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Dear John aired from October 1988 until July 1992 on NBC
For more on Dear John go to the mini-page right here at Sitcoms Online
A Review from The New York Times
Review/Television; Life After Divorce, in the 'Taxi' Spirit
By JOHN J. O'CONNOR
Published: October 6, 1988
John Lacey, a New York teacher married for 10 years, comes home to find a ''Dear John'' letter with the news that his wife has run off with his best friend. ''Must have thrown you for a loop,'' says his nasty brother-in-law, sneering. ''And with your best friend yet!'' At the urging of his sister, John decides to visit a singles support group in a community center in Rego Park, Queens. The brother-in-law is puzzled, wondering aloud, ''Why would he want to hang around with a bunch of other pathetic losers?''
So begins ''Dear John,'' being shown tonight at 9 on NBC, and, in the well-established American tradition, based on a BBC sitcom. This new series is being brought to you by many of the wonderful people whose credits include ''Taxi'' and ''Cheers.'' The executive producer is Ed Weinberger. James Burrows is the director. John is played by Judd Hirsch, distinguished ''Taxi'' alumnus. And in the crucial area of scheduling, after tonight's special preview NBC will put ''Dear John'' on at 9:30 P.M., immediately after the solidly established ''Cheers.''
The premiere, written by Bob Ellison and Peter Noah, moves quickly to the community center and its One-to-One Club. Here is the enclosed-environment equivalent of a taxi dispatch station or a bar in Boston, complete with still another set of delightfully oddball citizens. Actually, John starts out by mistakenly walking into an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting across the hall. ''My name is John,'' he finally confesses, ''and I'm in the wrong room.'' In typical Weinberger-Burrows fashion, the joke is later given an even better spin.
One-to-One is run by a formidable Englishwoman named Louise Mercer (Jane Carr), who insists that her purpose is not to pry, but then inevitably opens up her question period asking, ''Any sexual problems?'' Most prominent among those in attendance is the ebulliently slimy Kirk (Jere Burns), who is obsessed with the possibility of making out and who assures the appalled John, ''We're gonna get our turkeys tetrazzinied.''
Then there is Ralph (Harry Groener), who hasn't seen his Bulgarian bride since their wedding reception. The irrepressible Kirk offers his consolation, ''Why pour yourself in the dumper over some ugly Commie chick?''
Will John return to this peculiar womb? Well, there is always Kate (Isabella Hofmann), who has difficulty phrasing intelligent questions but is indisputably an attractive woman. Tune in next week. In fact, based on the number of laughs generated in this pilot, tune in for the next several weeks. With Mr. Hirsch and his first-rate co-stars in command, ''Dear John'' is likely to be around for a long while.
A Review from USA TODAY
TV PREVIEW/BY MONICA COLLINS
'John proves laughter is the best therapy'
The wife just walked out, leaving you for your best friend. You want to leap off a tall building. And, buddy, you're not superman, just a humble schoolteacher in Queens. You're alone and lonely, emotionally bankrupt, scared, bewildered, rejected, forlorn. You're a mess.
Is this anyway to begin a new TV comedy?
You bet. Dear John could well become a classic.
Out of pathos comes robust humor, jokes born of immediate identification-shared alienation , optimism amid broken dreams and bad memories , the need for comradeship that somehow drives us onward. Dear John taps into that desire to sympathize with and champion the underdog-a rich veign for the most memorable TV comedies. And Dear John gives us a wonderful underdog.
Judd Hirsch-floppy of face and weary of spirit-is John Lacey, the cuckold who gets the bad news. His wife leaves a note: Farewell, chump. Live on frozen dinners and frozen feelings now.
Hirsch could not fit the character better. He looks and talks the way John should.
John elicits pity, but he is not pitiful. He seems determined to heal himself. He joins a single/divorced support group.
