Poster: Clint Eastwood Fan
(see this users gallery)
The New Adventures of Old Christine aired from March 2006 until ? on CBS.
Thirty-five-year-old screwball Christine ( Julia Louis-Dreyfus) was a divorced single mother raising her young son Ritchie ( Trevor Gagnon) and running a ladies-only gym in Los Angeles. Matthew ( Hamish Linklater), her lazy, spaced-out younger brother, who sometimes watched Ritchie while she was at work, lived in her guest house. Christine's ex-husband, Richard ( Clark Gregg), with whom she maintained a reasonably friendly relationship, was dating an incredibly perky and friendly much younger woman, also named Christine ( Emily Rutherford)-so she was "new" Christine while Ritchie's mother was "old" Christine. Ritchie attended the fancy Westbridge private school where two snooty , non-working mothers, Lindsay and Marly ( Alex Kapp Horner, Tricia O'Kelley), were constantly making fun of old Christine. In the first season finale Christine's best friend Barb ( Wanda Sykes) had an intimate moment with Richard in his car and, after he told new Christine , she broke up with him-but eventually they got back together. Late in 2006 Christine's best friend Barb invested in the gym to help her financially, but Christine found it difficult to relinquish any of the control she had over its operation. Meanwhile, Matthew finally got motivated and decided to go to medical school.
A Review from Variety
The New Adventures of Old Christine
(Series; CBS, Mon. March 13, 8:30 p.m.)
By BRIAN LOWRY
Filmed in Los Angeles by Warner Bros. Television. Executive producers, Kari Lizer, Andy Ackerman; producer, Lisa Helfrich Jackson; director, Ackerman; writer, Lizer.
Christine - Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Richard - Clark Gregg
Matthew - Hamish Linklater
Ritchie - Trevor Gagnon
New Christine - Emily Rutherford
Marly - Tricia O'Kelley
Lindsay - Alex Kapp Horner
So much for the "Seinfeld" curse: Julia Louis-Dreyfus breaks it with one of the best conventional half-hours to come along in a while -- a sharp, funny romp created by actress-turned-writer/producer Kari Lizer. Solid pilot only gets better in the subsequent episodes previewed, with Louis-Dreyfus exhibiting a flair for physical comedy along with her snappy delivery in the role of angry divorcee. A perfect fit for the post-"Two and a Half Men" slot, CBS appears to have found the right woman to round out that hour.
After NBC's contortions with "Watching Ellie," as well as sitcom strikeouts by Michael Richards and Jason Alexander (twice), it was beginning to look as if the old "Seinfeld" gang couldn't go home again. Yet Louis-Dreyfus has shed the attitude she brought to the last project, which teamed her with husband Brad Hall, and come back with gusto.
Two episodes bow Monday. In the opener, written by Lizer and directed by "Seinfeld" vet Andy Ackerman, Louis-Dreyfus plays Christine, a divorced mom who has a good relationship with ex-husband Richard (Clark Gregg), having just managed to wangle her young son, Ritchie (Trevor Gagnon), into a prestigious private school. Unfortunately, Christine doesn't mesh with the Stepford moms, and an awkward situation gets worse after the other women espy Richard canoodling with a young woman (Emily Rutherford) in the parking lot.
The new girlfriend, it turns out, is also named Christine, which makes Louis-Dreyfus the older model. Yet that's just the setup, mercifully, instead of another title in search of a show.
Racing through life in a constant state of agitation, Christine bustles from home to work at a health club (half-hour workouts for busy people) to Ritchie's school, struggling to hold herself together. In that sense, the character possesses an underlying heart that doesn't interfere with the comedy, including a hysterical second episode featuring Andy Richter, whom she picks up in a desperate attempt to prove that if Richard can move on, so can she.
While it's primarily Louis-Dreyfus' show, the rest of the cast is fine, particularly Gregg, who doesn't come across as a bad guy, just an unthinking one.
