Becker aired from November 1998 until January 2004 on CBS.
John Becker ( Ted Danson) may have been a good doctor but he had no bedside manner.Sarcastic, opinionated, and cranky with a short fuse that only made things worst , he could drive anyone up a wall.His attitude was a source of irratation to Reggie ( Terry Farrell), the attractive woman who had recently taken over the diner where he stopped for breakfast every morning on the way to his office.Becker had been practicing in the Bronx for years, and most of the people in the neighborhood, including Jake ( Alex Desert), the blind newstand operator , were used to his tirades. Margaret ( Hattie Winston), Becker's longtime nurse , kept things under control at his busy office and calmed him down when he got upset about something in the news or when he alienated one of his patients. New to the office was Linda ( Shawnee Smith), a young nurses aid who was part flower child and part airhead. Bob ( Saverio Guerra), an obnoxious sleazy guy who had gone to high school with Reggie and still had the hots for her ( despite being married) also frequented the diner.
Becker's bluster often masked a tender heart . In the premiere he used the money he had planned to spend on a new car to pay for special treatments for a 7-year-old patient whose mother couldn't afford them. He made sure that nobody knew it was his money.
In November 1999 Becker was accidentally shot in the shoulder trying to break up a fight. He and Elizabeth ( Frances Fisher) , the doctor who treated him, had an affair, but both were afraid of committment and eventually broke up. The following February Linda took pity on Bob, who was in the throes of a divorce and had no place else to live, and let him move into her fancy Manhattan apartment ( it was owned by her parents). That fall Bob was hired as the super of Becker's building and spent most of his time complaining about the work-which he rarely did, anyway.
In the spring 2002 season finale Becker found himself attracted to his perky new neighbor Chris ( Nancy Travis), who kissed him passionately in his apartment. In the last scene Reggie planted one on him at her restaurant and he looked very confused. That fall it was revealed that Becker had spent the night with Reggie, but decided he was really interested in Chris. Reggie, however, had realized how desperate she must have been to sleep with him and had left town to sort out her life. ( Terry Farrell had been fired from the series). When Becker tried to clear things up with Chris he made a fool of himself and she stalked out, refusing to date him-but they continued to spar verbally, particularly after she took over the diner.
Hector ( Jorge Garcia), the brother of a friend of Jake's, surfaced at the start of the 2003-2004 season. Unemployed and lazy, he hung out at the diner while looking for easy ways to make a fast buck. That November Becker and Chris, whose relationship had survived despite his personality, finally slept together. In the series finale Jake sold his newsstand and used $25,000 he had inherited from his grandmother to move to Chicago and attend classes at Northwestern University . And Becker -incredibly-decided to be happy.
A Review From Variety
Becker
(Sitcom -- CBS; Mon. Nov. 2, 9:30 p.m.)
By RAY RICHMOND
Filmed in Los Angeles by Paramount Network TV. Executive producer, Dave Hackel; producers, Tim Berry, Andy Ackerman; director, Ackerman; writer, Hackel
Dr. John Becker - Ted Danson
Regina Costa - Terry Farrell
Jake Malinak - Alex Desert
Margaret Wyborn - Hattie Winston
Linda - Shawnee Smith
M.J. Johnson - Robert Bailey Jr.
Annette Johnson - Davenia McFadden
Mr. Capelli - Bill Capizzi
Beverly Stone - Amy Aquino
With: Rocky McMurray, Michael Reid Mackay.
Sometimes you want to go where everybody loathes your name. That's the case with Dr. John Becker, the ranting new alter ego of a fella named Ted Danson. He's giving this post- "Cheers" sitcom thing a second try, this time following "Everybody Loves Raymond" with his own "Everybody Hates Johnny" on Monday nights. If the retooled "Becker" feels a bit one-note from the outset, it also percolates with potential.
While some may outright reject the idea of Sam Malone with a stethoscope, Danson looks far more comfortable in this brash, cynical character than he ever did on his short-lived CBS effort "Ink."
And he has the benefit here of some unusually biting, sacred cow-slapping dialogue in the pilot from creator and exec producer Dave Hackel. But you get the feeling that Hackel weasels out a bit by ultimately giving Becker a heart of mush.
