Marci tesday • March 3, 1998
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.OS ANGELES (AP) — “Seinfeld,”
ch is about nothing, is wrapping up
"line-year run covered with glory as
3 most popular sitcom. “Ellen,” a
w,»w that is very much about some-
(%*V,ig, is dying a slow and painful death.
“Seinfeld” isn’t popular because it’s
r nit nothing, and ‘Ellen’ isn’t facing can-
ation because it has a point to make,
difference between the two is more
dor makes best of
lutterfly’ stomach
NEW YORK (AP) — Before show-
up at co-star Jack Nicholson’s
jse for his first rehearsal, Greg
mear was hungry but too nervous
know if he should eat or not.
“So I decided to wolf down a bowl of
aghetti,” Kinnear says in the March
f<ue of Entertainment magazine.
“It was that kind of nervous eating,
read through some scenes, and
u -m Jack said, ‘Would you like some
•r^d' aghetti?’ And I said, ‘Absolutely! I’m
Feu irving! ’ It was uncomfortable eating
” second time, but I dealt with it.”
' ' The ex-host of TV’s Talk Soup re-
^ S vered from the double dinner in
'' ae to co-star as Nicholson’s down-
-his-luck gay neighbor, a perfor-
.ance that won Kinnear a best-sup-
^rting actor nomination.
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fundamental, at least in TV terms: One is
funny, the other isn’t anymore.
“I’m gay, the character’s gay and
that’s the problem everyone has with
the show. It’s just too controversial, no
body wants to deal with it,” star Ellen
DeGeneres said last week on “Enter
tainment Tonight,” the TV program.
She’s right when it comes to the
network. ABC undoubtedly would love
to bid goodbye to the headaches
“Ellen” has brought it — but it could
n’t, and wouldn’t, if the ratings for the
show (9:30 p.m. EST Wednesday)
were high enough.
There is room on sitcoms for mes
sages, sermons, even politics, when they
are the seasoning in the stew. But when
comedy becomes afterthought, too
much is being demanded of viewers.
Plots can revolve around teen-age
drug use (“Home Improvement”) and
drinking (“Boy Meets World” this Fri
day), around cancer (“Murphy
Brown”) and weight bias (“The Drew
Carey Show”) because they are the
exception, not the rule.
The shows also know to follow the
trail blazed by such 1970s TV pio
neers as Norman Lear with “All in the
Family” and Larry Gelbart with “M-A-
S-H”; even racism, death and war can
be dressed up as sitcom fodder with
humor as the sugar coating.
“My take has always been we can
tackle any subject as long as we’re
not preachy, as long as we remember
we’re trying to entertain with it,” says
Bruce Helford, executive producer of
“Drew Carey” and an alumnus of
“Roseanne,” which explored such is
sues as domestic abuse.
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