Pilot Zone - Out Of Practice

In my humble opinion the pilot Out of Practice commits the ultimate sin of a sit-com - it's not funny - now I'm not saying it's groan-worthy or even on the opposite side and the funny needs to be gutbustingly hilarious (a smile from me every now and then will do) it just sort of exists which is a shame since behind the scenes it was created by Christopher Lloyd (why he goes by that name I don't know as it just confuses him with the actor) and Joe Keenan who where both and Lloyd's other credits have included The Golden Girls, Wings and more recently Modern Family, so yes the credentials are certainly there.

That's without bringing up the cast we have Henry Winkler (during an era he was playing the brilliant Barry Zuckercorn on Arrested Development), Stockard Channing and Ty Burrell in the cast as well as Paula Marshall (who I have to admit mostly associate with Veronica Mars). So yeah the bits and pieces are there.

I'm not sure where it went wrong for me, the premise has potential in that sit-com sort of way - a family of doctors in varying different fields (private practice, emergency room, plastic surgery etc.) but it all just feels flaccid, the parents are divorced and the father even as a younger model (Jennifer Tilly here, Lloyd I'm assuming took the idea to Modern Family), it's all sit-com 101 and very often works but just not here.

Lloyd I'm assuming gained some affection for Burrell from this taking him along to another failed sit-com (Back To You) in 2007 before both getting success with Modern Family in 2009.

Maybe the show gets better from here, it might have found it's legs within a couple of episodes but it didn't really give me much of a desire to follow on despite the talent involved.

Pilot Zone - The Tortellis

History will say that Cheers was a very successful show that had a very successful spin-off - Frasier - and there is no denying there is truth to this, but most people - I bet even avid Cheers watchers at the time - don't know that Frasier wasn't the first spin-off, you have to go back to 1987 when The Tortellis had a 13 episode run.

Now I went into The Tortellis with very low expectations - I had heard it was terrible - and to be honest because of these expectations what I watched wasn't terrible, I mean I can see why it didn't last - I mean the four who came over from Cheers where entertaining in small doses but you could see spending 30 minutes with them every week as getting tiresome fairly quickly.

We do have a Cheers regular show up in the shows opening scene, and it's unsurprisingly his ex-wife Carla, who appears in Nick's dream which is about him in the afterlife (other info I could find said Norm and Cliff show up in a later episode).

There is an attempt to make Nick more likable, because it was clear from his Cheers appearances it wasn't always his most notable trait and even as Nick getting upset when Loretta's sister Charlotte makes fun of an accomplishment of his. Speaking of Charlotte she seems to fit the typical sit-com staple of snarky friend (or this case sister-in-law) and even has the cute kid troupe of her own.

Though it was a failure, it was an admirable attempt to make a sit-com out of one of the lower-life recurring characters on Cheers and maybe the US sit-com world was just not ready for a main character so rough around the edges.