This group-an equal opportunity sitcom situation for the emotionally battered-will form the series' broken heart week after week. Even after one episode, you can tell the characters who will emerge from this ensemble: Kirk ( Jere Burns), the would-be stud whose gold chains hide his battered pride, and Louise ( Jane Carr), the group's seemingly veddy propper leader on sexual problems.
Dear John has it all. Bruised nobility, winking grace and a generosity of intent. You watch and you're moved to laughter.
And moved even beyond that.
An Article About Dear John from October 1988
ON THE TUBE
'Dear John'
'Taxi' driver Judd Hirsch steers a new course
By Ian Harmer
Entertainment News Service
It's taken two years for actor Judd Hirsch's new NBC sitcom, " Dear John," to get on the air...and like all the viewers who remember him fondly from " Taxi," he hopes the long wait will turn out to have been worth it.
The show is the latest in a long line of Americanizations of British TV hits. But it wasn't the drawn-out process of negotiating for U.S. rights to the show that caused the delay. It was producer Ed Weinberger's determination to grab Hirsch for the lead role. But more on that later.
Weinberger and Hirsch worked together for five successful seasons on " Taxi," and the actor confirms that both were anxious to see if they could recreate the same chemistry.
" No one knows exactly what makes a show a hit-even the audience doesn't know. It's a cliche to say it, maybe, but if we knew for certain how to make that special magic, none of us would have to waste our time on flops."
Weinberger and Hirsch have both had disappointments since " Taxi"; the producer created " Mr. Smith," a series about a talking monkey, and watched a smart-mouthed furry alien called " ALF" rise from its ashes without any credit coming his way, while the actor was brieftly seen in an unwatched opus called " Detective in the House."
Weinberger then went on to co-create " The Cosby Show" and " Amen," and Hirsch, co-star of the current critically accclaimed movie " Running on Empty," has his fingers crossed that " Dear John" will turn out to be the third-time charm for his old friend.
The character Hirsch plays thinks he's happily married until he gets a " Dear John" letter from his wife. He turns to singles bars and group therapy to help him cope with his feeling of rejection.
Hirsch says with a wide grin that he didn't need to do any serious research for his new show because in real life he has been " successfully divorced."
" I didn't need to go into therapy personally, but I didn't have to do any technical research because therapy isn't what this show is about-it's about coping with life and emotions, and we've all done that.
" Dear John isn't about singles bars either, but I've been in a few of those. One of the things I love about this show is that I could play just about any one of the other characters, although the women would be a bit of a stretch.
" They're all drawn from life, except that their situations in the show are probably a little more absurd than most people's reality, because otherwise there would be nothing different or entertaining about what we're doing."
When his friend Weinberger was first attempting to get " Dear John" on the air, Hirsch was enjoying rave reviews and packed houses in the play " I'm Not Rappaport," an on-and-off Broadway success that also went on tour and kept him out of the tv marketplace for months.
He had hoped to take the play to London, but Britain's actors union wouldn't permit it. Renewing his credentials as a prime-time star with the help of a British TV import would be an ironic consolation prize.
" Ed says he wanted me for the lead from the very beginning and that the guy who created the show back in England wrote it with me in mind," says Hirsch. " But I don't believe any of that-I know he talked to a whole bunch of other actors, and that Arnold Schwarzenegger was one of them."
He's kidding of course.
The London-made version of Hirsch's new show ran for only 13 weeks, in spite of the fact that it was one of the top series on British TV. Hirsch and Weinberger are hoping for a much longer stint on NBC, where their show airs on Thursday nights.
" They do things a lot diffferently over there: They make 13 shows and wrap everything up, and if the audience likes what they did, they do another 13...maybe. Here, if 13 shows is all the network will give you, you could be in big trouble.
" Sure, I'd like another long-running series, because the joy of TV is that it doesn't prevent you from doing other things. I enjoy theater and I do movies once in a while, and if 'Dear John' runs a long time, it won't take me out of circulation-it'll just make my schedule, a little more complicated," he says.