Becker is a Bronx doc who holds the world at arm's length and hangs out at a very un-"Cheers"-like diner, where his arrival clears the place of everyone but its comely proprietor, Reggie (Terry Farrell), and a blind customer named Jake (Alex Desert). Becker marches in and launches into a nonstop tirade about talkshows, pollution, used cars, car salesmen and humanity in general.
Back in his overcrowded office, Becker puts it on the line when an obese patient starts to get snippy: "If you care about your wife and kids, I want you to remember this one word: salad."
But the belligerent doc has a soft spot for an adorable kid named M.J. (Robert Bailey Jr.), who is HIV-positive. That diagnosis forces Becker to contact the doctor whose wife he stole. She's now Becker's ex, too. Dealing with a kid this sick causes Becker to say of Jesus Christ, "He and I don't have a real good working relationship."
The shot at organized religion almost qualifies "Becker" as courageous. The show surely wears its pessimism on its sleeve and invites viewers to reject its protagonist. But Danson's comic instincts are sharp enough so that he understands how to get in his licks and retain his considerable likability.
Yet while Danson is surrounded by a sprightly core of supporting players (Farrell in particular is very good), "Becker" will sink or swim based not on its acting (Danson's presence notwithstanding) but its attitude. This is a show that doesn't feel the need to constantly tap-dance. It dares to stomp a little bit, to have some sting, to risk some political incorrectness.
Not that "Becker" is a leap forward in primetime comedy. It's simply that watching it -- flaws and all -- makes you realize just how lily-livered most of the competition is.
A Review from The New York Times
TELEVISION REVIEW; A Doctor Whom Only A Cadaver Could Love
By RON WERTHEIMER
Published: November 2, 1998
At the start of the premiere episode of the new sitcom ''Becker,'' Ted Danson defines the cantankerous title character by delivering the first of many diatribes. The subject of this first harangue is the abysmal state of television programming: ''It's like America stepped in something, and it's scraping off its shoe directly over my TV set.''
Here's the best that can be said of ''Becker'': It's not that repellent.
The show, on CBS tonight, offers Mr. Danson as an angry urban doctor with a discouraging word on every subject, many of which cannot be repeated here. (The network, which has already maligned one New York borough with ''The King of Queens,'' says the series is set in the Bronx, although the name is not uttered in tonight's half-hour.)
Perhaps Mr. Danson's character is supposed to be a voice of reason in a world gone mad. Or maybe he's just a nasty jerk with a stethoscope in his pocket. Does it matter? This is a so-called comedy without one genuine laugh, although it does include a 7-year-boy who is H.I.V.-positive. That gives the script, written by the show's creator, Dave Hackel, a chance to show off the doctor's heart of gold.
Mr. Danson has fallen far from ''Cheers.'' His last series, ''Ink,'' was gone before it dried. Now, when he's not at the office yelling at the zany patients, he's hanging out in a seedy luncheonette, wiping off the counter with a succession of paper napkins while he yells at the attractive young proprietor, Reggie (Terry Farrell), who seems to like him in spite of his bitterness. When he shows up to order dinner and Reggie is dressed up for a date (with a dentist, yet), Becker seems angry or jealous or . . .
Wait a minute! Napkins. Waitress. Angry outbursts. Sick child. Heart of gold. Did somebody say, ''As Good as It Gets''?
And that would make this pale imitation, what? As bad as it gets? Don't kid yourself. There's worse where this came from.
BECKER
CBS, tonight at 9:30
(Channel 2 in New York)
Dave Hackel, creator and executive producer; Tim Berry and Andy Ackerman, producers; Mark Petulla, associate producer; Tony Askins, director of photography; Roy Christopher, production designer; Darryl Bates and Skip Collector, editors. Produced by Paramount Network Television.
WITH: Ted Danson (Dr. John Becker), Terry Farrell (Regina Costas), Hattie Winston (Margaret Wyborn), Alex Desert (Jake Malinak) and Shawnee Smith (Linda).
