Mad About You

[Rodney-2187]

‘Mad About You’ Revival In The Works With Paul Reiser & Helen Hunt In Talks To Return

http://deadline.com/2017/12/mad-abou...bc-1202232742/

[Michael24]

I'm down. I always enjoyed Mad About You.

[puddy77]

https://youtu.be/grQjwdr75rg

[DVD Josh]

Helen has not aged well.

[ZoetMB]

Originally Posted by DVD Josh

Helen has not aged well.

Neither have you.

[DVD Josh]

Originally Posted by ZoetMB

Neither have you.

That's true

[blahsi]

I'm looking forward to this. Since I cannot get access to Spectrum where I live, hopefully we will be able to find it...elsewhere. I'd love to support them but in this situation it is impossible.

[kevin87]

Originally Posted by blahsi

I'm looking forward to this. Since I cannot get access to Spectrum where I live, hopefully we will be able to find it...elsewhere. I'd love to support them but in this situation it is impossible.

Apparently Spectrum has a nine month exclusivity window, which is how LA's Finest has been acquired for broadcast TV with Fox... so probably around September, we might be hearing about a network for Mad About You. There was some language, specifically in one episode where it's jokes about unfortunate names, a la Schitt's Creek, which would lose the comedy if it's edited for normal broadcast, so it'd probably have to end up on basic or premium cable, or streaming.

https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/la-...me-1234603872/

Charter Communications-backed Spectrum offers a much looser grip on its original series than other networks or streaming services: The VOD service has a mere nine-month exclusivity window on “LA’s Finest,” allowing Sony to shop it around to other platforms.

Is another Sony-produced Spectrum series, the “Mad About You” revival, also in contention to pop up on a broadcast network or alternate platform?

“Absolutely,” said Frost. “There are all kinds of conversations ongoing in connection with that. Since it aired later, that window hasn’t opened up yet, but it’s definitely in the discussion stage.” He would not specify which networks the studio was in conversation with.

[Michael24]

Spectrum Originals? So this means it's only available to people with Spectrum cable? That bites.

[kevin87]

Originally Posted by Michael24

Spectrum Originals? So this means it's only available to people with Spectrum cable? That bites.

Yeah, like LA's Finest with Jessica Alba and Gabrielle Union. They also got US rights for the British Sky show Curfew. Since Spectrum has an app, I wouldn't be surprised if people share accounts like Netflix. The merger and Spectrum Originals have made cable even higher.

They also have the original 7 seasons On Demand as well, but are SD and expire on December 1st. I've been watching it over the past few 3 weeks because I was only 4 when it premiered and only ever saw bits and pieces near the end when I was a 10ish and was watching Friends. Only have 2.5 seasons left.

Also, they ordered 12 episodes. 6 on Nov 20th and the other 6 on Dec 18th.

[thecooldud]

Why?

[Hofftimus Prime]

An upgrade for this would be nice. It never gets the credit it deserves.

[tinpanalley]

You know, ironically, though I wasn't expecting it, I started watching this again from the beginning. I'm not the kind of person that remembers things differently from what they are. Which is to say that if I remember a particular series or film from 20 years ago, I rarely feel differently about it today than I did when I first enjoyed it. But 4 seasons into Mad About You, my wife and I were struggling to put up with it. And it's strange because I didn't remember so much of it from the 5th season on being so, well, bad. And it became clear why that was about the time that it started to lose favour with people, as I remember.

The whole show basically never got back its momentum and purpose from their small break-up and subsequent and immediate writing repair of getting them pregnant. But even without all that, I think there was a great and insightful show about a young couple in Manhattan and all the quirks and experiences that involves, something we could relate to having had a similar experience, but it feels like the lead up to the end of the fourth season and its subsequent air being let out of the bag of the pregnancy stories were engineered by producers and show runners and it feels like that was in defiance of what the cast perhaps would have liked. It felt typical American network engineered and not at all motivated by the kind of storytelling Paul Reiser will have been interested in. I simply can't buy that the person that helped produce the first 3 seasons could possibly have been ok with how season 5 and later proceeded.

Now, the only reflection here which is just my opinion is that a few things became extraordinarily clear to me, in no particular order...
a) Paul and Jamie are very evidently, after about 3 seasons, absolutely horrible for each other
b) Jamie is a galactically enormous narcissist. Not neurotic, not quirky, just head to toe narcissist.
c) Helen Hunt has a very specific range to her acting and when she reaches the outer extremities of that range, which is when she's asked to emote anything more than 3 things (anger, frustration, and worry), she hits a wall fast and demonstrates an inability to be anything but repetitive and annoying.
d) I know it's the 90s, but Paul's infantile and toxic bro attitude and juvenile view of what a relationship is starts to grate. As season 4 ended, I remember back then TV Guide and Entertainment Weekly gushing over the double episode, and this time all I could think was that the best thing for this story and indeed its lead couple would have been for them to break up from what was so clearly a complete mismatch. the deus-ex-machina pregnancy just killed any chance there was of this couple being believable.

There is another possibility but without knowing the extent of Reiser's influence on the storyline it's hard to know whether it's plausible or not. And that is that the disparity and awful match in a young couple who get together only to realise how wrong they are but still insist on staying together putting themselves and all their friends and family through their attention seeking mess is actually a statement Reiser was making on the hopelessness of young couples in New York in the 90s. But again, without some confirmation that he was trying to get a very poignant observation of failed young marriages past the network by cleverly concealing it in a formulaic sitcom to please NBC, is nothing more than a hypothesis until he writes some book about his experience on the show.

It's a shame, because I was so eager to watch the show again, but each subsequent episode of the 5th season became harder and harder to sit through. I remember it falling in popularity and couldn't place why back then. It seems evident now when compared with other sitcoms of the time that this was a great idea with a brilliant start that fizzled like so many others into meandering mediocrity. So, a bit of a sweet and sour for me on the main story with very memorable supporting characters around the periphery. Have many characters in sitcoms ever been better than Ira and Mark or Lisa? Or Fran and Paul's parents? But to be fair even getting 3 good seasons is tough as hell in a landscape where the bosses demand 25 or more episodes per season. Makes the good shows stand out even more that they could keep it going for longer and makes a show like Frasier absolutely outstanding. I haven't even bothered with the new season but the lack of a renewal for a second run suggests there wasn't much to it.

[Lemmy Lugosi]

It was mildly amusing when it was at its best. In my old day job at FMC, I used the show to pass the time between assignments. My interest in revisiting this series is like the title of that RDJ film… Less Than Zero.