" I think the show has a good chance. The idea of it is funny, and the cast we've brought together is terrific-a crazy bunch of people who aren't at all alike but who go together perfectly. " Taxi" had the same thing going for it. We were all different people, but the idea that each of us helped with the other's problems was believable on screen because things were exactly that way when we were being ourselves.
" Being funny is no fun at all if you don't enjoy your work and the people you do it with. I got a big kick out of ' Taxi,' and right now I feel the same way about ' Dear John'. "
Here's an article about Jere Burns from USA TODAY published in November 1988.
Jere Burns, a new lovable lout
By Tom Green
USA TODAY
Hollywood-Jere Burns has an inkling he's getting famous because people are starting to stop him and say, " Hey! You're that *******on tv!"
Indeed he is. Burns is boorish Kirk on Dear John, NBC's new Thursday night comedy ( 9:30 EST/PST) based on a divorce support group and starring Judd Hirsch. Kirk is a liar whose loose lips have helped make newcomer Burns TV's flashiest new second banana.
" I am really looking forward to growing with this guy. Where can you go but up?"
He's a bit of a sensation in the role because he is so far removed in real life from this guy who takes himself so seriously in producer Ed ( Taxi) Weinberger's latest sitcom.
Burns has done very little comedy. He's better known for playing dark, crazy psychos.
And his personal lifestyle couldn't be any further from Kirk's. Burns is married , has three kids and lives in deepest suburban Los Angeles.
Boston-reared, the 30ish Burns ( " I want to keep Kirk and therefore be a mystery," he says) has performed in experimental Shakespearean theater in New York and in Sam Shephard plays in Chicago.
He had to be prodded to read for Dear John even though he thought the script was hilarious.
" I'd heard they were looking for a Danny DeVito type. I was blond-haired and much younger than they expected. I just threw it out there because I felt there was no chance they were going to cast me."
Kirk has close to zero sensitivity when it comes to women-he calls them " broadskis"-but women seem to be laughing at the character.
" I think it's because of his vulnerability. You see it's coming from something other than malice-a childlike sort of ignorance and ineptitude-and you can't dislike a person for that."
He will become more sympathetic in future episodes, Burns says.
" My hope is that Kirk was really never married or divorced or any of that. He just ends up in that group. That's the way I want it to evolve."
An Article from The New York Times
ANATOMY OF A Sitcom
By LINDA BLANDFORD:
Published: April 2, 1989
OUT OF THOUSANDS OF SITUATION COMEDIES PITCHED in Hollywood each television season, few succeed. This year, there are three new hits: ''Roseanne,'' large, noisy, the tabloid of sitcoms; ''Empty Nest,'' full of lunatic, cheery farce; and an unusual winner, a quiet, downbeat comedy with an impeccable pedigree, ''Dear John.''
In a medium traditionally peopled by miraculously happy families (''The Bill Cosby Show,'' ''Family Ties''), ''Dear John'' is about a support group of needy and anxious singles - mostly divorced - who meet in a drab community center in outer Queens. It is about losers, albeit dreamers - hardly the stuff of a network's happy half-hours. And yet, against the odds, it comes in week after week in the magical top 15 ratings.
STAGE 27 ON THE PARAMOUNT STUDIOS LOT IS HUGE, DARK AND still. Busy Hollywood days outside go unnoticed. Inside is a world of its own: part theater, it is drafty, shabby, full of dust and dead ashtrays, pools of light and dark corners. It is part prison with 16-hour days and regulars talking of life ''on the outside.'' It is home, too. Amid the sticky dishes of buns and caramel corn, the staff of ''Dear John'' toil through the long week to capture the sparkle and life that might draw viewers to NBC at 9:30 on Thursday night -Thursday after Thursday.
