TVFactFan
03-09-2021, 07:30 PM
"Alice Doesn't Live here anymore" was a bittersweet movie about a gutsy widowed waitress and would be singer hoping to start a new life and a show bix career. Alice is CBS's takeout version....or TV Dinner.
Alice still waits on tables but she doesn't sing, which made her so touching in the movie. Here, she seems almost glad to be working in a truck stop. There is no feel of frustration. They hardly mention her career these days. Linda Lavin as Alice works time and a half to look naive and helpless, but she belongs on a New York deli, not an Arizona diner. Lavin is too dryly satiric for the slam-bang world of situation comedy.
Alice offers fun without humor and without being human. When Alice concludes that her late husband cheated on her, she gets off a zinger, when her son asks about sex, she stutters and squirms. This is knee-jerk gagwriting, it is designed to show off the writers not the characters, and so everyone winds up doing stand up shtick.
"Mom you gotta show him some leg, I gotta x-rated kid! "WHat's the soup du jour? Split pea, That was the soup du yesterjour. Kiss ma grits, Cant you be nice to a hard-workin girl? I dont know....i never had one work here before....Kiss ma grits.
At Mel's diner, the jokes pile up like dirty dishes, and the pace is so fast that there is no room between them for much more than cardboard-cutout characters, like growly owner Mel and trembly waitress Vera. A truer note is struck by the kiss mah grits gal. Flo, Twangy, gum popping Polly Holiday plays her as if she'd been born with a greasy spoon in her mouth. Alice's son Tommy is precociously precocious. The movie's wise guy kid wore specs and worked deadpan, here, Phillip McKeon is wide-eyed, towheaded and cute...a veritable Patridge.
Like most new situation comedies, Alice wants to be silly and sincere all at once, tackling relevant issues in cap and bells. The canned laughter has been replaced by canned editorials. In one episode, Alice dated an ex-jock who turned out to be gay but when she refused to let Tommy go fishing with him, Mom realized her own hypocrisy, etc
In a recent seminar on sex education, Tommy's teacher showed a film on reproduction in the diner, and there was much fine talk to the tune of "alarming increase in pregnancies," "peer pressure," "sex is more than physical, " and...the topper..."values of love, caring, and responsibility must come from the home.......we in sex education can only do so much.: Still that episode was hardly as painful as the one that mined its tin-ear gags and synthetic sentiments from a pair of suicide attempts.
The current rage in TV comedy is to make tidy sociological points at the expense of good old laughter, and its like trying to have your pie and throw it too. Alice throws pies and even slings hash....but still it keeps on missing.
Gerald Nachman, TV guide 1976
Alice still waits on tables but she doesn't sing, which made her so touching in the movie. Here, she seems almost glad to be working in a truck stop. There is no feel of frustration. They hardly mention her career these days. Linda Lavin as Alice works time and a half to look naive and helpless, but she belongs on a New York deli, not an Arizona diner. Lavin is too dryly satiric for the slam-bang world of situation comedy.
Alice offers fun without humor and without being human. When Alice concludes that her late husband cheated on her, she gets off a zinger, when her son asks about sex, she stutters and squirms. This is knee-jerk gagwriting, it is designed to show off the writers not the characters, and so everyone winds up doing stand up shtick.
"Mom you gotta show him some leg, I gotta x-rated kid! "WHat's the soup du jour? Split pea, That was the soup du yesterjour. Kiss ma grits, Cant you be nice to a hard-workin girl? I dont know....i never had one work here before....Kiss ma grits.
At Mel's diner, the jokes pile up like dirty dishes, and the pace is so fast that there is no room between them for much more than cardboard-cutout characters, like growly owner Mel and trembly waitress Vera. A truer note is struck by the kiss mah grits gal. Flo, Twangy, gum popping Polly Holiday plays her as if she'd been born with a greasy spoon in her mouth. Alice's son Tommy is precociously precocious. The movie's wise guy kid wore specs and worked deadpan, here, Phillip McKeon is wide-eyed, towheaded and cute...a veritable Patridge.
Like most new situation comedies, Alice wants to be silly and sincere all at once, tackling relevant issues in cap and bells. The canned laughter has been replaced by canned editorials. In one episode, Alice dated an ex-jock who turned out to be gay but when she refused to let Tommy go fishing with him, Mom realized her own hypocrisy, etc
In a recent seminar on sex education, Tommy's teacher showed a film on reproduction in the diner, and there was much fine talk to the tune of "alarming increase in pregnancies," "peer pressure," "sex is more than physical, " and...the topper..."values of love, caring, and responsibility must come from the home.......we in sex education can only do so much.: Still that episode was hardly as painful as the one that mined its tin-ear gags and synthetic sentiments from a pair of suicide attempts.
The current rage in TV comedy is to make tidy sociological points at the expense of good old laughter, and its like trying to have your pie and throw it too. Alice throws pies and even slings hash....but still it keeps on missing.
Gerald Nachman, TV guide 1976