Sitcoms Online Photo Galleries - Jenny: Ad

Jenny ran from September 1997 until January 1998 on NBC.

Jenny McCarthy became a media sensation during 1996 as the sexy, aggressive co-host of MTV's popular game show Singled Out. After considerable exposure ( including a Playboy centerfold), she turned up in this cheerful but short-lived NBC sitcom as a small town girl from Utica, New York, who inherited a 70's style bachelor pad in Hollywood from her late father and decided to go Hollywood.Moving in with her equally adventurous best chum Maggie ( Heather Paige Kemp), she immediately encountered 2 young, goofy, wannabe film-makers who were living in the guest house-Max ( Rafer Weigel ), an inept womanizer, and Coop ( Dale Godboldo), his slightly more sensible partner in " Pendulum Films." Even more surprising were the tapes left behind by her dad, whom she had never known. Guy had been a colorful B-movie actor in the 70's, renowned for his huge ego and skirt-chasing ways and the tapes were little video letters to Jenny about having fun in life. Bubbly Jenny and loyal Maggie took his advice and shared slapstick adventures as they learned their way around Tinseltown, looking for work and having a good time, in stories filled with wild parodies on Hollywood stereotypes.

The over-the-top tapes from Guy ( actor George Hamilton, having the time of his life) were the best thing about the show, but U.S. viewers did not get to see what eventually happened. NBC pulled the plug on Jenny after only 10 episodes had aired but Paramount Studios continued production in anticipation of the series being picked up by UPN. In an unaired episode seen only in foreign markets, Guy showed up, not dead but merely missing, and " Disco Dad" became a partner in the girls' escapades.

A Review from Variety

Jenny
((Sun. (28), 8:30-9 p.m., NBC))
By RAY RICHMOND

Taped in Hollywood by Mark & Howard Prods. and MTV Prods. in association with Paramount Network TV. Executive producers, Mark Reisman, Howard Gewirtz; producers, Stevie Ray Fromstein, Lori A. Moneymaker; supervising producers, Ellen Byron, Lissa Kapstrom, Joshua Sternin, Jeffrey Ventimilla; director, Andy Ackerman; writers, Reisman, Gewirtz; director of photography, George La Fountaine.

Cast: Jenny McCarthy, Heather Paige Kent, Dale Godboldo, Rafer Weigel, George Hamilton, Eric McCormack.

You've seen her on MTV's "Singled Out." You've seen her in Playboy. Now, introducing Jenny McCarthy in the role she was born to play: small-town yokel-turned-Hollywood mover and jiggler. It's Jenny McCarthy: The Sitcom, and it isn't quite as painful as you might fear. Already, it's the funniest comedy ever made about a coupla dopey white chicks from Utica, N.Y.
"Jenny" also represents a network primetime rarity in that the pilot is far more entertaining than the second episode, which finds McCarthy (as Jenny McMillan) and Heather Paige Kent (as her lifelong pal Maggie) getting their tongues pierced and attending a trendy A-list party with --- get this --- swollen tongues.

"The Mary Tyler Moore Show" was never like this.

That said, there's something agreeably quirky about the antagonistic, gal-bonding interaction between McCarthy and Kent, as if they actually (gasp) enjoyed working together. And the reshot pilot boasts a genuinely inspired performance by George Hamilton as, well, a dead guy.

Hamilton had been commissioned to shoot a cameo as McCarthy's long-estranged, and late, ham-actor father Guy Hathaway, seen in a videotaped will. But he was such a stitch that he will now be seen on more tapes, including one in episode two that shows him in the 1970s as a pathetic would-be disco king crooning "I Will Survive." It's wondrous self-parody, proving that death can be just the thing to bring a career back to life.

Of course, this is supposed to be McCarthy's show. She got it because she has been able to work past her centerfold roots by being that rarest of rarities: a blond bombshell who also is just plain daffy. In America, this qualifies a performer as multi-faceted.

Indeed, McCarthy shimmies through the opening two segs of "Jenny" by playing off the image of a 1990s Carole Lombard wannabe. She predictably overacts in the pilot, which sets up her inheritance of a cheesy Hollywood Hills bachelor pad from daddy and straight-away move to Hollywood with the wisecracking Maggie in tow.

Also filling space in the pilot script from executive producers Mark Reisman and Howard Gewirtz are Cooper (Dale Godboldo) and Max (Rafer Weigel), a couple of struggling filmmakers who also happen to live in the guest house behind Casa de Perky Babes. Dialogue has some occasional zing, and helmer Andy Ackerman moves things along swiftly --- at almost an MTV pace, you might say.

So, as tempting as it is to want to trash both Jenny and "Jenny," it wouldn't be quite fair. This is not NBC's worst new comedy this season --- a distinction held by "Union Square." And the presence of the posthumously posturing Hamilton would give this show a real shot at success were it not lodged in a Sunday night deathslot opposite CBS' "Touched by an Angel" and Fox's "King of the Hill."

And yet, McCarthy is getting her shot, sending her fame meter ticking on well past its allotted 15 minutes for at least an additional 22. Wacky is as wacky does.

An Article from The New York Times

SUNDAY: SEPTEMBER 14, 1997: TELEVISION; Two Opposable Thumbs Down

Published: September 14, 1997

Research chimpanzees raised in captivity often watch television, for pretty much the same reason humans do: they're bored. We arranged for chimps at the New York University Medical Center Laboratory for Experimental Medicine and Surgery in Primates to screen tapes of three new fall sitcoms: NBC's ''Jenny,'' starring Jenny McCarthy; ABC's ''You Wish,'' which features a male genie trying to serve a reluctant divorced mom, and CBS's ''Gregory Hines Show,'' a heartwarming comedy about a widowed dad. Reactions were monitored to find out: Do chimps really pay attention to TV? Do they display actual preferences? And of course: How long will it take them to get tired of ''Jenny''? Here's a look.

The Participants: The experiment took place over a two-day period at the Lemsip lab in Tuxedo, N.Y., which uses TV ''enrichment'' to cheer up chimps who can't socialize because they're recovering from surgery or are in isolation as part of an experiment. Six animals were chosen, half male, half female, named Binky, Regis, Jethro, Chance, Rachel and Anne.

The Protocols:

In an experiment overseen by Dr. James Mahoney, a reproductive physiologist and veterinarian, two summer interns, Jamie Dupuis and Christiana Grim, quantified reactions at 30-second intervals. Eyes glued to the set counted as a Positive Direct Visual. Screaming, sleeping and jumping around did not. Behavior was recorded and then analyzed to determine whether it was cognitive (screaming directed at the television set, for example) or simply random (screaming at another chimp).

The Results:

P.D.V. scores ranged from 2 to 77 percent. Generally, the females were more interested in TV than the males, but it was a male chimp, Binky, who scored the 77 percent P.D.V. (''A real couch banana,'' quips Dr. Mahoney.) Overall, ''Jenny'' was considered a bore (average P.D.V.: 25 percent). ''You Wish'' did so-so (43 percent). And ''The Gregory Hines Show'' was a hit. The show was especially popular with Chance, Anne and Binky, who gave it P.D.V.'s in the 70's. Another female, Rachel, liked ''You Wish'' and bobbed her head up and down throughout the show. Not one of the chimps, however, could sit through ''Jenny'' without getting up and running around the room at least once. ''Perhaps,'' says Dr. Mahoney, ''McCarthy's brand of humor is just too sophisticated.''

For a Website dedicated to Jenny McCarthy go to http://www.jennymccarthyworld.com/