At 11 o'clock on a recent Monday morning, the first meeting of a new episode is about to start. The script appears on thick white paper. It is called a first draft but it has already been through countless incarnations. Each future revision appears on a new color: pink, blue, yellow and even, on thorny weeks, a last-minute lilac. This is to be a lilac week. In television, they are fond of saying that anyone can do a movie: you only have to do it once. The real test, they say, is here in this bare script, so spare that five lines is a monologue.
The actors are already on stage, hair awry, noses dripping with heavy colds, faces scrubbed. The talk is of baby showers, new puppies and mortgages: the small change of people unexpectedly growing close. The show is too new, its success too untrustworthy for there to be much glossiness or false charm about its stars. But who, in the end, would not be spoiled? The numbers defy imagination. Over 27 million people watch ''Dear John.'' In television, an audience of only 15 million - the population of many nations - can mean failure and rejection.
The smell of theater still hangs over the company. The production schedule calls forth memories of summer stock: washed-out Monday mornings, a new play each week, underrehearsed and overworked, performed Friday nights for the cameras and an audience of 300 on uncomfortable, narrow bleachers.
Unexpectedly for a sitcom, ''Dear John's'' five regular cast members are all stage performers. Jere Burns, the insensitive and bigoted Kirk, was in Sam Shepard's ''True West'' with the Steppenwolf Company. Louise, the bossy group leader with a prurient interest in other people's sex lives, is played by Jane Carr. She came to Los Angeles first in ''Nicholas Nickleby'' with the Royal Shakespeare Company. (''Oh, this isn't very different really . . . .'') Isabella Hofmann, the gentle and elusive Kate, was with Second City in Chicago. Harry Groener, the owlish and naive Ralph, won Tony nominations for his work in a revival of ''Oklahoma'' and in ''Cats.''
The show's anchor is Judd Hirsch. He plays John Lacey, a good-hearted English teacher, still baffled that his loving blonde wife left him for his best friend. If anyone should swagger into this cozy, smoke-filled Monday, it should be Hirsch, who has received a Tony for ''I'm Not Rappaport'' on Broadway, an Oscar nomination for ''Ordinary People'' and two Emmys for his acting in television's legendary series ''Taxi.''
Hirsch, though, is a trouper. His face, given the context, is massively unassuming, wrinkled, imperfect. In Los Angeles, few such faces escape unrevised. Actors dream of being Redford or even Hoffman; few dream of being Judd Hirsch, as he well knows.
''For Chrissake, where did they dig you up?'' Hirsch bounds in to hug a worn and untidy man with baggy and lugubrious eyes. Noam Pitlik is the director of the week, one of that inner circle of sitcom ''traffic cops'' - a hundred episodes of ''Barney Miller,'' many of ''Taxi.'' The director as auteur - the vision of feature films - is not the way of television. Once Pitlik hoped for movies (''When I was more ambitious and less old'') but he has settled for this, the smaller glory of working among friends. Union minimum per half-hour episode is $11,644. Word on the set has it that Pitlik earns more than twice that amount: comforting enough for a Hebrew teacher's son who grew up in Depression Philadelphia.
Pitlik, nice as he is, is not the fulcrum. No one jumps to attention because he is here. The power, clearly, lies elsewhere. A long trestle table has been set up onstage and silent hands have arranged around it scarlet deck chairs with writers' and producers' names on them. All through the week, these chairs materialize and disappear. A line of them here, another there - and it soon becomes evident that when they are set up, writers and producers are about to descend. Actors have to pull up their own chairs.
The writers arrive now: a procession of writers, thin, lanky and young writers; roly-poly and even younger; tall, lanky and old, little and big. The cast calls them the Junta. The procession has about it something of Gilbert and Sullivan. The self-consciousness, perhaps; the slight hint of condescension in the air. Certainly, only Hirsch's wardrobe designer outdresses them: she is a raven-haired, jewelry-clanking beauty, who darts in now and again to bring a whiff of Hollywood to this homely proceeding.