What's really refreshing amid this year's uneven crop of laughers, though, is how conventional "Christine" turns out to be while still being flat-out funny. It's a reminder, perhaps, that producers and nets have become overly preoccupied with single-camera gimmickry and improv when wedding a star to the right material can still click.
It's early, of course, for Warner Bros. to start planning its NATPE party to celebrate off-network deals, but this is one of those rare series that arrives feeling like it's been on the air for a while. Coupled with the net's consistently endearing freshman "How I Met Your Mother" and Monday anchor "Men," CBS is proving that the traditional sitcom -- itself seduced and abandoned -- still has some life left in it, too.
An Article from The New York Times
Trying to Turn Elaine Into Christine
By MARGY ROCHLIN
Published: March 9, 2006
SANTA MONICA, Calif. — Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who is starring in a new CBS comedy called "The New Adventures of Old Christine," sat before a roomful of television critics at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Pasadena in January. Confronted with questions about whether she was a victim of the " 'Seinfeld' Curse" — which refers to the lack of success she, Michael Richards and Jason Alexander have had since "Seinfeld" ended its ratings-topping, award-winning 10-year run in 1998 — she wittily deflected them.
About a week later, Ms. Louis-Dreyfus, 45, took her place on a different kind of center stage, this time in a classroom at her younger son's exclusive private school. As part of Parent Share Day, she delivered a 45-minute summary of her life story to a group of third graders. Suddenly, pressure.
"It went really well, but I was drenched in sweat," said Ms. Louis-Dreyfus, who is married to the television producer Brad Hall, and has two sons, Henry, 13, and Charlie, 8. "I don't know why, but it was very meaningful to me. I felt like a lot was on the line."
It was real-life modern-day parenting moments like these — an otherwise capable adult undone by the desire not to embarrass her child in front of his peers — that Ms. Louis-Dreyfus said first attracted her to "The New Adventures of Old Christine." In it, she plays a divorced working single mother who is trying to balance rearing an 8-year-old son (Trevor Gagnon), dating and maintaining a good relationship with her ex-husband (Clark Gregg).
Day in and out, Christine struggles to remain plucky in the face of unexpected humiliations: withstanding the withering lack of interest of a cashier at a day spa, or learning that her former spouse is involved with a woman who could be viewed as a newer model of herself — a pretty, relentlessly upbeat younger pixie also named Christine (Emily Rutherfurd).
The role capitalizes on the strengths familiar to any fan of Ms. Louis-Dreyfus's "Seinfeld" character, Elaine Benes: the way she can get a laugh just by the sturdily determined way she carries her petite 5-foot-2 frame or how she gives extra spin to a line of dialogue by emphasizing the last word of a sentence. But when Kari Lizer ("Will and Grace"), the creator and executive producer of "The New Adventures of Old Christine" who based the show on her own experiences, met with the actress to discuss the project, she was interested in emotions that Ms. Louis-Dreyfus's scrappy Elaine never inspired in an audience.
"There were all these sorts of questions like, 'Is there a soft side?' " Ms. Lizer said in a telephone interview. "Christine is different from Elaine, a little more vulnerable."
Ms. Lizer acknowledged Ms. Louis-Dreyfus had brought her own set of pressing concerns to their getting-to-know-you coffee date. Ms. Louis-Dreyfus's previous series, "Watching Ellie," created by Mr. Hall, began in 2002, never caught on and sputtered to an end in 2003. "She's a big TV star and her next move is critical," Ms. Lizer said. "I knew she was going to be very, very careful about who she hooked up with."
Ms. Lizer said she and Ms. Louis-Dreyfus had instantly clicked: "It was like a great blind date. She thought I was funny. I thought she was funny. "
Now that Ms. Lizer has gotten to know Ms. Louis-Dreyfus better, she is even more specific. "She's not soft funny; she's dirty and so fearless about making fun of herself it's staggering," said Ms. Lizer, adding that she and the staff writers tried to test Ms. Louis-Dreyfus's limits. "We'd try to come up with things she wouldn't say," Ms. Lizer said. "I'd be like, 'No way Julia is going to say that.' But she'll say anything."
