Word: sitcomming
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...When J.R., after 17 episodes of malign neglect, finally embraced his infant son, viewers responded with nearly 10,000 letters-half saying "Thank God!," the other half saying "Don't ruin it by reforming him.") Hagman developed a touch for light comedy on TV in the '60s sitcom / Dream ofJeannie. He plays the villainy sotto voce and the humor-the infectious delight J.R. brings to the business of malevolent one-upmanship-fortissimo. He struts, whinnies, talks out loud to himself; he has a grand time being bad. His soft, smooth, surprisingly characterless face expresses J.R.'s childishness...
After the Air Force, Hagman tried his luck off-Broadway, then did a two-year stint on The Edge of Night. There were several modest roles in movies, including one memorable semivillain in The Group. But Hagman's most important part before Dallas was in the airhead sitcom I Dream of Jeannie. For Hagman it was the big break. He worked constantly, rewriting scripts, fighting to get the best possible performers. "I was driven, compulsive," he remembers. "I yelled at people. Finally I couldn't take it any more. I started to vomit...
Ouch! As with a lot of other things in this curious little movie, which has the bland air of a sitcom but is blacker in spirit than it pretends to be, there is bitter, discomfiting truth in that moment. Writer Kaufman's guiding spirit is not misogynistic; he lays about him with a fine, impartial hand. For example, Jane Curtin, who could turn out to be Saturday Night Live's most valuable contribution to the movies, plays a woman reduced to instant penury when her husband abandons her and raids all their bank accounts before informing...
...might guess, is a romance between the Air Force pilot turned taxi driver, played by the ingenuous Robert Hays, and the stewardess who takes over the co-pilot's chair from Kareem Abdul-Jabar. Julie Hagarty plays the sallow, teary type--she's sure to snag a nighttime sitcom role from this appearance...
HAPPY END is schizophrenic--an anomalous lark. The biting, sardonic music of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht don't fit the sitcom plot. The play's as far from Brecht & Weill's Three penny Opera as a Keystone Kops film is from Little Caesar. Both plays recount the daring misdeeds and romantic entanglements of a gangster, but Threepenny Opera's sordid outlaws become Happy End's petty, bumbling bullies. Despite a denunciation of capitalism tacked on at the end, Happy End is insubstantial fluff, a romantic comedy expertly staged and acted by the American Repertory Theatre Company...