Hello, America! Here are your boys Michael J. Fox and
They have had their triumphs, their tribulations, their hits, their flops. But they worked their way into our lives when the world was young, and are stuck there good and tight.
You can probably guess the star of the highly likable "The Michael J. Fox Show" from its title, which in itself hearkens back to an age of purpose-built star-vehicle sitcoms. Its premise is a kind of metaphor for its own existence, mirroring as it does the star's own retirement from and return to work — the necessity that mothered this invention being, of course, his
Here he plays not the beloved actor he is in life but a beloved
"What if I'm not the guy they remember?" he wonders to wife
"You won't be," she answers. "You'll be different. But you'll still be you."
And so he is. Fox, in fact, has been working his way back into the public eye for some time, in bits and pieces — an arc on
The new
Indeed, as the dad in what is in most respects a very traditional sitcom (a new role for the actor), he is a magnet for mockery. His faults — he is foolishly competitive and, as is often the case with sitcom dads, slower on the uptake than the rest of his family — are distinct from his diagnosis.
It is a familiar, exaggerated TV reality. At home: his wife, three kids (woolly-headed, woolly-haired older son Conor Romero, sardonic middle daughter Goglia, precocious smaller son Jack Gore), floundering relative (the excellent Katie Finneran as Fox's sister). At work: eccentric boss (Pierce), a semi-nemesis played by Anne Heche (arriving after a few episodes and well-used). Standard sitcom issue — yet they feel convincingly bound to each other from the start.
Particularly valuable is Brandt, who has been playing Marie Schrader on
You can probably guess the star of "The Crazy Ones" from its title too. This CBS series, from David E. Kelley, proposes the hyperactive Williams, in his first series since 1982, as the mad-genius head of a Chicago ad agency; Sarah Michelle Gellar is his daughter, the company's creative director, though her father seems to be doing most of the creating and directing.
Kelley, of
If Fox at 52 is not the same actor as when he left "Spin City," Williams, 62, has also traveled far from Mork (from Ork). But where Fox seems appealingly both boyish and mature — some of that is just the way he looks, of course — there is a kind of tension between Williams' age and his antics that here produces an air of melancholy, underscored by lines long on nostalgic reverie. Indeed, of the two series, it is the more baldly sentimental.
"My daughter," he says, in a pitch to McDonald's, whose account they might lose. "Sometimes when I look at her I still see my babycakes, my piglet — I was flat broke but I still had enough money to buy her a Happy Meal — it made me look like a king to her." This is as unsettling a monologue as I have heard this fall season.
It is not a hopeless proposition. The pilot, busy as it is — it includes an extended appearance by Kelly Clarkson, who may have more lines than series regular
That may be the point, but it is buried in whimsicality and paeans to "feeling" and leaping into the void. And the stars do feel out of sync. (Williams is more comfortable riffing with James Wolk — "
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'The Crazy Ones'
Where: CBS
When: 9 p.m. Thursday
Rating: TV-14-DL (may be unsuitable for children under the age of 14 with advisories for suggestive dialogue and coarse language)
'The Michael J. Fox Show'
Where:
When: 9 and 9:30 p.m. Thursday
Rating: TV-PG-DL (may be unsuitable for young children with advisories for suggestive dialogue and coarse language)