Combine Ms. Louis-Dreyfus's screwball streak and her cultured background and she starts to sound a little bit like Katharine Hepburn's outlandish society girl in George Cukor's "Holiday." The daughter of the French billionaire businessman Gérard Louis-Dreyfus, Ms. Louis-Dreyfus lived one weekend a month at her father and stepmother's residence on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The rest of the time her home base was in Washington with her mother and stepfather, a Project HOPE doctor who would occasionally uproot the family to treat the impoverished in places such as Sri Lanka, Colombia and Tunisia.
Ms. Louis-Dreyfus was a 21-year-old theater major at Northwestern University when she was group-cast for "Saturday Night Live" along with her three co-stars — including Mr. Hall, who was her boyfriend — after they were spotted in a Chicago-based improvisational troupe, the Practical Theater Company. There was no audition, only orders to report to New York within days.
Mind-blowing" is the term Ms. Louis-Dreyfus chose to describe what it was like to be young, female, instantly discovered, then unprepared for the aggressive behind-the-scenes elbow-throwing tactics it took just to get into a "Saturday Night Live" sketch. "I came of age in a lot of ways at that time," Ms. Louis-Dreyfus said. "It was a trial by fire."
It was in 1985, during Ms. Louis-Dreyfus's final season on "Saturday Night Live," that she met an underused staff writer named Larry David. What Ms. Louis-Dreyfus immediately liked about Mr. David was that he was angry and felt even more marginalized than she did. "He was so miserable!" Ms. Louis-Dreyfus said. "We found a connection."
Four years later, Ms. Louis-Dreyfus was sent a few of scripts written by Mr. David for a series about four neurotic pals in Manhattan.
No one has to tell Ms. Louis-Dreyfus how much the world of television has changed since "Seinfeld," which famously took a couple of seasons to hit its stride. This year, ABC pulled the plug on Heather Graham's heavily promoted series, "Emily's Reasons Why Not," after a single episode. "If that mentality existed when 'Seinfeld' premiered it wouldn't be a part of television history, that's for sure," Ms. Louis-Dreyfus said.
Then again, you can't get a shot at history if you don't even have a time slot, and until mid-February — when Monday night at 9:30 was finally chosen for the show — "The New Adventures of Old Christine" was being promoted by commercials that ended with the vague promise: "Coming in March."
Back in late January as Ms. Louis-Dreyfus, in a blue jeans and a black fitted jacket, sat in a Santa Monica hotel lounge, she was asked if she knew why the network had yet to make up its mind. She said: "I don't know. Call Nina Tassler and ask her." Ms. Tassler is the president of entertainment at CBS. Not wanting to be left out of the loop, Ms. Louis-Dreyfus added, "Then after you call Nina, call me in my car." Then, a note of motivational encouragement crept into her high voice. "It'll be fun!" she said.
Those addicted to "Seinfeld" re-runs might not have recognized Ms. Louis-Dreyfus as she engaged in such restrained lobbying. On that show, Elaine's idea of getting what she wanted so memorably involved a patented physicality that Ms. Louis-Dreyfus made sure to eliminate one thing from Christine's gestural vocabulary.
"That would be a shove," said Ms. Louis-Dreyfus, using both of her hands to jostle an invisible foe. "I had to remind myself not to be too physically aggressive."
"As Elaine, I did a lot of pushing people," Ms. Louis-Dreyfus said. Then she leaned forward and confided, "And I'm sort of personally inclined to do that, too."
A Review from The New York Times
Seinfeld's Buddy Elaine Is a Divorced Mom Now, and Her Name Is Christine
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY
Published: March 13, 2006
The so-called curse of "Seinfeld" lives on: none of the secondary characters from that series have starred in a successful sitcom since its finale in 1998. So "The New Adventures of Old Christine," starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus, is pretty risky. On the other hand, the Boston Red Sox finally did win the World Series.