The atmosphere has changed now. The laughs are more contrived, there is a tension and edginess. The actors were given a dressing-down not so long ago for having an ''attitude problem.'' The writers complained that cast members were not trying hard enough to ''sell'' their scripts in the crucial Monday morning reading, not trying to make the jokes funny, not showing respect for the words - and, by implication, proper respect for those who wrote them.
Writers, as everyone knows, are the lackeys of the film industry. (The starlet joke goes: ''She was so dumb, she slept with the writer.'') The exception is situation comedy. They call it ''the voice,'' ''the melody'' and every successful show has one. Even when it comes with a star such as Bill Cosby or Roseanne Barr, it is the writers' words that give breath to the voice, inner pulse to the melody. It has turned the best writers into the princes of television and made little writers into little gods.
DEAR JOHN'' WAS created for NBC and Paramount by one of the masters of situation comedy, Ed. (as in Edwin) Weinberger. He is one of the last of a special group: the Mary Tyler Moore alumni. Other groups of writers may have been more flamboyant, but it was the MTM years that proved the touchstone.
The Mary Tyler Moore Show developed a school of comedy based not on one-liners or broad jokes but on character, dark touches, stories, sadness and a wealth of acting talent. MTM was like an excellent collection of short stories, the limelight fading in and out on Mary, or those around her, at will. There was Cloris Leachman as Phyllis, Valerie Harper as Rhoda, Ted Knight as Ted Baxter, Ed Asner as Lou Grant. Where difficult issues were dealt with - Lou Grant's separation and divorce, for instance - the show was funny without being simple-minded. Ed. (his punctuation) Weinberger started writing for MTM in 1972. In 1978, he went on to create ''Taxi'' - a crew of taxi drivers hanging out in a huge garage in New York: losers but dreamers.
''Taxi'' had its own richness. In a wire-mesh cage above the taxi drivers, the mean, abusive Louie De Palma (Danny DeVito) strutted and scourged. The cabbies were a textured and mismatched bunch: a burned-out hippie preacher, a struggling boxer, an East European emigre and, in their midst, Judd Hirsch as Alex, the middle-aged Everyman. In these people, in this unlikely setting, the life force could be sensed at work. And part of it was Ed. Weinberger. Edwin Weinberger arrives last this Monday morning. He always arrives last. He is a chaotic-looking man with the face of a chronically anxious badger and the long, flying, silvery hair of a man in his 50's who wishes there was more of it. He hides behind thick spectacles tinted brown, a glimmer lurking still of the brilliant Columbia undergraduate who expected to teach 17th-century literature, but who dropped out to sell jokes to nightclub comedians. Long ago, he served his apprenticeship - monologues for Johnny Carson, jokes for Bob Hope in Vietnam, for Dick Gregory in Mississippi, for Dean Martin specials.
With his partner Stan Daniels (a Rhodes Scholar at Magdalene College, Oxford, and philosophy don manque), he was half of a famous writing team. Picture these two introverted and cerebral men, Daniels painfully writing in longhand, Weinberger pacing to and fro looking for the bizarre moment, the wild card. Weinberger no longer writes scripts as such: he runs, owns, produces. (''When you get to be Ed Period,'' an insider remarks, ''the world says you are too big to write.'') This is not to say that ''Dear John'' is not his in the creative sense. He found the show on English television and brought the idea to America. The differences are interesting: the other was cruel and quick in the British way; its John was a whining loser. Weinberger's show is warmer, kinder, more to do with fighting back and reaching out, with life's awkward second act. His John is not a victim as much as a man permanently surprised by life, peering out at it and hoping to be touched by it. (''You're so good,'' Kate wails at him, drunkenly trying to get him into bed. ''I'm sorry. I don't mean to be,'' he immediately apologizes.) It is a gentle, shy comedy, often touching -and Ed. Weinberger's voice, confused at the mess of life, is in there somewhere.
