her wedding and she accuses him of trying to fix things so that she'll be as lonely as he is -- which seems a pretty accurate reading of the situation. It's possible that Will and Grace will develop the kind of interdependence that will have them bickering as convincingly as Raymond and Debra (or Oscar and Felix). But the more interesting relationship is between pinched-butt control queen Will and best gay friend Jack (the hilarious Will Hayes), a noisy-but-never-nellie attitude queen. When Will gives him a lengthy scolding for inconsiderate behavior, an obviously hurt Jack huffs, "And so ends a scene from `Mr. Bitch Goes to Washington.' " The show may be set in the best neighborhoods of Manhattan, but you can almost believe that these people care about each other. Dan Tobin can be reached at dtobin[a]phx.com.