Prime-Time Comfort Food

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

By this point in its history, the traditional multi-camera sitcom, filmed before an audience instructed to laugh even when there’s precious little to laugh at, is the sweet old lady of television genres, sitting on a park bench dispensing crumbs of humor to hungry pigeons. But when it works, it works, and no better half-hour entertainment rest stop has yet been devised for the weary, or for that matter, the wicked.

In “Back to You,” the new show on Fox making its premiere on Wednesday, Kelsey Grammer plays Chuck Darling, a masculine, charismatic anchorman (that would be his description), or a “preening gasbag” (that would be someone else’s). When Chuck’s career in Los Angeles flames out in a spectacularly embarrassing on-air snafu that quickly streaks across the vast gutter-universe of the Internet, he is forced to return to the local news show in Pittsburgh, where he started out years ago.

Anxiously awaiting Chuck’s return, which has been trumpeted on the Pittsburgh airwaves as if he were a one-man Rolling Stones — “Chuck Darling is back!” — is Kelly Carr (Patricia Heaton), the co-anchor he left behind 10 years ago when he began his glorious network climb from Pittsburgh to Denver to Minneapolis and, finally, the glittering summit of Tinseltown. Kelly, very much second fiddle when Chuck was her co-anchor, has since become a star in her own right, and naturally feels ambivalent about having to resume second place.

There’s another reason for Kelly to be anxious about Chuck’s return, but it comes enmeshed in what is known as a “plot point,” and I am solemnly sworn to secrecy on the matter. Not only was there a stern warning on Fox’s screener, but there have been mysterious phone calls, thuggish men have approached me on the street, and one outright death threat delivered, just to be sure, in five different languages. I must admit, the plot point in question is pretty good.

Otherwise, “Back to You” is television’s form of comfort food, in which familiarity breeds contentment. The snappy dialogue, for instance: “You look younger than you did 10 years ago,” Chuck gallantly offers when he and Kelly have their first tête-à-tête away from prying office ears and eyes. “You even said that with a straight face,” Kelly counters cynically. “I’m chock-full of Botox,” comes the triumphant reply as the laughtrack brimmeth over.

Then there are those peculiar sitcom touches that always make you wonder if sitcoms are filmed when all the qualified set designers are out of town. Take Kelly’s house, for instance. She’s been living in it for at least a decade, but her living room has less personality than a newly made-up room in a Doubletree Hotel. It’s impossible to believe she’s spent a minute in it, let alone a quarter of her life. (As the show’s unchallenged lead, the unmarried Chuck neatly skirts this problem by choosing to live in hotels. “What can I say? I like a relationship where they ask me to leave my towels on the floor,” he says, exuding typical self-satisfaction.)

“Frasier” veterans Steven Levitan and Christopher Lloyd took pains to create a local newsroom with more than a passing resemblance to the real thing. It would require a category five hurricane heading straight for New York to make me watch the local news, but the smiley-face, thumbs-up cheesiness of the thing does feel authentic.

Both sitcom veterans, Mr. Grammer (“Frasier,” “Cheers,” etc.) and Ms. Heaton (“Everybody Loves Raymond”), know how to squeeze a drop of laughter out of even the least promising line, and deliver a downpour when they’re handed a genuinely funny one. They’re also adept at physical comedy. As they sit down for their first broadcast together, Chuck realizes that Kelly is occupying what used to be “his” chair (the one on the left as you face the screen.) That won’t do, of course. “Look, if it really bothers you …” Kelly says, and before she’s even had time to finish the sentence Chuck’s already moved his chair to her right and shoved her across the screen.

As for the rest of the cast, the stereotypes are as perfectly ordered as the stars in the heavens. Marsh McGinley (Fred Willard) is a dim sportscaster of the old-to-senile school who loves his job but, as he confesses to Chuck, still vomits before every show (“If it ain’t broke…” Chuck replies). Ayda Field (Montana Herrera) is the classically foxy weather girl/ woman (but not meteorologist) who happily trades on her looks and fashionable Latino heritage, wears a skirt the width of a watch band, and feels no compunction about admitting her attraction to powerful men. Ryan Church (Josh Gad) is the chubby, 25-year-old news director recently promoted from the Internet division (where he belongs), while Gary Crezyzewski (Ty Burrell) is the station’s overworked, underappreciated field reporter with a surname only one person in the world bothers to pronounce correctly — him.

Though “Back to You” is hardly the sort of show that will ever need to begin with one of those bewildering five-minute recaps that leave you even more confused about the plot than you already were (“Previously on ‘Back to You’….”), much of the first episode is retrospective, filling us in on the details of the Chuck-Kelly relationship, which worked on air but tended to drive both of them crazy off it.

The good news is that the second episode, which derives most of its comedy from Chuck’s inability to keep a succession of goldfish alive, is better than the first. “Back to You” may be old-fashioned to the point of being retro, but it already looks like it will be around for a long time.


The New York Sun

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