1970s Fun Flops: “The Associates”

[TMC]

https://www.thiswastv.com/2012/07/31...he-associates/

The Associates is easy to describe in a single sentence: it’s a white-collar Taxi. That’s what it looks like, that’s what it feels like, and that’s what it was probably conceived as. Taxi was the John Charles Walters team’s attempt to do a blue-collar show after years of doing white-collar shows (and also to do a male-dominated show after producing mostly vehicles for female stars). Now The Associates would go back to the white-collar world, but in a higher-stakes environment than the newsroom of Mary Tyler Moore or the photography studio of Phyllis. The theme song, written by Brooks’s friend and frequent colleague—but, strangely, not relative—Albert Brooks, sums up the premise of the show: it’s about young lawyers on Wall Street who are making good money, dress well, have bright futures, but just find that “something is not quite working” in their high-pressure jobs and screwed-up lives.

The lead character was Tucker, played by a young Martin Short—so young that he was still pronouncing “about” as “aboot,” proving all the Canadian stereotypes to be shamefully true. In the first episode, Tucker is drafted out of Harvard Law School to be an associate at a major law firm. On the first day, he meets the other new associates, the gorgeous blonde blueblood Sara (Shelley Smith) and Leslie (Alley Mills) a Hollywood homely working class woman with a ton of student loans to pay off. (This sets up a classic Betty and Veronica situation throughout the show: Short pursues the unattainable Sara while mostly ignoring Leslie’s crush on him.) And he meets Mr. Marshall (Wilfrid Hyde-Whyte), the elderly, dotty, rambling, but unexpectedly sharp senior partner, who is sort of like Latka and Reverend Jim combined and turned into an old British man—whenever a scene is slow, bring on Whyte to deliver a funny line or a rambling monologue. The role of Louie DePalma-esque creep is filled by the unctuous Elliot Streeter (Joe Regalbuto), who believes unconditionally in all the evil lawyer stuff that the other characters have moral qualms about. And as the token blue-collar guy, there’s Johnny Danko (Tim Thomerson), the disco-suited gofer and office stud.