There's a lot of Elaine in Christine, which is good. But that was also true of Ms. Louis-Dreyfus's last sitcom, the quickly canceled "Watching Ellie." The success of "Christine," which begins tonight, hangs mostly on whether there is even more Elaine this time around.
"Christine" is a conventional sitcom with a laugh track, and its premise is not particularly groundbreaking. Ms. Louis-Dreyfus plays a California woman with a son, a job and an ex-husband, Richard (Clark Gregg), who is involved with a sweet, pretty, much younger woman also named Christine (Emily Rutherfurd). Except for the dueling first names, the series follows the same formula as "Reba" or "Cybill."
Christine gets along splendidly with her ex, or so she insists. When her brother asks her why she spends so much time with Richard, she boasts, "My divorce is better than most people's marriages." But at that point she doesn't know that Richard is dating someone. She finds out on her son's first day at a private school, where she catches the lovers kissing in the parking lot. When the new Christine says she has heard wonderful things about her, Christine responds with the full fury of Elaine, yelling, "I don't care."
And those Elaine moments are the real allure of this series — a chance to see Ms. Louis-Dreyfus once again portray an insensitive, aggressive neurotic trapped in the body of a petite, attractive woman. As the star, however, Christine is also supposed to be a sympathetic victim, a vulnerable Everywoman in the land of cosmetic surgery and no-fault divorce.
Christine is funniest when, like Elaine, she is filled with misplaced self-confidence and sputtering outrage. Much of the time, however, she has to endure an endless parade of dispiriting slights. Some are self-inflicted: she laments her aging body and face, even though she looks very fit and no older than her younger rival. (Christine wakes up one night fretfully wondering if she should have a Botox treatment, even though Ms. Louis-Dreyfus's brow is expertly unfurrowed.)
In another episode, Christine is goaded by her ex-husband into trying to find a lover of her own, and tries to pick up men in a fancy supermarket. She ends up having a one-night stand with a chubby, needy middle-aged man who turns out to be the father of a student at her son's school, and a laughingstock. The actress is quite funny in that predicament, but her character is too well grounded to be believable as a social reject. Her loneliness would make more sense if her personality was more consistently off-putting.
Some of the best scenes take place between Christine and the tall, blond Stepford moms who rule the school and introduce themselves in parentese. One of them, Lindsay, greets the newcomer this way: "LindsayKelseythirdSammyfourthJacksonpre-K." Lindsay is appalled when Christine tells her she owns a women-only gym that specializes in 30-minute workouts. "What would I do with the rest of my day?" she exclaims.
Every sitcom character needs a sidekick, and Christine's is her brother, Matthew (Hamish Linklater), a laconic stoner and slacker who lives in her guesthouse and serves as her nanny when Christine is at work. When he teases her about her dependence on cough medicine as a sleep aid, she retorts, "I don't make fun of your glaucoma medicine."
Women are the lead characters of many prime-time dramas, from "Medium" to "Grey's Anatomy." But there are not many network sitcoms with heroines. ABC tried to create a series for Heather Graham this season, and it was canceled after just one episode. CBS has "Courting Alex," a new and lackluster sitcom starring Jenna Elfman as a workaholic single lawyer, but the rest of the network's sitcom lineup is man-centered, from "The King of Queens" to "Two and a Half Men." Tonight CBS will use those proven hits to help usher in two episodes of "Christine."
Ms. Louis-Dreyfus is one of the funniest women on network television. If anyone can break the "Seinfeld" curse, it should be the actress who played Elaine.
The New Adventures of Old Christine
CBS, tonight at 8:30, Eastern and Pacific times; 7:30, Central time.
Created, executive produced and written by Kari Lizer; Andy Ackerman, executive producer and director of this episode from a teleplay by Ms. Lizer; Lisa Helfrich Jackson, producer. Produced by Warner Brothers Television Productions.
