The Ten Best KATE & ALLIE Episodes of Season Five

[TMC]

https://jacksonupperco.com/2022/02/2...f-season-five/

Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen Kate & Allie slowly become funnier, with jokier dialogue, more overtly comic stories, and slightly bigger characterizations. Here in Season Five, the show’s humor objective is finally on par with the genre’s baseline, as the series has shifted its own standards of realism (its aesthetic realism) to be less literally fixated and therefore more conducive to the sitcom’s typical aggrandizement. Unfortunately, though, that type of literal realism was one of the things making Kate & Allie special, and now that it’s gone, it’s a blow to the series’ projection of self. What’s more, the evaporation of this aspect of the show’s identity has coincided with the ongoing destruction of other big things that made Kate & Allie, well, Kate & Allie, including its premise — the domestic format’s “modified family” wrinkle, which scripts are no longer playing up in episodic plot. In fact, with Ari Meyers off to college and only in a fraction of this year’s installments, Five is barely able to pretend to be a traditional family sitcom anymore either… and while that’s been an ongoing trend, as the show chose to elevate the central friendship between Kate and Allie into something of a proxy-premise, story still craves that support. Meanwhile, speaking of that friendship, after a year where one half of this duo was unavailable (due to an off-screen pregnancy), Five consciously pairs them more frequently, and their new catering business — introduced at the end of Four — is purposely meant to both pivot the show away from its minimized family and to supply lots of direct interaction between the stars. For the most part, it succeeds on both fronts. However, these catering plots, though engaging a new part of the leads’ “situation,” are not a capable substitute for the series’ real premise, especially when this hook invites one-off story-led notions that can’t help but distract from the characters and, yes, their relationship, which gets collaterally undermined… That said, I do have some good news: the catering business is only a factor in about five of this year’s entries… for actually, Season Five is aware of these issues and is trying to end the premise (and proxy-premise) entirely, winding down the whole series by focusing on the leading ladies’ romantic pursuits — their endgame arcs — as each one is reunited with her best previously introduced beau: Allie’s ex-football player from last season, and Kate’s ever-present plumber.