It’s already mid-season for network TV and Perfect Couples fill-in, The Paul Reiser Show, lasted just two agonizing episodes before NBC decided to cut its losses early.
Never heard of The Paul Reiser Show? Now you know why. A pseudo-documentary in the vein of HBO’s hit Curb Your Enthusiasm didn’t fly with NBC’s diminished viewership. Not even Curb star Larry David’s guest starring role in the pilot could help resuscitate this dead fish of a primetime show.
The pilot opens with an explanation from Reiser that he’s that Mad About You guy people recognize and his life is pretty swell, but now a decade removed from his hit 90s sitcom, he’s looking for things to fill his time. This is where his friends come in and try and get him to become America’s “favorite new game show host” so Reiser has something to fill out when he gets a form with a box entitled “father’s occupation.” Sound a little too much like a TV-PG Curb Your Enthusiasm rip-off?
Paul was recently seen on Leno, originally booked to promote the show, but held onto the interview because he’s also got a new book to plug. Reiser makes a few questionable comments, including a sarcastic one along the lines of his show’s cancellation as the ‘first bad decision NBC has made,’ which could potentially be seen as a heavy-handed slap toward the Conan/Leno debacle (based on Leno’s over-enthusiastic response), or just a trouncing of NBC, itself.
In the pilot, Reiser tells Larry David that people think he’s likable when really he’s not that great of a guy, which juxtaposes David’s acknowledgement to his own TV appearance as a curmudgeon in spite of the fact that he is actually much nicer in real life. So how much of Reiser’s TV self-reflection is actually true and how much is scripted? It seems odd that Reiser would be out to prove he’s not that likable, so I feel his heavy dose of sarcasm directed at NBC in the Leno interview was an honest retort.
Unheard of for years after his 90s hit, Reiser resurfaced from the grave only to get buried by NBC once again: with a clenched fist poking up from the dirt, realizing it may be his last time on national television, Reiser went down swinging.
Curb Your Enthusiasm has a place in today’s comedy world, but Reiser’s show failed to excel to that level. There was once a place for Paul Reiser’s blend of family-friendly humor on television, but it was called the 90s. Back when NBC was teeming with exorbitant ratings, and supported by shows like Friends, Frasier and Seinfeld, Reiser could thrive. (Though, even then, Mad About You was referenced by Seinfeld‘s George Costanza as torture forced upon him by his girlfriend Susan -even then, Larry David dealt the better hand). But today, not even a TV-MA rating or airtime on a network afloat could breathe the life necessary into The Paul Reiser Show.