WITH: Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Christine), Clark Gregg (Richard), Hamish Linklater (Matthew), Trevor Gagnon (Ritchie), Emily Rutherfurd (New Christine), Tricia O'Kelley (Marly), Alex Kapp Horner (Lindsay) and guest-starring Jordan Baker (Mrs. Belt) and Amy Farrington (Ali).
A Review from USA TODAY
'Old Christine' kills the 'Seinfeld' curse
By Robert Bianco, USA TODAY
Welcome back, old friend.
One of TV's most-missed performers, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, returns for a second shot at post-Seinfeld stardom with The New Adventures of Old Christine. And this time, she's back in style.
Forget Watching Ellie, her misguided "real-time" NBC series. And forget the last resident of Christine's regular slot, Courting Alex, CBS' inept attempt to relaunch the TV career of Jenna Elfman. With Christine, past mistakes from all parties are corrected and forgotten: This bright, funny, appealing old-school comedy is an ideal vehicle for Louis-Dreyfus and, it would seem, a perfect fit for CBS.
Created by actress-turned-writer Kari Lizer, Christine keeps the best aspects of Louis-Dreyfus' frazzled, frizzed sitcom personality while moving her in a warmer, wiser direction. A mother herself in real life, she now plays one on TV: a divorced woman who juggles the demands of raising an 8-year-old son with those of running a women's fast-workout gym.
A divorce that is "better than most people's marriages" has left Christine on good terms with ex-husband Richard (Clark Gregg) — at least until he started dating a much younger, appallingly perky woman also named Christine (Emily Rutherfurd). Naturally, being turned into the "Old Christine" gives her pause, not to mention giving the show its somewhat balky title.
You get two Christine adventures tonight — at 8:30 and at 9:30, its normal slot — and both are worth watching. In the premiere, Christine's attempts to enroll son Ritchie (Trevor Gagnon) in an exclusive private school bring her face to face with "new" Christine and with two of the show's funnier supporting characters: Tricia O'Kelley and Alex Kapp Horner as snooty stay-at-home moms Marly and Lindsay.
The entire ensemble is first-rate, including Hamish Linklater as Christine's unambitious younger brother.
But give special kudos to the casting folks for choosing Gregg, who takes a likable, regular-Joe approach to a character who could have been just a jerk.
Even so, the show rests on Louis-Dreyfus' shoulders, and her attempt to carry it will inevitably provoke a new discussion of "The Seinfeld Curse." Yes, Ellie failed, as did the series for Michael Richards and Jason Alexander, but all failures are not created equal or equally poorly.
Richards and Alexander gave bad performances in ill-conceived shows. Louis-Dreyfus was fine in Ellie; the show just wasn't up to her talents. This one is.
Seinfeld Curse? Please. With any luck, Old Christine will make that old news.
An Article From USA TODAY
Published on March 19, 2006
For her, 'Old Christine' is refreshingly new
By Donna Freydkin, USA TODAY
SANTA MONICA, Calif. — The curse is broken.
" I like playing somebody who has to apologize to their kid, all the time, for screwing up. That seems really real," says Louis-Dreyfus.
CBS
Seinfeld's Julia Louis-Dreyfus has a hit show on her hands, playing a character that would make Elaine scream: "Get out!"
Eight years after playing baby-phobic, brassy Elaine on Seinfeld and a cabaret singer on the 2002 dud Watching Ellie, Louis-Dreyfus is a divorced, sweetly bungling mom in CBS' The New Adventures of Old Christine (Mondays, 9:30 p.m. ET/PT).
And if the show's impressive two-episode debut last week is any indication, audiences love her once again: 12.4 million watched the first airing, and the second episode drew 15.1 million sets of eyeballs, winning its time slot. (Related story: The new adventures of Louis-Dreyfus)
No wonder Louis-Dreyfus, 45, is crossing her fingers that Christine gets picked up for a full season.
"I really want to keep doing this show — it's so much fun," she says.
Aside from supporting turns on Seinfeld co-creator Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm and the now-canceled comedy Arrested Development, Louis-Dreyfus had been lying low.
