How would you rate or grade Tim O'Donnell's job as executive producer

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Amy Heckerling, who of course directed the Clueless motion picture, was the EP/showrunner for the first season on ABC. When Clueless was cancelled, and picked up by UPN, Tim O'Donnell took over. If you want to get technical, Amy Heckerling said that after the first six episodes, she was gone.

O'Donnell said that the show would focus more on the five central teenagers than did the ABC version. He added he was more interested in watching things that happen in school because the interesting stories happen there.

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Tim O'Donnell, himself discusses working on Clueless on this podcast (at the 01:05:50 mark). The host of the podcast, Ken Reid seemed to compare Clueless under Tim O'Donnell as a sitcom variation of James at 15. Under Amy Heckerling, Clueless according to O'Donnell, seemed to want to directly continue the movie's aspirational, "we're hipper than everyone else" approach.

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Originally Posted by TMC

Tim O'Donnell, himself discusses working on Clueless on this podcast (at the 01:05:50 mark). The host of the podcast, Ken Reid seemed to compare Clueless under Tim O'Donnell as a sitcom variation of James at 15. Under Amy Heckerling, Clueless according to O'Donnell, seemed to want to directly continue the movie's aspirational, "we're hipper than everyone else" approach.

Maybe I'm talking what Tim O'Donnell said out of context, but when he says that on a TV show, he need to in his words "give a ****" about the characters, I immediately get the sense that he didn't completely like or understand Clueless as movie. Say what you will, but Amy Heckerling was perfectly on-point and in tune with where youth culture in the '90s was at and where it was going. Clueless in some respects, was sort of a satire.

This is what Sean O'Neal said on AVClub:

Clueless presented a world populated by young people who actually cared—teenagers like Alicia Silverstone’s Cher who, despite all their superficialities, are motivated by a genuine interest in being somebody. In one of its most slyly epochal moments, Cher declares, “I don’t want to be a traitor to my generation and all, but I don’t get how guys dress today. I mean, come on, it looks like they just fell out of bed and put on some baggy pants and take their greasy hair—ew—and cover it up with a backwards cap and like, we’re expected to swoon? I don’t think so.” Sitting in the theater, I swear I could feel the Earth tremble, as an entire populace of Troy Dyers stampeded for the shower.

In Clueless, Paul Rudd’s Generation X stand-in is ribbed for his Nietzsche-reading angst and his coffeehouse soul patch. After learning that she’s interested in hanging with the school burnouts, Cher disdainfully lectures Brittany Murphy’s Tai on the difference between going to “spark up a doobie and get laced at parties” and being “fried all day.” In short, all of the qualities that only a year before had been the mark of a hero were turned on their head in an instant, replaced by a chipper will to succeed. In the ensuing years, movies like Can’t Hardly Wait, Drive Me Crazy, She’s All That, and American Pie would be filled with Clueless-derived teens brimming with crazy ambitious schemes and youthful exuberance. The dream of not giving a **** was at its end.

I do suspect, that O'Donnell was the reason why there was a relatively high quotient of very special episodes/After School Special type of messages. He figured that if you're going to make a show about teenagers and high school life, then it must be some sort of heavy handed "morality play". A similar thing happened you could say, with the final season of Parker Lewis Can't Lose. It went from being this dense and wacky, live-action cartoon to essentially being a self-serious, sitcom version of Beverly Hills, 90210.

Like I said, O'Donnell gained most of his notoriety, on '80s sitcoms like Growing Pains. So of course, he had to rehash plots from there like Cher having a boyfriend who dies in a car accident while driving drunk much like how Carol on Growing Pains had a boyfriend, Sandy (played by Matthew Perry) die in a similar manner. But by 1996-97, did people really want to see that type of sitcom anymore? One that mixed equal parts corniness, sarcasm, and treacly sentimentality like Growing Pains.

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I also get the sense that the Clueless TV series was a job that was pretty much dumped into Tim O'Donnell's lap when Amy Heckerling got sick of it. And O'Donnell was told to make something out of it. Like I said, I get the feeling based on his comments on the TV Guidance Counselor podcast that he really didn't like or understand the movie and therefore, wanted to remake it in his own image.

Very special episodes much like After School Specials even by the late '90s, were becoming old hat. Did kids in that era really want to be lectured in a heavy handed, unironic manner about the evils of drunk driving, smoking, and teenage pregnancy for example? In some respects, it seems like Tim O'Donnell tried to use Clueless and its branding as a backdoor way to redo the teen oriented stories and plots on Growing Pains and Just the Ten of Us from back in the '80s.

