TDL’s Sports, Wrestling, & Otherwise

I really dug Cheers and Frasier growing up, so I was happy to see that Kelsey Grammer finally got another gig. Even if he would be playing Frasier Crane on television again, I figured I liked Frasier enough that I’d give it a shot.

Back To You is your standard fare television sit-com set in the newsroom of a television studio. Kelsey Grammer plays Chuck Darling, a news anchor who left his anchor job in Pittsburgh 10 years ago to take a promotion. Eventually, he gets all the way to Los Angeles television before he has a Go F*ck Yourself, San Diego moment. After getting fired, the Pittsburgh television station he left 10 years ago welcomes him back. He returns to find Kelly Carr (played by Patricia Heaton) still womanning the same co-anchor desk he left her with 10 years ago. What he didn’t know is that the one-night stand he had before he left resulted in a baby, played by a fake fifth grader.
Pros

• It’s funny. It made me laugh. I didn’t watch it with a blank expression.
• The newsroom setting should keep it from getting stale. New people can be swapped in and old people swapped out without a lot of explaining.
• Heaton and Grammer had good chemistry in the first episode and each has enough baggage to fill a cargo hold. They work well together as they both have really good timing and delivery.
• Fred Willard!

Cons

• The supporting characters are horrifically stereotyped. The hot Latina weather girl makes jokes about how much she loves sex and how hot she is. There’s only so much mileage the writers can get out of these people.
• I hated Deborah on Everybody Loves Raymond. It got to the point toward the end of the show when I couldn’t even watch it anymore because of her. Later, when Robert’s wife turned out to be Deborah Jr, I could stand it even less. Patricia Heaton might be a really nice person in real life, but I can only see her as the over-reacting, nagging shrew she played on Raymond and, apparently, she plays the same character in this show.
• One can almost plot out the major plot points of the entire series between the two main characters already. They were separated for 10 years and have a 10 year old daughter together. There’s going to be the “job offer in another city” episode, the “will they or won’t they” episode, the “she’s dating another guy and I don’t like how he’s treating out daughter” episode, the “she finds out he’s her father” episode, etc, etc. If they keep the interim episodes funny, this doesn’t matter so much.

Final Thought: It’s a paint-by-numbers sit-com, but for the moment I like it. The DVR has nothing going on Tuesdays at 8pm so it’s attained series recording status. However, I could very quickly drop it if there’s a conflict.