But when the Christine script fell into her lap, she immediately signed on.
"It appeals to me to show the imperfections of motherhood and womanhood, warts and all. I like playing somebody who has to apologize to their kid, all the time, for screwing up. That seems really real," says Louis-Dreyfus, a married mother of two boys, ages 8 and 13.
It's Louis-Dreyfus' willingness to be humiliated on TV that connects with viewers, says Kari Lizer, Christine's creator.
"People really love to watch her get knocked down. She's really funny, and you can take it really far with her without being scared for her," she says.
Louis-Dreyfus, meanwhile, is not dwelling on the so-called Seinfeld hex, even though her earlier sitcom and the shows created around her co-stars Jason Alexander and Michael Richards tanked.
To her, there's no "annoying legacy" from the show, for which she won an Emmy.
"If I hadn't done Seinfeld, would I have the opportunity I have today to do this show? Chances are, no," she says. "It's afforded me all sorts of opportunities, and I'm proud of being a part of popular culture in that way."
Fans still approach her to talk about Seinfeld, but for Louis-Dreyfus, who hasn't lost any of Elaine's razor-sharp, vivacious appeal, it's all good.
"People really liked that show," she says. "It's fun to have that under your belt. ... Occasionally they'll ask me to dance, something idiotic like that, and I can understand why they ask, but I'm not going to start dancing."
So will Richards, Alexander or Jerry Seinfeld ever guest-star on Christine?
"They'll all have to audition!" Louis-Dreyfus says with a laugh. "If they read well, they'll get the part — perhaps. Sweeps!"
Louis-Dreyfus pauses, then adds: "I'd work again with Jason Alexander in a heartbeat. He's such a wonderful guy."
An Article from USA TODAY
Published on November 5, 2006
Delightful 'Christine' breaks new old ground
By Robert Bianco, USA TODAY
If you're looking for the old-fashioned joys of a first-rate sitcom, take a new look at Old Christine.
Initially just a pleasant Monday bridge between Two and a Half Men and CSI: Miami, CBS' The New Adventures of Old Christine has grown into a must-stop destination in its own right.
By expanding past its initial "new Christine/old Christine" conflict and making ever better use of an Emmy-winning, career-reaffirming star turn from Julia Louis-Dreyfus, the show has quietly lifted itself into TV's top ranks.
Need proof? Tune in tonight (9:30 ET/PT) as a sweetly flustered Christine tries to hide her crush on son Ritchie's handsome teacher (Blair Underwood). Unfortunately for her, self-control isn't one of Christine's virtues, whether it's adjusting her volume, avoiding racial flubs or stopping herself from demanding food from her brother. ("You don't even know what it is." "Since when do I care?")
Trust me: You want to root for Christine's awkwardness. It leads to one of the few guffaw-out-loud moments on any sitcom this season.
That seemingly out-of-fashion ability to make an audience laugh — once a genre staple — is surely one of the reasons Christine is the second-most-popular sitcom on the air, right after Men.
Of course the time slot helps, but it's worth noting that both shows follow the traditional taped-in-front-of-a-studio-audience format, rather than being shot on film as are so many of this season's less-popular debuts.
Oh, and one other thing: They're both funny.
There's another grand sitcom tradition Christine revives: female-driven CBS comedies. As "old" Christine, a divorced mother whose ex-husband is dating a younger "new" Christine, Louis-Dreyfus has officially made the leap from supporting actor to star, breaking a second-banana "curse" that has afflicted far more shows than Seinfeld.
As fans would expect, and probably require, many of the beloved quirks and mannerisms of Seinfeld's Elaine remain. (The show even got a joke out of Christine's misplaced conviction that she can dance.) But it's the changes that matter more — the vulnerability and maternal sweetness that make this a softer, more sympathetic, more real performance.
The writers, led by creator Kari Lizer, also have given her more interesting things to play this season, from her doomed attraction to new Christine's father, Jeff (Scott Bakula), to her annoyance when new Christine takes Ritchie to church without asking.
