Against Odds, Sitcom Team Gets Last Laugh

Question: What do you get when you put together a cast that includes the lead of last season’s biggest TV sitcom disaster, three other stars from short-lived NBC series, two executive producers who have never created a top show, and some of the most brutally negative reviews of the year?

Answer: a hit.

CBS’ “Yes, Dear,” which several critics predicted would be one of the first casualties of the new fall season, has emerged as the second-highest-rated new network comedy behind NBC’s “Cursed.” The series, which mixes an “Odd Couple” formula with a concept about two young couples and their differing approaches to parenting, has joined forces with three other CBS veteran series, “The King of Queens,” “Everybody Loves Raymond” and “Becker” to form a potent two-hour comedy block on Monday nights.

“Yes, Dear” not only has fared much better than high-profile new comedies with major stars such as “The Geena Davis Show,” “The Michael Richards Show” and “Bette” with Bette Midler. Last Monday, it improved upon its lead-in, “The King of Queens,” both in viewers and the treasured 18-to-49 age demographic, a younger audience than is usually drawn to CBS. It has already helped to kill off its rival competition, NBC’s new family comedy “Tucker,” and has also been picked up for the whole season.

Alan Kirschenbaum and Greg Garcia, the creators of “Yes, Dear,” acknowledge that the show’s current popularity is due in large part to its placement between two hits, “The King of Queens” and “Everybody Loves Raymond.” But they note that new shows given a treasured time slot don’t always benefit. Witness the numerous failed comedies such as “The Single Guy,” “Union Station,” “Stark Raving Mad” and “Cursed” that have been nestled between established hits on NBC’s “Must See TV” Thursday.

“The real trick to staying successful is to be relatable to the audience,” said Garcia. “We want to bring them the things that they can laugh at and relate to. As long as we do that, they’ll keep coming back.”

Added Kirschenbaum: “We never stop agonizing. We have to work up to the faith the network and audience have placed in us.”

Lead Actors Veterans of Short-Lived Series

Few outside the show had faith in “Yes, Dear” with its creative team often cited as hurting its odds for success.

One key factor in that speculation was the casting of Mike O’Malley, star of “The Mike O’Malley Show,” which was greeted with a critical lashing from reviewers and was last season’s most notable comedy failure. (See accompanying story on this page.)

The other male lead was Anthony Clark, best known for starring in the college comedy “Boston Common,” which lasted fewer than two seasons. The female leads were also coming off short-lived series. Liza Snyder was a co-star on NBC’s now canceled “Jesse,” while Jean Louisa Kelly was a principal in the relationship drama “Cold Feet,” which lasted just a few weeks.

And though they had worked steadily on various shows for years, Garcia and Kirschenbaum were not exactly hot Hollywood properties. Garcia, who wrote for “Family Matters” and “On Our Own,” was the co-creator of the 1997 comedy “Built to Last,” which he now affectionately refers to as “the lowest-rated comedy in NBC’s history.” Kirschenbaum, who has directed episodes of “Everybody Loves Raymond” and was the head writer for “Coach” for three seasons, was the creator of the short-lived 1992 Fox comedy “Down the Shore.”

The two producers last year spun their experience as young parents to develop “Yes, Dear,” aware that CBS was looking for a domestic comedy to fill out the Monday night block. Said Kirschenbaum: “We knew that the best domestic comedy developed would get into that Monday night slot. We knew we had the right show to go in there.”

In “Yes, Dear,” Clark and Kelly play first-time parents Greg and Kim Warner, a conservative couple obsessed with being the perfect parents. O’Malley and Snyder play Jimmy and Christine Hughes, the world-weary parents of two. While Greg is strait-laced and a successful businessman, Jimmy is sloppy and unemployed.

Except for one clever scene involving a baby’s first steps on video, most critics blasted “Yes, Dear.”

Wrote TV Guide: “If not for a killer sight gag in the premiere episode . . . there would be nothing in this domestic formula to keep us from demanding custody of the remote.”

David Zurawik of the Baltimore Sun said “I’m thinking two weeks is going to be a long run for this weenie.”

Phil Rosenthal of the Chicago Sun-Times said, “ ‘Yes, Dear’? Not tonight. I have a headache, and this show is it.”

Mark Wigginton of the Oregonian was one of the few with a positive critique, saying the show was “combustible fun” with “some heartfelt laughs and that pleasant aftertaste that suggests that amid the entertainment, you might have actually learned something about the human condition.”

Recalling the critical fallout, Garcia joked, “Yeah, those reviews were good and uplifting, weren’t they?”

He then added, “This is a very hard job. Week after week, you’re cranking out episodes, and a lot of what you’re doing is based on enthusiasm. So it just becomes harder when bad reviews come out, and the people you’re working with start to question their own instincts. Maybe what they thought was funny isn’t funny.”

The producers also found the reviews disturbing since both O’Malley and Clark had been reluctant to join the show in the first place. Garcia theorized that the past failures of shows featuring the cast had an influence on how the show was received.

“I think a lot of reviewers already had their first paragraph written before they even saw the show,” Garcia said. “It was like, ‘This is the cast which failed.’ But shows fail for a lot of reasons.”

And CBS’ Wendy Goldstein, senior vice president of comedy development for the network, believes, “People were looking for this cast to fail because they had these other shows that didn’t make it. Plus Mike’s show was such a public event last season.”

It’s the producers and cast who are laughing now.

“It really doesn’t matter what the critics say. What matters is the people who tune in,” said Clark. “This is my fourth sitcom, and I’ve gained experience on what is expected. I don’t take it too personally. I come from the trailer parks of Virginia, so this is all cake to me.”

Added Snyder: “All that stuff that was written about us before just makes this that much sweeter. You just never know.”

* “Yes, Dear” can be seen Mondays at 8:30 p.m. The network has rated it TV-PG-D (may be unsuitable for young children with special advisories for suggestive dialogue).