An Article from The New York Times
Aging and Grumpy but With a Bit of Sam Malone
By ANDY MEISLER
Published: December 12, 1999
THE food at the corner coffee shop, albeit cooked and served by a comely ex-model, is terrible. Parking in the Bronx is bad and getting worse. Every car on the street is a rolling rap concert.
Whining hypochondriacs live stubbornly into their 90's; sweet-faced inner-city children waste away from H.I.V. You can center a sitcom on an egotistical, self-righteous misanthrope, if he's played by a famous actor associated with a well-loved comic character in his past.
In short, the world is nasty, brutish and almost totally unfair. God -- whether you believe in him or not -- almost inevitably acts in an irritatingly inscrutable manner, and all of the above, serious and frivolous, fairly comprehensively sums up the concept, execution and comedic underpinnings of the most unconventional and underpublicized hit comedy on the air today.
''He's the most flawed character I've ever written,'' says David Hackel, proudly, of Dr. John Becker, the middle-aged lead character played by Ted Danson, the ex-''Cheers'' matinee idol whose sitcom star seemed permanently eclipsed after the failure of his heavily promoted ''Ink'' in 1996. Becker is a politically incorrect malcontent with no real counterpart in today's youth-obsessed sitcom world.
Positioned neatly at 9:30 p.m. on Mondays on CBS behind the hit ''Everybody Loves Raymond,'' ''Becker'' the show regularly finishes in the Nielsen top 20 and has become what Mr. Hackel, a 51-year-old veteran sitcom writer and producer, a bit nervously calls a ''stealth'' success.
''CBS has to be very happy with it,'' says Tim Spengler, executive vice president in charge of national broadcasting for Western International Media, a Los Angeles media management company. ''It drops off only one share point from its hit lead-in, which in this day and age is very good.''
What the ''Becker'' audience seems to be responding to is Mr. Danson's portrayal of a man who, for pure irascibility, recalls bygone characters like ''Taxi's'' noisome dispatcher Louie De Palma and Bill Bittinger, the scabrous talk show host of NBC's short-lived ''Buffalo Bill.''
During an interview in his Paramount Studios office, Mr. Hackel described Becker this way: ''He has clear attitudes about things. You may not agree with them, I may not agree with them, but when he speaks, everybody listens.
''I think he is an unhappy person, but not all the time. I think he is a very frustrated person, and sometimes depressed. I think he is also one of those guys who sometimes thinks the rules are for everyone else besides him. He is not a consistent character, and he is often dead wrong. But by being consistent and wrong, I contend that he is the most human character I've ever written.''
To be precise, John Becker is a twice-divorced general practitioner with a lower- and lower-middle-class Bronx practice, and -- astounding for a sitcom character -- a car and an apartment considerably junkier and dingier, respectively, then the ones he would probably own and inhabit in real life.
Becker usually opens each episode with one of his trademark jeremiads against some form of societal absurdity or injustice, real or imagined.
For example: ''Parents are too permissive. Today, you let the kid cry; 10 years from now, he's running a chain of crooked lemonade stands. Next thing you know, he's got a gun in my back at an A.T.M.'' Or: ''The only people dumber than talk radio listeners are talk radio callers. It's an entire audience made up of the infirm, the unemployed and the insane.''
Becker's outbursts are usually met with scorn or censure by the supporting characters, including Margaret (Hattie Winston), his efficient nurse and office manager; Linda (Shawnee Smith), the dingbat receptionist; Reggie (Terry Farrell), the model-turned-hash-slinger with whom he has a warily platonic relationship, and Jake (Alex Desert), a blind newsstand operator with whom he has the closest thing to a male friendship.
The plots are basically extensions of Becker's peevish tics and obsessions. In one episode he insists on his right to call an Asian-American motorist he has collided with a bad driver. In another, after being shot during a robbery, he's as rude to the female emergency physician treating him as he normally is to his own patients; in another he deals with a woman excessively grateful to him for saving her life (''Jesus sent you to me!'') as if she were a crazed stalker.
