This is one of the more memorable episodes from season 8, and I remember watching it when it first aired in February 1990. It's hard to believe that was 25 years ago already.
Interested in what other people think and have to say about it. It certainly is a Julia Duffy showcase. And some of the dialogue Newhart has in the show within a show is truly ridiculous. But it takes skill to make a good statement about bad television, which is exactly what this episode does.
Having just seen it for the first time, I didn't think it was anything special. I guess part of it is that the premise has been done many times since then.
The most spectacular thing about it for me was how 38-year-old Julia Duffy was still able to pass for a teenager. The lady just didn't seem to age.
You're right-- she looks great in pony tails. LOL
The casting of Don Knotts in a special cameo is worth mentioning. Seein' Double was clearly meant to be a spoof of The Patty Duke Show and Three's Company (which Knotts appeared on for several seasons).
What I really liked was when Seein' Double went to a commercial break, so did this episode of Newhart. It was all cleverly done-- and while they were commenting on lousy television, they were not completely ripping TV production to shreds. Newhart's own success is partially based on hit sitcom formulas. So they were not biting the hand that feeds them, just making wry observations about the television landscape and the creative process in Hollywood.
I guess I'm biased because the Seinfeld treatment of this topic was done so much better, with the TV pilot storyline that arced over many episodes. If I'd seen this episode first I'd probably have a higher opinion of it.
shareYeah, I think you're going out of your way to be negative about this episode. In fact, it was the old 'Burns & Allen' sitcom in the 1950s that first broke the fourth wall and did shows within shows. In various episodes, George Burns watches a TV screen, with his wife Grace Allen in the other set performing their sitcom. Then, he goes into the other set and joins the sitcom in progress. So Seinfeld was rather late arriving at the party of self-reflexive television.
Newhart was not trying to cover new ground with Seein' Double or to draw attention to itself by being strangely funny or irreverent. The idea was to use the characters (in this case, Stephanie & Dick) to make more insightful comments about television production practices. And it was all the better if they could have a few laughs in the process.
"Tonight I'm going to die...................my hair"
It was an ambitious episode that had its moments, and Julia was superb in it, but I thought as a commentary on the quality of sitcoms it was a bit too over-the-top and obvious. The same message was better handled in the earlier episode where Michael was depressed that he'd never succeed in TV because stations were starting to look for quality programming, but Dick cheered him up by pointing out how the golden age of sitcoms in the early 70s was followed by shows like Three's Company and Hello Larry.
I thought Seein' Double may have also been a parody of the mid-80s bad NBC show Double Trouble, which was heavily promoted by the station but only lasted one season. There was a similar concept of a single father raising identical twin girls, one a straight-A student, the other a troublemaker.
As a big Don Knotts fan, I was disappointed that his appearance was only a few seconds onscreen. If they were going to make the effort to bring Knotts in for Newhart, they should've made him an integral part of the episode with plenty of lines like they did with Rickles and Conway.
Maybe they weren't sure if they could get Knotts for it, or decided at the last minute to add Knotts in, after the script had been written. There was a quick line earlier in the episode, when Michael is pitching the idea, where he briefly mentions the great Don Knotts. But if Knotts had not been available, that line could easily have been altered or deleted-- and his part could have been done on Seein' Double by George (Tom Poston).
I remember 'Double Trouble,' which costarred two real-life twin actresses. The old Patty Duke show was one actress playing both parts with a double/stand-in...which is what Seein' Double is spoofing. I loved the part where the other gal exits the room at a 45 degree angle. Hilarious.
I also liked the woman who played Smitty, the silly neighbor. That was probably a spoof of the outlandish girlfriends on 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show,' like Rhoda and Phyllis, who always popped in and were a bit man-crazy. At first, I thought it was Rose-Marie but it was another actress whom I had never heard of before. But she was quite good.
I agree that Seein' Double is obvious in its parodic message of network television. However, the fun is in watching them carry it out in such extreme fashion. I think it's my second-favorite episode of the 8th season. My favorite episode in season 8 is not 'The Last Newhart' which I feel is problematic from an overall writing standpoint-- but rather the one right before Seein' Double called 'Child in Charge,' where the baby is the new owner and boss of the TV station. There was a lot of wicked satire in that story about the infantilism (literally) of network television decision-making practices.