The reactions to the problems may be comically exaggerated, as witness the hilarious attempts by Christine and her easily befuddled brother (the invaluable Hamish Linklater) to trace the family connections if she married Jeff. But the emotions stay grounded in reality.
Few shows work as star vehicles alone, and Christine is no exception. The joys of the spot-on supporting cast extend to every actor, led by Clark Gregg as her embraceable ex, and including Emily Rutherfurd as new Christine and Wanda Sykes as Barb. And there's an ever-growing list of funny recurring characters, such as the "mean moms" (Tricia O'Kelley and Alex Kapp Horner), who reappear tonight.
When Christine's on, you get the feeling sitcoms may not be in such a sorry state after all. And isn't that worth a look?
A Review from Entertainment Weekly
Published on December 1, 2006
TV Review
The New Adventures of Old Christine (2006)
More B+
By Henry Goldblatt
There's something awfully familiar about The New Adventures of Old Christine, now in its second season on CBS. Perhaps it's the fact that the show owes a debt to Murphy Brown, The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd, Rhoda, Suddenly Susan (eek!), Kate & Allie, and Alright Already (a late-'90s gem starring Seinfeld scribe Carol Leifer). This might be a problem if it were 1997, but what makes Christine unique is that it's currently the only female-led sitcom on the Big Four networks. Luckily, it's a terrific one.
An owner of a Lucille Roberts-type gym, Christine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is a boozy, kinda slutty, divorced mom who wears a toe ring and can't quite modulate her voice. Much credit goes to Louis-Dreyfus for making the role appealing (compensating for an ill-advised toe ring is, ahem, a feat). Her committed delivery actually lifts the script. One-liners like ''I was just flirting, but sometimes it comes out mean'' don't exactly jump off the page, but coming out of Louis-Dreyfus' mouth, they are comedic art — especially since she throws every part of her body into a scene. Her hair convincingly flirts with Andy Richter's ''Sad Dad'' (a recurring character who beds, or rather futons, Christine); her breasts, which are constantly in use as props, deserve their own billing in the opening credits. This homage to Karen from Will & Grace is no coincidence — Christine creator Kari Lizer was a coexecutive producer on that sitcom.
Lizer has made smart choices since the show's debut in March. She toyed with reconciling Christine and her ex-husband, Richard (the wonderfully smug Clark Gregg), in the May cliff-hanger, but wisely kept them apart. That's much better, since Christine spars so well with Richard's dim-bulb girlfriend, New Christine (Emily Rutherfurd). But the best scenes occur between Louis-Dreyfus and the ''Meanie Moms'' (Tricia O'Kelley and Alex Kapp Horner) at her son's school; this blond, Pilates'd Waldorf and Statler combo spit out every piece of dialogue as if it were an unwanted carb.
The intelligent guest casting is also welcome, with Richter, Blair Underwood, and Scott Bakula appearing as Christine's boyfriends. (Well, Bakula's Shirley Jones shag wasn't welcome.) And Wanda Sykes, who plays best friend Barb, should spend as much time on the set as possible until someone builds a comedy around this talented woman. In a better situation for comedy, Louis-Dreyfus wouldn't be standing alone: Margaret Cho, Mo'Nique, Kate Clinton, and Susie Essman would all headline their own sitcoms. But for now, a world with an old Christine is much better than one with no Christine at all.
An Article from The New York Times
Television
Heat Some Tea. Look at the Ceiling. Now, That’s Acting.
By SUSAN STEWART
Published: March 9, 2008
COMEDY is hard, and quitting cigarettes makes it harder. Hamish Linklater, who plays Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s brother, Matthew, on the CBS show “The New Adventures of Old Christine,” learned this last year.
He gave up smoking when his wife, Jessica Goldberg, a playwright and screenwriter, became pregnant. Good news for his baby, Lucinda Rose, who was born in April, but bad news for his career: it improved his voice.