In the end, of course, Becker's basic decency is reluctantly revealed. In the episodes above he (1) eventually convinces everybody that he was simply venting his spleen at bad drivers in general, (2) starts an awkward, prickly love affair with the E.R. doctor and (3) discovers to his embarrassment that the grateful woman is a Roman Catholic nun in mufti.
Along the way, too often to be accidental, Becker and his colleagues discuss a matter not often dwelt upon in sitcoms: the presence or absence of a Supreme Being.
''We do debate God's existence,'' says Mr. Hackel. ''The existence of a sort of greater good, of an arbiter of right or wrong.'' The main combatants are Margaret, a devout Christian who insists that Becker and his healing powers are a gift from God, and Becker, who protests shrilly that nobody or nothing could be at the helm of such a messed-up world.
In one episode, a supposedly psychotic shoe salesman (played by the comedian Steven Wright) comes to Becker's examination room and says he often hears the voice of God -- who goes by the name Larry. Becker refers the patient to a psychiatrist, who silences the voice with drugs, but in the end the salesman confesses to Becker that he has stopped taking his medication, because he misses Larry's advice.
In another episode, Becker angrily shakes his fist at the sky (for reasons too complex to recount here) and declares that ''they'' are out to get him. ''That's interesting,'' Margaret says acidly. ''You're being persecuted by a God you don't believe in.''
Mr. Hackel admits readily that a character as abrasive and unlikable as Becker is almost by definition unsuitable as a sitcom figurehead. And that only Mr. Danson's skills as an actor -- plus the reservoir of audience good will he built up playing Sam Malone, the charming ladies' man of ''Cheers'' -- made ''Becker'' a viable comedic vehicle.
Over coffee at a West Los Angeles restaurant, Mr. Danson agrees with the second part of that theory.
''The baggage I bring to anything new after 11 years of 'Cheers' is that Ted is a nice guy,'' he says. ''I think that there is a comfort zone I bring to the part that allowed me a bit more time to establish this character.''
''Sam Malone and Becker have something in common also,'' he adds. ''Both are lonely men, very lonely.''
Mr. Danson, now 51, says he is pleasantly surprised to be able to shake off old typecasting and establish a new sitcom character, especially after ''Ink,'' the much hyped and reworked CBS project in which he played a swaggering newspaper columnist still in love with his ex-wife and editor (his real-life wife, Mary Steenburgen).
''My theory about that one,'' says Mr. Danson, ''is that if you're not a stand-up comedian -- a Cosby or a Seinfeld -- it's a mistake to hire people to find your comedic voice, which is what happened. What we are is actors, and what we need to do is find somebody else's passionate self-expression and then ask very nicely if we can be in it.''
Mr. Danson adds that after the demise of ''Ink'' (after one season) he was extremely pessimistic about ever returning to sitcoms. ''We still totally believe in him as a TV star,'' says Leslie Moonves, president of CBS Television, ''but after 'Ink' went off we'd sent him a number of things that he rejected. There was a real chance he wouldn't be coming back.''
Meanwhile Mr. Hackel, after stints on shows like ''Webster'' and ''Wings'' and as a consultant on ''Frasier,'' decided to take a chance and develop a sitcom about a spokesman for political incorrectness. It eventually became ''Becker.''
Mr. Danson (and Ms. Steenburgen, he adds) saw the role as an interesting challenge for him. CBS planned to introduce the show in January 1999 but rushed it onto the air in November 1998 in place of the quickly canceled ''Brian Benben Show.''
In the lee of ''Everybody Loves Raymond,'' ''Becker'' quietly prospered and, according to Mr. Moonves, is a cinch for renewal. As for Mr. Danson, he notes with some satisfaction that although he is still usually hailed on the street with cries of ''Sam Malone!'' he has heard a ''Becker!'' or two recently.
''Another thing I like,'' he says, ''is that I play my real age.'' But that's not all he has in common with Becker, Mr. Danson admits. In the last few years, he says, he has ''become a little bit more judgmental.''
''It's the little stuff I have opinions on, about nearly everything,'' he explains, but not about the big issues. ''And you can ask my fellow actors, you can ask my wife, it flips across my face with less charm the older I get.''
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