Can Jim Parsons save Matthew Perry’s career?
CBS is piggybacking the premiere of Perry’s newest show, “The Odd Couple,” with the red-hot “Big Bang Theory” on Thursday night. So Perry — whose three previous attempts to star in 🅰his own series have been loud failures — is guaranteed an audience for the first and maybe the second episode of his lates🎀t series.
After that, nostalgia for the🐟 Jack Klugman/Tony﷽ Randall ABC series from the ’70s may play a key role in keeping an audience.
The setup — and 🐼even the theme music — are the same. The canned laughter sounds like it was borrowed from an🥃 old episode of
Perry, at his dissipated peak, plays sportscaster and ag🧜ing ladies man Oscar Madison, whose cheesy idea of ho🐠w to pick up women in his apartment building is to put his own mail in their mailboxes, so they’ll ring his bell to return it.
Not one minute after one of these nꦏei♈ghbors (Leslie Bibb) agrees to come in for a drink — even though the place looks like a pigsty — the bell rings again, with an unexpected visitor: Felix Unger, Oscar’s college buddy and friend of many years, who’s just been kicked out by his wife.
Felix is played b꧅y Thomas Lennon, the one bright spo💃t in this warmed-over enterprise.
When Oscar has the guys over to watch the game, F෴elix prepares a vegan feast (“Gentlemen, start your taste buds”). When Oscar blows up after Felix’s neatnik ways get on his nerves, Felix loses his cool.
“It is no picnic living wit🌟h an inconsiderate slob who is so lazy th🎀at his idea of multi-tasking is peeing in the shower,” he says — adding after falling and hitting his head on the coffee table: “I’m concussed. I know I’m concussed.”
With his high-strung personality and fussbudge🐻t demeanor, F꧋elix may remind you more of — the “Frasier” character who committed grand larceny in the scene-stealing department — than anything Randall ever did. It’s no accident that Joe Keenan, who wrote for “Frasier,” is also an executive producer on “The Odd Couple.”
The strange journey of “The Odd Couple,” from its birth on Broadway and subsequent adaptations for a 1968 Hollywood film and now three TV series (there wa꧒s even a black version called in 1982) is testament to one of the most durable properties in the his🎉tory of entertainment.
This latest production is not completely 𝓰terrible; it just underscores the sad state of affairs on network television, where programmers are seriously hurting for a fresh idea.