SFist Watches: TV Tonight
The event seemingly everyone-and-their-senile-uncles was waiting for happened last night, so we can finally move on to other blips on the TV landscape.
Don't get us wrong. We totally dug "The Sopranos," but we must have suffered from some severe, Uncle Junior-level memory loss in the two years since the last season ended. We were...confused, to say the least. Anyone prepared to give us a complete history of all the characters that appeared in last night's season premiere, please, do so in the comments.
Two years is a long time, people. Wasn't "Seinfeld" still on back then? Maybe not, but haven't you missed Julia Louis-Dreyfus? Huh? Just us? Well, we're fans. As a matter of fact, we were big fans of her previous post-"Seinfeld" sitcom, "Watching Ellie," a show that was way ahead of its time, and therefore a major flop. To wit: It utilized a single-camera filming format, ala "Arrested Development," a "real-time" story structure, ala "24," and Steve Carrel as a creep, ala "The Office." Alas, no one watched it, and another entry into the "Seinfeld" curse was born.
So Dreyfus is back with a slightly less innovative sitcom, "The New Adventures of Old Christine", in which she plays a single mom, who, while friendly with her ex-husband, finds her life jarred a bit when he starts a serious relationship with a younger woman, also named Christine--hence the "new" and "old" Christines. We admit we're tuning in purely based on the presence of Julia Louis-Dreyfus, because everything else about the show screams "Stale!"; laugh-track, cute, precocious child, and Comedy Jokes (our term for sitcom one-liners that are said because they're funny, and not because it's actual dialogue a character would say because she's funny).
But, we'll give it a chance, and hopefully the "Seinfeld" curse will remain on the shoulders of Jason Alexander (and let's face it, he kind of deserves it). It premieres tonight at 8:30 p.m. on CBS. Another episode airs at 9:30 p.m., which is the show's actual timeslot.
Image of Old Christine from CBS.