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I also get the feeling that Tim O'Donnell didn't know that Clueless is actually an adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma and just focused and singled out the style rather than the substance. Even so, perhaps the main message of the movie is that a woman's "girly-ness" is not something that needs to overcome, but is something that can be embraced. The movie Legally Blonde also had that same type of message you could say. Further more, the Clueless film followed an arc that shows the protagonist discovering greater depths of humanity and empathy within herself.

‘Clueless’ has a clue, after all

“Clueless” is not only changing networks — from ABC to UPN — it’s switching direction a bit, said executive producer Tim O’Donnell. When it debuts on UPN (locally, WTXX, Channel 20) in the fall Tuesdays at 8 p.m., the show will focus more on the five central teenagers than did the ABC version, O’Donnell said. Also, Wallace Shawn and Twink Kaplan, who played recurring roles as teachers, will be gone from the production. Instead, O’Donnell will use stunt casting to fill the teacher slots. And Michael Lerner, who played the father of lead-teen Cher (Rachel Blanchard), won’t be returning.

Adjusting the Off-Color Contrast

Tim O’Donnell, who produced “Uncle Buck” and more recently the UPN teen comedy “Clueless,” admits even he was a little taken aback as he began watching tapes of this season’s new prime-time offerings, such as UPN’s “Shasta McNasty,” about a young, sex-obsessed hip-hop group.

“I actually think the rudeness of some of these pilots was overshadowed by the diversity issue,” he says, referring to the discussion that took place throughout the summer regarding the dearth of minority characters in new prime-time programs. “If not, it would have been 1990 all over again.”

UPN TROTS OUT THREE NEW SITCOMS

"Clueless" (Tuesday at 8, beginning Sept. 23) comes to UPN after making its debut last year on ABC. Based on the successful feature film directed by Amy Heckerling and starring Alicia Silverstone, the TV series continues the exploits of Cher, Dionne and Amber in Beverly Hills. Rachel Blanchard stars as pack-leader Cher; Stacey Dash is Dionne and Elisa Donovan plays Amber. Heckerling and Tim O'Donnell are the executive producers. Among this season's storylines, according to O'Donnell: Cher will shatter the Beverly Hills social code by dating a pool boy.

UPN comes out swinging

CLUELESS: (debuts at 8 p.m., Sept. 23) Critics scoffed when UPN moved to pick up this comedy _ based on the popular Alicia Silverstone movie of the same name _ after ABC dropped the show for in-the-basement ratings. But the transition makes perfect sense to executive producer Tim O'Donnell, who says he's seen "a kind of rabidness . . . just crazed" following among adolescent girls for the show. Certainly, that's the response the network is banking on, re-creating the exploits of Beverly Hills high schoolers Cher, Dionne and Amber in the time slot that made Moesha a household word.

When I hear Tim O'Donnell say that unlike in the movie that Amy Heckerling directed, you have to "give a ****" about the characters, that makes me think that O'Donnell is one of those people who think that they need to 'show the world as it is' when in actuality, you're 'lecturing the audience'.

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Originally Posted by TMC

Maybe I'm talking what Tim O'Donnell said out of context, but when he says that on a TV show, he need to in his words "give a ****" about the characters, I immediately get the sense that he didn't completely like or understand Clueless as movie. Say what you will, but Amy Heckerling was perfectly on-point and in tune with where youth culture in the '90s was at and where it was going. Clueless in some respects, was sort of a satire.

This is what Sean O'Neal said on AVClub:


I do suspect, that O'Donnell was the reason why there was a relatively high quotient of very special episodes/After School Special type of messages. He figured that if you're going to make a show about teenagers and high school life, then it must be some sort of heavy handed "morality play". A similar thing happened you could say, with the final season of Parker Lewis Can't Lose. It went from being this dense and wacky, live-action cartoon to essentially being a self-serious, sitcom version of Beverly Hills, 90210.

Like I said, O'Donnell gained most of his notoriety, on '80s sitcoms like Growing Pains. So of course, he had to rehash plots from there like Cher having a boyfriend who dies in a car accident while driving drunk much like how Carol on Growing Pains had a boyfriend, Sandy (played by Matthew Perry) die in a similar manner. But by 1996-97, did people really want to see that type of sitcom anymore? One that mixed equal parts corniness, sarcasm, and treacly sentimentality like Growing Pains.

Also, in the Clueless film, Cher reaches an epiphany about her role in meddling in other people's lives. It wasn't just some idiosyncratic, postmodern teen movie about spoiled rich kids in Beverly Hills like Tim O'Donnell seems to suggest.

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How would you rate or grade Tim O'Donnell's job as executive producer?