Sitcoms Online Photo Galleries - Ladies Man: Cast Photo

Ladies Man aired from September 1999 until June 2001 on CBS.

Jimmy ( Alfred Molina), made furniture for a living and worked out of his Los Angeles home. A big, happy guy who bumbled a lot ( " What'd I do?") he was surrounded by women. Living with him were Donna ( Sharon Lawrence), his very pregnant second wife; their tomboy daughter Wendy ( played by Katie Volding in the pilot and Alexa Vega in the series); Bonnie ( Mariam Parris in the pilot and Shawna Waldron and later Kaley Cuoco in the series), his blossoming daughter by first wife Claire ( Park Overall), and Mitzi ( Betty White), his sarcastic mother. As if that was not enough, Peaches ( Dixie Carter), his wealthy mother-in-law showed up periodically to spoil her granddaughter and step-granddaughter. Gene ( Stephen Root), a jaguar salesman who had been married 4 times , was Jimmy's best friend and regular golf partner. In the premiere Donna gave birth to-surprise-a son. Despite Jimmy's misgivings, they named him Chester ( Nicholas and Noah Hight), after Donna's late father.

A year after being canceled, Ladies Man returned to the CBS schedule with new episodes. Jimmy was hired as a contractor remodeling a house owned by game show host Alex Trebek, and Sabrina ( Elizabeth Beckwith) was the insecure young architect with whom he was working. Jimmy's neorotic buddy Gene was dating Terry ( Kathleen McClellan), a sexy but somewhat spaced-out young divorcee.

A Review from The New York Times

NEW TV SEASON IN REVIEW; Probably Should Spend More Time With the Guys
By RON WERTHEIMER
Published: September 20, 1999

'Ladies' Man'
CBS, tonight at 8:30
(Channel 2 in New York)

''I do not hate women!'' Jimmy Stiles keeps screaming through the first episode of this tired little sitcom. Jimmy (Alfred Molina) probably doesn't hate women any more than the people who run CBS hate their viewers. In both cases it's probably just a communication problem. Jimmy's ham-handed ineptitude makes him seem foolish (or worse) to his wife (Sharon Lawrence), his ex-wife (Park Overall), his mother (Betty White), his mother-in-law (Dixie Carter) and his two daughters. Jimmy's total lack of endearing qualities may make the CBS brass seem foolish (or worse) to you.

Tonight's episode begins with all these characters crammed into a bathroom where Jimmy is trying to shave. His mother comes in bearing muffins. ''Ma,'' he whines, ''I'm usin' the bathroom.'' She replies sunnily: ''That's O.K. They're bran.'' And that's the funniest line in the show. Mr. Molina is a British actor whose stage and film work have been very well received. He should be back to those other pursuits in a Nathan Lane minute. RON WERTHEIMER

A Review From TeeVee.org

Fall '99: "Ladies Man" by Philip Michaels — September 27, 1999

Friends, we are a nation divided. Discontent and discord are astir. Households are turning against one another. You can feel the tension building in the air.
No lives have been lost and no blood has been shed... yet. But it's only a matter of time. We are just two different groups of people, unable to peaceably co-exist, unwilling to live and work in close quarter. All it will take is one false move, one ill-advised gesture, one cruel twist of circumstance to light up this powder keg like a roman candle. And then...

Then the battle of the sexes becomes a full-scale gender war. And God have mercy on the poor slobs who think the Geneva Convention is going to be any help saving them from the carnage.

Men versus women. Boys stand girls. Guys square off against dolls. Shirts take on the skins.

That's the conclusion I've come to, at any rate, after watching the two rookie shows of CBS' Monday lineup. To take in Ladies Man and Family Law in one sitting is to come away convinced that men and women can barely tolerate one another. Forget years of sensitivity training, session after session of couples therapy, all those hours spent listening to radio call-in shows -- we hate each other's living guts. In the televised world of CBS, the opposite sex is a millstone around our necks, good only for browbeating us, taking away all our fun, liquidating our bank accounts, porking our hired help and driving us to any early grave.

Take Ladies Man. Alfred Molina plays Jimmy, the kind of lovable schlub who Tony Danza used to portray until America decided it'd had its fill. So instead, we get Molina, who's just this well-meaning, salt-of-the-earth, blue-collar kind of guy.

And he lives in a household of shrews.

For the better part of Ladies Man's 30-minute premiere, Molina stands around looking like someone's just asked him a difficult math problem. And for good reason. Over the course of the first half-hour, his mouthy, pregnant wife (Sharon Lawrence) alternately denies him sex and then forces herself upon him, his mouthy ex-wife (Park Overall) tries to pawn off his mouthy teenage daughter on him, his mouthy mother (Betty White) trades barbs with his mouthy mother-in-law (Dixie Carter) and his other mouthy daughter accuses him of pedophilia.

Hand to God, folks, this all happened in one episode.

"I don't hate women," Molina's character insists over and over again throughout the show. Which makes one ask the question, well, why the hell not? I only had to spend 30 minutes with these broads, and they had me white-knuckling the remote.

(And apparently, I'm not the only one. Word has it that the parts of Molina's two daughters were recast immediately after the pilot was shot. So viewers who tune in for a second installment of Ladies Man -- and dear God, I am not recommending that -- can expect to find two new mouthy nags in those crucial, crucial roles.)

It doesn't help Ladies Man that the cast -- save for the wonderful Stephen Root -- is populated with a bunch of unrepentant hams. Sharon Lawrence -- whose performance in her last sitcom, Fired Up, induced seizures -- manages to tone it down a smidge here. So viewers will escape Ladies Man with only blurred vision and a faint throbbing sensation in the temples.

It also doesn't help that not a single moment of Ladies Man feels authentic. It's an InstaSitcom -- just add water, stir in a laugh track, and serve. When Betty White and Dixie Carter fire off bons mots at one another, it doesn't so much resemble actual human dialogue as it does stilted one-liners scribbled by a room full of Harvard Lampoon alums.

But what kills Ladies Man is the fact that every female character on that show is an unrelenting harpy, deserving only scorn and ridicule. And yet, it appears that every episode will end in a tidy, little package with Alfred Molina saying something along the lines of, "Just kidding, folks. I really love the dames."

That kind of tripe moves Ladies Man out of the well-populated realm of pedestrian sitcoms and into the rarefied air of truly revolting programming

For The Alfred Molina Page go to http://www.geocities.com/Pipeline/3225/molina.html

For The Official Site of Sharon Lawrence go to http://www.sharon-lawrence.com/

For a WEbsite dedicated to Betty White go to http://rosenylundfan001.tripod.com/

For The Official Dixie Carter Website go to http://www.dixiecarter.com/

For a Website dedicated to Alexa Vega go to http://www.foreveralexaonline.com/