Every joke and bit of business goes through his personal sieve as he paces around, clutching his large cigar. When he arrives for this first actors' reading, there is not a ''hello,'' as there will not be a ''goodbye.''
ACT ONE:
John: ''Come on, Kate.
What do you say? It's the game of the season -Knicks and Lakers - and someone gave me floor seats at half court.''
Kate: ''To be honest, John, I think football is an incredibly stupid game.''
Ed. paces. Is it too obvious? Is it patronizing to let Kate, the good-looking redhead play for the simple laugh? On the other hand, is it obvious enough? Is it not very middle-class and L.A. to assume that out there, beyond the San Fernando Valley, everyone knows their basketball from football?
Approach it from another angle, he suggests.
''It's great,'' says John now. ''You're so close to the action that the players' sweat sometimes hits you right in the face.''
Kate: ''John, do me a favor. Ask me again when you don't have such good seats.''
In a page and a half, each character must be set. Kate, holding herself back slightly; John, turning hopefully in all directions. Ralph, the neurotic bumbler, gets a turn at the tickets:
Ralph: ''I'd love to, but I should warn you, if there's going to be a lot of people, there's a good chance I could break out in hives, hyperventilate, go all funny-colored and, most likely, faint.''
Louise turns the offer down with a very sexy shiver: ''Mmm . . . tall men running around in their underwear. . . . I'd love to dear, but I'm busy tomor-row night.'' Kirk, eyes aglitter, angles for an invitation.
By Friday, each of these tiny speeches will have been tried this way and that, struck out, rewritten, shortened, moved aside - worried at by Ed. Period, stubbornly looking for the word or two that sets alight the unheard laughter.
No wonder the actors dance around Weinberger after this first reading. It is not just his well-known temper that they fear: it is that no one on his staff is his size anymore. Once, in the MTM or ''Taxi'' days, he was surrounded by talent. Others, who were as clever, as brilliant, have moved on, among them, James L. Brooks, to ''Broad-cast News'' and other films, and Stan Daniels, to being top writer and director of other television projects. (For old-time sakes, he has also directed five episodes of ''Dear John.'')
ACT TWO:
Wednesday. This week's episode is ''on its feet,'' taking shape on Stage 27. Lines come and go. (''My niece's preschool is doing a production of 'The Iceman Cometh' '' did not last long.) The Junta sweeps in and out for run-throughs. The actors stay, patiently working and reworking each line, each word. They sniffle and cough, comparing flu remedies. By now, they are on the third rewritten script. They shake their heads as weary teachers do over yet more splodgy essays from the third grade. ''Judd, let me ask you,'' Harry Groener sighs. ''Who changed the line from 'Oh, my God' to 'Yikes!' '' A pause. ''I'm just trying to figure out the process.'' Hollow laughter all round.
Judd Hirsch is in a remarkably good mood. The guest star this week is an old friend, Cleavon Little, who co-starred with him in ''I'm Not Rappaport,'' a comedy about two old men, one Jewish, one black. They hope to bring subtlety to their scenes together. The problem is that subtlety in sitcom is negotiable: 22 minutes, two acts, 40 or so sparse pages.
Cleavon Little plays a gay man who falls in love with John Lacey. ''We said, 'What if we did a ''Fatal Attraction''? ' '' said the staff writer David Hackel, who wrote the original script. ''We said, 'What if we made him gay? What's the funniest situation we can think of? How can we make the character of John Lacey squirm?' '' Did he research the subject, given the sensitivity of gay men, let alone blacks? ''Well, I run in the valley three times a week with a writer whose partner is gay. I don't want to be offensive - I want to be real.''
Weinberger and Hirsch at least understand other, more complicated arenas. Hirsch tells the story of his first part on Broadway, as the ethnic telephone man in ''Barefoot in the Park'' and of longing to read for the handsome lawyer leading man. He tells of the agent who said he was too ''regional'' for commercials. He chain-smokes when he can; when he is angry, he mocks the world - and himself most of all.