“I now have a more plaintive, sensitive, vulnerable register, which is apparently very annoying,” Mr. Linklater, 31, said. “I lack mystery now. I’m so available now. I have to find more restraints for Matthew.”
Matthew is already so restrained he sometimes seems to be talking in his sleep. He was conceived as a surfer (“but I couldn’t pull off the ambition to be a surfer,” Mr. Linklater said), a stoner (but CBS dislikes marijuana references “unless they’re very clever or very veiled”) and a slacker. Instead, after a short stint in medical school (his cadaver turned out to be an old neighbor), Matthew is training to be a psychotherapist. He spends a lot of time microwaving tea and soup. (“I have one bit of business as Matthew: I hydrate”). Mostly Mr. Linklater is a still point in a busy world.
While Ms. Louis-Dreyfus whirls around like a tiny tornado, the laconic, 6-foot-3 Mr. Linklater reacts. The humor is in his expressionless face, his loose-limbed awkwardness and his rhythm, which owes more to Jack Benny than to, say, “The King of Queens.”
Though most of the reviews have focused on Ms. Louis-Dreyfus, several critics have noted Mr. Linklater’s dry take. Karla Peterson of The San Diego Union-Tribune wrote that in tandem with Clark Gregg (as Christine’s ex-husband), Mr. Linklater added “a low-key bemusement that throws the standard-issue sitcom rhythms nicely out of whack.”
Kari Lizer, creator and executive producer of “Christine,” said, “There’s just a vibe about him that you don’t see on standard network sitcoms,” but “he was a hard sell” to network executives.
Ms. Lizer had tried to sell Mr. Linklater before, opposite Anne Heche in a pilot called “True.” “I brought him in, and I was crazy for him, and they couldn’t get their heads around him.” It was different with “Christine,” which started in 2006. “Julia said instantly, ‘That’s the guy.’ ”
Starting his first sitcom Mr. Linklater was nervous. He had recently had a role as a doctor on the short-lived drama “Gideon’s Crossing,” but that was easy. “For hourlong acting all you need to do is brood and get your makeup right.”
Ms. Lizer remembered: “He was afraid he was going to have to come out and land jokes. Then he realized he could be himself.”
As Mr. Linklater put it, “I kind of figured that if I talked very slowly and emphasized a lot of words, I’d eventually emphasize the words the writers wanted me to.”
Sharing scenes with Ms. Louis-Dreyfus and the comedian Wanda Sykes, who plays Christine’s droll best friend, is great, he added, but “I wish they would hire someone unfunny for me to work with.” What Ms. Louis-Dreyfus does “is unspeakably difficult, but she makes it look easy,” he explained. “Here comes a fastball, and you’re required to hit it out of the park.” A pause. “You can see why people are very depressive and tormented who are funny.”
Mr. Linklater’s background, like his comic cadence, is unusual. His mother, Kristin Linklater, is a drama professor at Columbia University and a noted vocal coach who has worked with Patrick Stewart and Sigourney Weaver, among others. Ms. Linklater raised her son alone and partly in the Berkshires, where she was a founder of the troupe Shakespeare & Company. Mr. Linklater was 8 when he began doing small Shakespearean roles.
His technique has become more sophisticated since then. “I like putting constraints on characters,” he said. “Working from the outside to in. The tighter the restraints, the more gymnastics you can do.”
When Mr. Linklater says “gymnastics” he is not speaking literally. His is a physicality of isolated movements: a hand waves, the head turns. Sometimes even that seems like too much.
“In one episode I discovered that a really funny way to react to Julia being crazy was to look at the ceiling. And I was delighted with myself for finding this new reaction take, and I watched the tape and saw that I was looking at the ceiling any time she said anything.”
In future shows Mr. Linklater’s character will go into therapy but remain essentially unchanged. And Mr. Linklater will continue, in the finest comic tradition, to fret.
To wit: “I think I got fired about halfway through this conversation.”
|
