Short-lived summer comedy about a very loud marriage. Rick and Ronnie ( Rick Reynolds, Pam Dawber), had been married for 10 years and the wear and tear was showing. With his high stress job as an advertising executive and her long hours running the household and caring for their 2 boys, Jerry and Shawn ( Tanner Lee Praire, Kevin Keckeisen( Brandon Allen played Shawn in the pilot)), there wasn't much time for romance-or even meaningful talk. So they yelled a lot. Jordan( Anita Barone), and Bernie ( Fred Applegate), who they tried to fix up with Ronnie's friend Christine ( Andrea Martin), worked with Rick. Andy ( David Bowie), Rick's unemployed, slightly spaced-out brother, lived in a trailor parked in the family's suburban driveway.
Comedian Rick Reynolds had adapted his rather dark standup material for this cynical series-this was no Father Knows Best-and the depressing mood didn't attract much of an audience. Six episodes were produced but CBS pulled the plug after only four had aired.
A Review from Variety
Wed., Jun. 4, 1997, 11:00pm PT
Life and Stuff (Fri. (6), 8:30-9 p.m., CBS) Taped in Culver City by Somers/Teitelbaum/David and Perrgood Prods. in association with TriStar Television. Executive producers, Mark Teitelbaum, Lee Aronsohn, Bill Bell Jr., Alan Kirschenbaum, Andy Cadiff; creators, Rick Reynolds, Aronsohn; co-executive producers, Reynolds, Jordan Moffet; producers, Pam Dawber, Alan David, Alan Somers, Jason Shubb; director, Cadiff; writer, Aronsohn; camera, Donald A. Morgan; editor, Michael Weitzman; sound, J. Mark King; music, Rick Marotta; casting, Marc Hirschfeld.
Cast: Rick Reynolds, Pam Dawber, Fred Applegate, Tanner Lee Prairie, Kevin Keckeisen, David Bowe, Anita Barone, Andrea Martin.
There is a cute show hiding around somewhere inside CBS' "Life and Stuff," but it's difficult to tell because everything is drowned out by a human smoke alarm named Rick Reynolds. He whines, he gripes, he ruminates, but mostly he irritates. After 23 minutes, the urge to smother him is overpowering. Burying this sitcom ode to self-absorption on six Friday nights over the summer sounds about right. Mind you, there are those who swear that Reynolds is an extremely funny standup comedian. But his shtick as the pied piper of personal trauma and neuroses plays without the requisite charisma, or laughs, once the act hits primetime. He's like Fran Drescher after nasal surgery. Part of the problem appears to be Reynolds' level of chemistry with co-star Pam Dawber. There simply isn't any. It's like pairing Charles Nelson Reilly with Pamela Anderson. Actually, on second thought, that might be kinda fun. "Life and Stuff" is based on Reynolds' one-man show "All Grown Up and No Place to Go," in which he muses on what it's like to be a balding, married, career-driven, fortysomething father. The sitcom takes this promising premise and turns it trite. Reynolds portrays Rick Boswell, an ad industry exec. Dawber is his understanding but easily irked wife, Ronnie. They have two little boys and a unique approach to conversation. He rants, she belittles. Once his wife starts tuning him out after 10 years of marriage, Rick turns to fast food drive-through speakers, vegetation , even his co-workers, to share observations about his abysmal life. In the opener --- which has a few clever lines but few believable moments --- Rick realizes that the thrill has gone out of his marriage. Like a poor man's "Dream On," seg shows his daydreaming about a "Leave It to Beaver" existence, with a roast in the oven and an adoring, unquestioning wife cooking it. Then reality hits. "Honey," she tells him, "I'm not a 7-Eleven. You can't just zip in, get what you want and zip out." "Not even a Slurpee?" he asks. Yes, it's marriage 1990s style. They haven't had sex in over a month, and when they do, he marks it on the calendar with an "HS" (for "Had Sex") and drinks a Yoo-Hoo in celebration. No, it's not particularly funny. But "Life and Stuff" is plenty annoying. It grows even more so in the second episode, when we get force-fed a bigger dose of Rick's slacker brother, Andy (David Bowe), who lives in a trailer out back. Reynolds, clearly enamored of his own voice, is never silent in "Life and Stuff" (which he also co-executive produces). The man will even speak to inanimate objects. In the case of this show, he promises to be yakking at viewers who aren't there.
