I'm watchin' season 2, and I was expecting some huge dip in quality and everything becoming soft and happy-go-lucky by the way Wikipedia described it. On the contrary, the tone of the show is the same and the grittiness is fully in tact. What was the big stink about anyway? Was whatsherface quitting prostitution and John getting a bigger apartment that big a deal to fans at the time?
shareI'd take anything on Wikipedia on any subject with a grain of salt. I don't really recall any particular "stink". I think the main problem the show had was too many people didn't want to see Larroquette in anything other than his Night Court role and it just had trouble finding a solid audience. Maybe if the show had come out a couple of years later it would have had a better chance.
share
I don't recall if it was S2 necessarily, but eventually, the show did get weaker, the characters' less dark. The edge, and it wasn't as much as some shows today even, gave the show flavor that it eventually lacked. It ended rather weakly.
I haven't read Wikipedia's entry, but, from what you wrote, I pretty well agree w/Wikipedia.
They lightened the show up, trying to reach a wider audience. They tried to make it more like OTHER shows.
He got a nice apartment, in an apartment building, w/a pretty nurse across the hall, for his love interest. See---we couldn't have him chasing the prostitute.
Matter of fact---they had her quit hooking. Too dark. So, she bought the bar, in the station, to keep her on the show.
They cut John's hair. Too scruffy.
John stopped going to AA meetings, too. Nothing funny about AA.
The cast was still sterling, but the material was weaker---less challenging. They smoothed off the edges.
Carpe Noctem!
BTW, where, in January of 2010, are you watching this show?
Has it been released on DVD?
I always thought Gigi Rice, as Carly, the hooker, was smokin'.
Carpe Noctem!
At the time it was fairly noticeable to me as a viewer. The changes I remember the most are the new love interest feeling shoehorned in there and the prostitute character giving up the life. I mean in the first season she's very unapologetic about hooking and then all of a sudden she just gives it up. I think there was a change in tone too because the show never quite felt the same after that.
"Unless Alpert's covered in bacon grease, I don't think Hugo can track anything."
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I actually thought it was still really good in season 2, and beyond. Alison La Placa and Mayim Bialik were great, and the dialogue was still clever. But by making it a more conventional sitcom they did definitely lose a lot of what made it so interesting and different in that first season. The depressing, cynical mood, the willingness to show a protagonist who was kind of a loser and at a low point, the dark, dimly lit look of the show, all the literary references... That was all very new for a tv show at the time, especially a sitcom, and pretty rare even now. It was like a cross between Cheers and Cannery Row. As much as I loved Catherine and the great interplay between her and John, that first season is really something special.
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