Browned Off
I'm not sure what surprises me the most; that "Murphy Brown" is considered a classic comedy, or that it's only been off the air for six years. I was always under the impression that it got cancelled in mid-95.
Shows what happens when you don't pay any attention to TV>
Neal Justin commemorates Murphy Brown's ascent to "classic"-hood- marked, these days, by being included on the "TV Land" Lineup, which I've never watched, so it's completely opaque to me:
gets to use the title "classic television" because it lasted 10 years and picked up more Emmys than "Seinfeld" and "Friends" combined. But while viewers decades from now will be barking out "No soup for you!" and rooting for Rachel and Ross, "Brown" already gets treated like a creaky relic, even though it stopped producing new episodes only six years ago.
I think I saw the show five or six times during its run; I recall a chuckle or two. I won't tune out MXC for it...
But the image of Brown cradling a baby boy (played by Haley Joel Osment in later years) remains the show's most indelible image.
"I think it hurt the show," said Charles Kimbrough, who played repressed anchor Jim Dial, referring to the single-motherhood storyline. "It blew up a lot bigger than anyone thought, and suddenly everyone looked at the show in a different way. We always loved the topical stuff and loved the politically engaged material.
"But it was a sitcom. It was a show about pretend people doing work. And suddenly we had this big, kind of real issue out of something that really involved a single professional woman wanting to have a baby out of wedlock, which was part of Murphy's character. She has to come to terms with that. That made perfect sense within the story, but suddenly it was kind of engraved in stone. It became a big political statement."
And nothing dates faster than yesterday's politics. Seriously - I remember the Quayle flap; Quayle jokes aside, he was right.
Justin notes that the show has a reverence for journalists that seems like a thirties throwback these days.
Posted by Mitch at
January 21, 2005 07:47 AM
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I can't imagine watching that show these days...it seemed to get increasingly preachy as time went on, not to mention that a lot of the humor was based on contemporary events. And as you say, nothing dates faster than yesterday's politics. Which is why Allen Drury's novels are largely forgotten these days - they're relics of the 1960s and early 1970s, and not particularly valuable relics at that.
Posted by: Kevin at January 21, 2005 11:01 AMI hated Murphy Brown...hated it. Not for its' politics, but just for its' supreme mediocrity.
Posted by: John at January 21, 2005 11:44 AMIt pleased me to note that the final episode aired the same week as Seinfeld's and nobody noticed.
I’m sorry, Murphy WHO?
Posted by: Thorley Winston at January 21, 2005 12:13 PMI'm not a big fan of Murphy Brown (as you might have predicted, I suppose), but I did like their sendup of the abstract impressionist art market in one episode.
Paraphrased memorable comment:
I don't know whether the piece of art is good or not, but two important art critics just argued over it on national television. I'll be able to sell it for a lot more than I paid.
Posted by: Doug Sundseth at January 21, 2005 12:21 PMActually, when the show tried to be funny, I mostly liked it. They had a good cast who could work good material.
When the show tried to be relevant, it was preachy, and the "jokes" fell flat.
To the show's detriment, they tried for relevance FAR more than humor.
But as for "classic" status? Seinfeld (which I loathe, but I'm vastly in the majority) and Friends (which I can take or leave) are heavily promoted on the powerhouse, TBS, AND syndicated in practically every market in the country. Neither has been off the air since they left the air (and I think both were syndicated before their runs ended). Cheers and the Cosby Show have been relegated (mostly) to TV Land and Nick@Nite, but only after long, healthy runs in syndication and on top-tier cable channels. Cosby's still on TBS in the afternoons.
Murphy Brown, meanwhile, pretty much disappeared as soon as it left the air. It's not in the same league.
And Doug: the art episode was even funnier if you knew it was essentially true. 60 Minutes, in a rare moment of puncturing liberal pieties, ran an expose on the pretentiousness of the art world as it stands today. They got pilloried. (My favorite example of the hypocrisy: some artist made a piece that consisted of store-bought four vacuum cleaners in a box. The correspondent -- Safer, I think -- said, "Anybody could do that. I could do that." The critics responded: "Yes; but if you did it, it wouldn't be art." Correspondent: "Why not?" Critics: "Because you're not an artist. He is." The circularity of their logic was entirely behind their comprehension.) Shortly after that, Murphy Brown ran that story. The incidents in that story were very close to the incidents in the 60 Minutes story and in the subsequent debate.
Posted by: UML Guy at January 22, 2005 04:02 PMThat should be "entirely BEYOND their comprehension." I need sleep.
Posted by: UML Guy at January 22, 2005 04:04 PM