New TV (Otherwise Known as Fall's Consolation Prize)

Last week marked the beginning of the 2011-2012 TV season, and with it my deliverance from the surfeit of sitcom reruns and played-out movies that buzzed on my TV like so much white noise this summer.  As always, my menu of mainstays, including The Middle, Modern Family, Community, and The Office, was sprinkled with fresh new selections.  Just as when I'm presented with an updated restaurant menu, I couldn't help but wonder which newbies would become the new mac and cheese, i.e., flavorful, fulfilling, and always a treat, and which would suffer the fate of concoctions made unpalatable by too many or too few ingredients.  Here's my take on three of the series debuts I sampled (in reverse chronological order):

Show: Pan Am
Network: ABC
Time: Sunday, 10:00 pm EST

Despite the scuttlebutt that it was just a Mad Men knock-off, I had high hopes for Pan Am (pun intended).  Like lots of people, I like a good period piece.  Stories set in iconic eras can't help but be shrouded in romance, and the admittedly fluffy ABC capitalizes on this phenomenon in its drama showcasing stewardesses of the early 1960s.  To be honest, it was slow going at first.  The plot centers around four women -- each a trailblazer of sorts -- which means that there was a bit of back-story to relay.  Even so, Pan Am has all the hallmarks of a best-selling saga and will probably become more engrossing as the season unfolds.

Show: Whitney
Network: NBC
Time: Thursday, 9:30 pm EST

NBC is known for sitcoms that probe beneath life's underbelly.  Whitney, starring comedian Whitney Cummings, fits right in as the story of a cohabiting, thirty-something couple contemplating marriage.  Albeit gentler than the other social commentary-spouting shows in NBC's Thursday night lineup (Community, Parks and Recreation, and The Office), Whitney delivers some trenchant one-liners about love and relationships.  Unfortunately, most of them were in the commercials, which somewhat diluted their appeal.  Nevertheless, pilots are often iffy, so I remain optimistic.

Show: New Girl

Network: FOX

Time: Tuesday, 9:00 pm EST

New Girl is just the sort of off-beat show you'd expect to see on the network that brought us The Simpsons.  Starring queen of quirk Zooey Deschanel, it centers around Jess, a newly single teacher who finds herself living with three guys she met on Craigslist.  Fashion-challenged and in the habit of bursting into song, Jess catapults over Deschanel's resident territory of the unusual headlong into the land of just plain odd.  Indeed, her actions are often cringeworthy, particularly when she's hurling herself at prospective suitors.  Still, her eccentricities are born of a genuineness that render her as endearing and vulnerable.

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Criticisms aside, I'll continue watching all of these shows.  Sweet, salty, or tangy, stories are my favorite snack.

Promises, Promises

Yesterday, my mom and sister and I went to New York's Broadway Theatre to see "Promises, Promises," starring Sean Hayes and Kristin Chenoweth. It was a revival of a 1960s play of the same name, which was based on an earlier 1960s movie, The Apartment, starring Jack Lemon and Shirley MacLaine. In a nutshell, it was the story of a lowly office worker, C. C. "Chuck" Baxter, who gets sucked into lending his apartment to the senior executives for rendezvous with their mistresses only to discover that the girl he's in love with, Fran Kubelik, is his boss's, mistress. It's cute and campy yet underscored by the shadows of the male chauvinism that dominated the workplace of the 1960s. (One review I read aptly compared it to Mad Men.) But unlike Mad Men (SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT!), "Promises, Promises," finds a moral high ground and stakes its claim there. Ever the "good guy," Chuck saves Fran after a failed suicide attempt brought on by the news that Mr. Sheldrake is not leaving his wife. By the time Mr. Sheldrake crawls back to report that he is, after all, free and asks for Fran's hand in marriage, she's already fallen in love with Chuck, securing the classic happy ending. Snappy dance numbers, stellar singing, and period humor made "Promises, Promises," a joy to watch. Incidentally, it also inspired me to commit to buying a fedora I'd been eying in JCPenney. (Chuck sports one despite his worry that it makes him look like James Cagney. His was gray; mine is pink and black.)

As a side note, it occurred to me that the movie The Baxter was probably based on Chuck Baxter's character. The Baxter is about Elliot Sherman (Michael Showalter), a guy who lets people walk all over him. Indeed, the name Baxter becomes synonymous with anyone who's a malleable yes man, establishing the theme of the movie. Elliot's fiancé (Elizabeth Banks) is cheating on him with her high school boyfriend, and he's powerless to stop her. Meanwhile, he becomes friendly with his offbeat temp secretary (Michelle Williams), who is enmeshed in a relationship with a Baxter of her own (the inimitable and always-easy-on-the-eyes Paul Rudd). In the end, Elliot gets jilted at the alter when the high school boyfriend busts in. Elliot ends up with the secretary, who has overthrown her own boyfriend for being too "Baxterish." Poor Paul Rudd ends up with no one. Although it's a little more complicated than The Apartment and "Promises, Promises," the parallels between C. C. Baxter and Elliot are definitely there.

Now that the deepness is over and done with, it's time to share an interesting tidbit I learned after reading the "Promises, Promises" playbill. It turns out that Sean Hayes (of Will and Grace fame) is the executive producer of that new TV Land sitcom Hot in Cleveland co-starring Betty White. Small world, huh?