‘SISTERS’: Final Episode : ‘Sisters’ to Bid Emotional Adieu to Series

Although he’s induced plenty among viewers over the years, don’t look for tears from executive producer Dan Lipman about “Sisters” closing its six-season run on NBC tonight. He never thought it would last this long and, now that it has, he believes it’s time to move on.

“I think there is a life span of a show--it builds, it peaks and then it starts to go down,” says Lipman, who co-created the show with Ron Cowen. “I think we have performed well for NBC--we still get the highest ratings for NBC on a Saturday night. But there are so many channels now. We are so bombarded with new shows that, after a while, the shows that have been on the air lose a little bit of luster. I think it’s hard to maintain something for six or seven years.”

Though never a ratings hit with its low-profile Saturday time slot, “Sisters” built a loyal following of fans hooked on the ever twisting and turning lives--both past and present--of the four Reed sisters: former socialite-turned-talk-show-host Alex (Swoosie Kurtz); the free-spirited, recovering alcoholic Teddy (Sela Ward); the level-headed Georgie (Patricia Kalember); and the career-minded youngest, Frankie (Julianne Phillips).

Several factors contributed to the show’s demise, Lipman says. Ratings were off about 24% from last season, the performers’ contracts were expiring and the show was getting more expensive to produce each season.

Shooting the finale, which finds all the siblings reuniting after their mother, Bea (Elizabeth Hoffman), suffers a stroke, was a bittersweet experience for the cast.

“On the one hand, you are exhilarated,” says Ward, who won an Emmy in 1994 for her performance as sister Teddy. “Everyone is so tired. You’ve been playing the same character for so long and it’s nice to look forward to new opportunities and creatively move on. But I have to tell you, it was so sad. I was so sad. I was driving home in my car with tears in my eyes because six years is a long time.”

“The hours for the last three episodes were pretty rough,” Kalember adds. “I think it really hasn’t sunk in yet with anybody. It will probably sink in next fall when we are not back at work.”

Kurtz recalls that the cast was surprised when they were informed in November that this was the last season for “Sisters.”

“But for me personally, it was, like, the perfect time for the show to end,” she says. “I am the only sister who has done all 127 episodes. I am still enjoying it, but I am not sure how much longer I could have gone on giving it 100%.

“This group of people have become such a family because when you spend so many waking hours, you have your good days and your bad days. You go through such a ride together, such a journey. There’s no longer a polite, social veneer because nobody has the time or energy for that. It is a life-swallowing job.”

That’s why Phillips left the series when her contract ran out last season. “You have no life,” she stresses, adding that it was a “wonderful” experience to return to the show for the finale.

“I had worked so much. I felt like my family was the work situation and I just started getting kind of resentful. I just wanted to do other things.”

All the “Sisters” agree that having their characters evolve over the seasons made it easier for them to endure the 12- to 14-hour days on the set.

“It always helps to do something different,” says Kalember, whose husband, Daniel Gerroll, played Georgie’s malevolent therapist last season. “I think that’s why most actors find long runs very difficult, because audiences tune in to see the same thing every week, which can be very tough sometimes on an actor over a long period of time. It helped to branch Georgie out.”

Alex, Kurtz adds, developed “the way a person really would. I loved her because she started out with all of these superficial values. She was always defined by who she was married to--a socialite wife of a plastic surgeon. We fleshed her out and everything changed.”

As for the secret to the series’ appeal, “I hear different things from different people,” Phillips says. “Some said it was the believability of the relationships--that these four women really loved each other. I used to get letters from women who would say, ‘I am you! You are me! I have three sisters and I am exactly like you.’ ”

“It’s a particular show,” Kalember offers. “It’s really interesting to get a bead on the people who really did get it, because they could be so different. I always assumed it was a certain type of audience, and then you would meet someone who was a totally different type. It wasn’t all women and it wasn’t all women of a certain age. There were a lot of preteen girls for a while.”

Since “Sisters” wrapped last month, Kurtz has been busy making a TV movie. Ward just completed a feature film, “Fellow Americans,” with Jack Lemmon and James Garner, and is set to shoot a TV movie. Kalember is awaiting the birth of her third child in June and Phillips is set to do an independent feature in July. Lipman and Cowen have sold an idea to NBC for a new dramatic series.

Kurtz says fans will definitely be shedding more than a few tears during the two-hour conclusion tonight. “I think it’s a five-hankie finale,” she says. “In true ‘Sisters’ style, though, someone just never dies. They always come back and have better scenes than when they are alive.”

* “Sisters” airs 9-11 tonight on NBC (Channel 4).

IT’S THE END TOO:

Other series finales this month: CBS’ “Murder, She Wrote” bows out May 19 after 12 seasons; NBC’s “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” concludes its sixth season on May 20.