''I'm not sure I'm not selling myself down the river doing this, I'm not sure Federico Fellini isn't saying, 'I'm not going to have that guy because he's on television.' '' He started his career, he says, being offered ''the miserable man, the underbellied character in even seedier circumstances.'' Enough remains of the early Judd Hirsch to know how John Lacey feels going home at nights to the sofa bed in desolate Queens.
Weinberger long ago embraced the silkiness of Los Angeles success: the house at the beach, the gated estate in town, the Greek-goddess actress-wife (Carlene Watkins), the children's birthday party with valet parking. But he still needs to need more. ''By any normal, decent standards,'' he says, ''the money is absurd, but I suppose I'm the product of the worst aspects of our society. No matter how much it is, it never seems enough.''
And somewhere in that sentence is the voice that comes through in his comedy: the little man, self-deprecating, whose inner voice colored the darker moments of ''Taxi'' as they do now of ''Dear John.'' He is still the tragic clown, the lunatic funny man in a band of WASP's, the insecure, complicated Jew, only son of a butcher in Philadelphia.
WEINBERGER HAS learned the other stuff, the producing and dealing. (''Producing,'' says Bob Ellison, a producer of ''Dear John,'' another MTM veteran, ''is the punishment for writing well. Producing is screaming into the phone: 'How much does she want!' '') Weinberger makes the show for Paramount, who sells it to NBC; he will share in the profits. The problem is that it is no longer enough to have a modest hit. The stakes have gone too high for that. James L. Brooks (of MTM and ''Taxi'') won Oscars for ''Terms of Endearment.'' James Burrows and Glen and Les Charles (who worked with Weinberger on ''Taxi'') made many millions from their television show ''Cheers.''
The money is only part of it, though. It is proof, manifestation: the real longing is to be courted, to be appreciated, to be more than filling between commercials. James Burrows was profiled in GQ, the men from ''Family Ties'' and ''Cosby'' were in People.
Weinberger asks too many questions of himself to submit to many from others. ''Dear John'' is not his only show, for instance. He also created another television hit sitcom, ''Amen.'' Gossip has it that he started the show, set in a raucous black church, as a ''black Cosby Show'' in a fit of pique after creating and leaving the original. ''Do you think it was arrogant?'' he asks. ''Maybe it was. Maybe it was just stupid. Is it being condescending? Hell, I'm scared to death of it.''
It is one of those knotty contradictions: the black show run by white, middle-aged, middle-class men, as if the world of inner-city pain, of anger and history had been edited out, painted over. In this enclosed world, it seems at times as if there are only cheery rooms with simple colors and brash lighting and fun, fun, fun. There is an inherent and colossal innocence to sitcom life, an innocence that ''Taxi'' and now ''Dear John'' have tinged slightly and nervously with ''reality.'' ''You're doing lonely,'' says the doleful Weinberger of his new show ''and America doesn't have much affection for losers.''
THE CHALLENGE this week is to make a gay man's unrequited love lighter, funnier and more convincing all at the same time. Fortunately, the director Noam Pitlik is liked by the struggling actors. He has acted in his time and he even says ''please'' and ''thank you,'' unheard words here. He is extremely delicate with them and it is just as well. At the end of Act One, Cleavon Little has to kiss Hirsch as he declares his love. Full on the mouth, the script has it, and Hirsch gamely goes along. (The only resentment he shows is for stupid bits of business: ''I don't do silly, I don't do hee hee hee, hah hah hah,'' as he puts it.) They try it one way, they try it another. They try it in rehearsal, they try it in run-through. ''You've got to make it more playful,'' Weinberger calls to Little suddenly. He has, uncharacteristically, left himself open. ''Show him, Ed., show him,'' come the calls from the ranks.