A Review from The New York Daily News
GOING GETS TOUGH WHEN 'STUFF' GETS GOING
BY DAVID BIANCULLI
Thursday, June 5th 1997, 2:02AM
LIFE . . . AND STUFF. Tomorrow, 8:30, CBS. 1 Star
AFTER sitting on the CBS shelf for most of a season, the sitcom "Life . . . and Stuff" finally gets a network run in June, when the ratings don't count, viewers don't watch and its chances for renewal don't even register.
Anyone curious or bored enough to tune in tomorrow's premiere will have an easy time understanding why CBS waited as long as it could to inflict this particular sitcom on the public. "Life . . . and Stuff," in a more honest world, would be titled "Lifeless . . . and Stuffed."
Rick Reynolds, who has managed to turn his autobiographical musings into a couple of successful one-man stage shows, plays a suburban family man who works at an ad agency. His Rick Boswell, though, is neither as angst-filled as Michael on "thirtysomething" nor as exasperated as either of the Darrins on "Bewitched."
Instead, he's just a working guy who makes allegedly witty and trenchant observations. Imagine a guy who spends all of his time asking hypothetical questions and offering slightly skewed musings about life, the way Jerry Seinfeld does in his stage act. That's Rick.
What "Life . . . and Stuff" illustrates is why Seinfeld doesn't spend all his time on his TV series acting like he does onstage. A standup act, transferred to a sitcom, isn't necessarily a transplant that takes, and this one is rejected from the very start.
Poor Pam Dawber plays Rick's wife, an even more thankless role than when she starred opposite Robin Williams on "Mork & Mindy." At least there, when she laughed at her husband's jokes, we could believe her.
The two of them get to play dress-up during Rick's occasional Walter Mitty-like daydreams the only aspect of this show that gives it a distinctive look. Those sequences aren't any funnier, though, than the rest of the stuff in "Life . . . and Stuff."
A Review from The LA Times
'Life . . . and Stuff' Struggles to Stand Up
TV REVIEW
June 06, 1997|HOWARD ROSENBERG | TIMES TELEVISION CRITIC
Now for comedies that didn't make the regular season.
Sometimes justifiably, as with "Life . . . and Stuff," the drearily derivative sitcom that CBS is playing off during the languid summer weeks after May's ratings sweeps.
It's yet another series drawn from stand-up comedy material. The source of the one-liners this time is comic Rick Reynolds, who plays advertising executive Rick Boswell, someone who shares with his wife, Ronnie, played by Pam Dawber, a feeling of being overwhelmed by life.
It's an underwhelming premise, one that has Rick trying in the premiere to rekindle the spark of the harried couple's 10-year marriage. He complains that she doesn't want sex as much as he does. She disagrees. "If you did," he counters, "we'd be on the floor doing the noodle dance right now."
The noodle here is this half-hour, whose frequent libidinous talk (including a thinly veiled reference to oral sex) makes it a questionable pick for a kiddie-accessible 8:30 p.m. time slot--carrying a mere TV-PG rating, no less--and a poor one anywhere in prime time unless subsequent episodes are much funnier than the two supplied for review.
Sharing the Boswells' home are their two young sons and Rick's loopy, man-child brother (David Bowe), and sharing Rick at the office are two colleagues, one of whom (Fred Applegate) gets the show's very few witty lines.
Meanwhile, Ronnie keeps getting mad when Rick keeps goofing off, and Rick punctuates "Life . . . and Stuff" with bits of club-style monologue ("You know what I hate . . .") in the former manner of NBC's "Seinfeld." Viewers are unlikely to confuse the two series, though.
* "Life . . . and Stuff" premieres at 8:30 tonight on CBS (Channel 2). The network has given it a rating of TV-PG (may not be suitable for young children).
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