It's A Phil Spector World
It's Phil Spector's birthday (according to some). Okay, the creator of the Wall Of Sound is inside four walls these days. But I hope, right now, lying on his bunk, he can look out the barred windows and remember the great Christmas music he made.
posted by LAGuy @ 12:19 AM
3 Comments:
I felt there was a drop off in season 2 of "Raising Hope" (so far at least). In dysfunctional family comedies, it seems to me that it is essential you have "normals" who stand in for the audience and obsreve the oddity around them. They also serve as straight men (straight persons?) for the jokes to bounce off.
Like many such comedies, Raising Hope is losing its normals as it proceeds. Sabrina was the normal season one, but in season two she's becoming a neurotic mess.
The same was true in "Everybody Loves Raymond," where the normal, Ray's wife Debra, was sucked into the inanity of the Barone family and turned out repeatedly to be worse than they were. On Raymond, they kept trying to introduce other normals, like Robert's girlfriend Amy, but it just became cumbersome.
Compare The Bob Newhart Show, or Newhart, where Bob's wife was always the normal through every season, which I think worked very well. (Bob always had the veneer of a normal, but when pushed went bizarre).
In contrast, Patricia Heaton from Raymond plays the most neurotic character on "The Middle," which leads me to believe she must like playing nutsy and pushed the Debra character in that direction over the years.
P.S. I think "The Middle" should at least be in the top 25 for 2011.
Thanks for your comments, Denver Guy. You'll note I've moved them to the correct post.
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