In that moment of ribbing, the curtain lifts and the real glue shows: the camaraderie, the chumming around with the guys, the maleness of this world, a place where those who shy from feelings can release them in humor. For an instant, Weinberger is a small, awkward boy again; he blushes and blusters. ''What do you think, I'm afraid?'' he scoffs defiantly. ''I'm not afraid to kiss a guy.'' The bravado, the wanting to be as big as the other guys - the playground toughs when he was young, the movie moguls now that he is big. All those sides of him have been in his work, and are still.
Weinberger does not let Little kiss him, of course. He is too tense these days for the spontaneous gesture, unless it is wrapped in something safe, like anger or laughter. It is Judd Hirsch who finally stops acting as the hired hand and steps over the magic line between set and stage, from actors' place to writers' turf. He takes off his glasses and talks to the line of personalized directors' chairs. He pleads for them to write in some fun, some embarrassment, a moment that can be soft and beautiful.
As with any good performance, the response is electric. For the first time in a week, there is total silence on stage - not through tension or resentment but because everyone is moved. So they try it another way. Little, for that second, is a lonely man reaching out for his life, trying to offer affection. The kiss is long, deep, caring -and full on the mouth. There is a long, long still moment afterward. ''Oh,'' wails a voice in the darkness by the bleachers. ''It's so real at this moment that I don't want to laugh. And that's terrible.''
IT IS FRIDAY EVENING, time to record the show that will first go out in mid-February and, if the heavens are kind, will live to run again and again in repeats and syndication. Some 120 prime rib dinners have been served. Some shows are stingy with crew food: ''Dear John'' prides itself on being a class act. But it means 120 bodies milling around during the show: cameras, cables, booms, pot-bellied carpenters, clean vice presidents from network and Paramount.
Backstage, Kirk practices one of his big moments: ''Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. In short, whoa.'' Another way, possibly. ''Who, whoa. . . .'' Sitcom is not unlike too large a host of angels dancing on the head of a pin. It is amazing when it works at all. ''If something appears not good enough,'' says the producer Peter Noah huffily, ''maybe it is because it is hard to do, not because everyone is a moron.''
It is the eternal contradiction of television sitcom: the gossamer of comedy relies on an apparatus that is as unwieldy as a truck. There is the frantic need of networks for ratings and shares (''Dear John'' hovers between 10th and 14th place and a 20 percent to 25 percent share of the audience), the bombardment of commercials, the creative teamwork that has everyone chip in, the watering down, the coarsening and flattening out.
Somehow the actors have to survive all this, have to bring life, color and spontaneity to the support group in the shabby Queens community center in which they sit and talk. Each actor has his own solution: Jere Burns, as the obnoxious Kirk, uses his icy blue eyes to sneer at the newcomer's gayness and blackness. He uses gesture and energy. He buttons and unbuttons his jacket, twitches and darts. ''You know, Ralphie,'' he leers, unbidden. ''He's light in his loafers . . . got a little extra bounce in his boots . . . a little too much air in his Nikes.'' Cleavon Little's Tony turns bitterly to John: ''You will let me know when they get to the supportive part,'' he says quietly.
Jane Carr, the Shakespearean veteran, brings a heaving bosom and a robust delight in sex (''Are there any . . . er . . . sexual problems?'' is her catch line). Harry Groener as Ralph hugs his hysteria and bewilderment to himself. His feeling is of barely contained, almost puppyish eagerness. Isabella Hofmann is careful to balance all this lunacy with a very special, almost fluid grace. Hirsch and Little simply respond to the audience, for they are theater men in their bones. They sense the affection for them in those darkened, uncomfortable bleachers, and play out to it, beyond the cameras and paraphernalia.
''I love you in spite of your faults,'' Little says to Hirsch and kisses him playfully - on his large, friendly nose. The kiss gets the largest laugh so far of the season. Embarrassment and resentment are instantly dissolved. Just as Weinberger said they would be.
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