Sitcoms Online Photo Galleries - Notes From the Underbelly:Peter Cambor and Jennifer Westfeldt

Notes from the Underbelly aired from April 2007 until February 2008 on ABC.

The trials of pregnancy were the subject of this rather bland sitcom. Two young Los Angeles couples were expecting. Lauren ( Jennifer Westfeldt) was a stylish, somewhat hyper high school guidance counselor for whom pregnancy meant a long list of " I wants."Andrew ( Peter Cambor) was her patient, accomindating husband, a landscaper , excited at the prospect of a child but frustrated at all of Lauren's demands. Their friends Julie and Eric (Melanie Paxson, Sunkrish Bala) were more methodical, waking themselves up at three a.m. just " for practice," Practice -feeding a toy baby and shopping endlessly for everything they would ( or might )need once their baby arrived. Watching all this actively with some dismay were two single friends, Lauren's best gal friend Cooper ( Rachael Harris), a cynical divorce attorney who had a put-down for every situation and Andrew's layabout pal Danny ( Michael Weaver) who just wanted to, like , play table hockey and hang out, man.

Based on the novel of the same name by Risa Green

A Review from Variety

Notes From The Underbelly
(Series -- ABC, Thurs. April 12, 10 P.M.)
By PHIL GALLO

Taped in Los Angeles by the Tannenbaum Co. and Hill Three Prods. in association with Warner Bros. Television. Executive producers, Stacy Traub, Barry Sonnenfeld, Kim Tannenbaum, Eric Tannenbaum; producer, Graham Place; director, Sonnenfeld; writer, Traub, based on the book by Risa Green.

Lauren - Jennifer Westfeldt
Andrew - Peter Cambor
Danny - Michael Weaver
Cooper - Rachael Harris
Julie - Melanie Paxson
Eric - Sunkrish Bala

A run-of-the-mill sitcom set during an unsettling time in a young couple's life, "Notes From the Underbelly" commences the opening episode at the moment when husband and wife are debating having a baby. Andrew (Peter Cambor) is in charge of the pros while wife Lauren (Jennifer Westfeldt) finds the con list endless, yet the two recite their concerns and wishes as if they were buying a vacation home. There's no sign of passion here; it's all awkward. If the two actors had a more convincing chemistry, perhaps there would be reason to believe this half-hour would last beyond the first trimester.

Show's pedigree includes Kim and Eric Tannenbaum, former exec producers on "Two and a Half Men," while Barry Sonnenfeld, an established cinematographer in the '80s who has bounced between film directing and producing ("Men in Black," "Wild Wild West") and TV ("The Tick," "Karen Sisco"), directs the first three episodes in addition to exec producing. He clearly wants to push some boundaries, especially in the visual sexual references. As the crux of the show is the nonstop debate that accompanies life with tykes, there's a pingponging between individuals and couples celebrating and lamenting parenthood. Technique, in directing editing and camera work, is standard -- nothing flashy but nothing out of the ordinary.

Lauren and Andrew don't appear particularly settled in life. He's a landscape architect, and she's a guidance counselor at a private high school. He's inspired by work, she's not, and their collective ambition seems to be this odd desire to go whitewater rafting before they start having children. They seem less well off than their friends, though they live in a rather nice Spanish-style home on the west side of L.A.; perhaps there is more dramatic comedy to be milked from the have and have-not situation that is only hinted at in the initial segs.

Early in the first episode, the extensive use of Andrew's voiceover indicates "Notes" will strictly be his game. But within minutes, the perspective shifts to Lauren -- sans voiceover -- with a lot of screen time dedicated to her time away from her husband. But then at each show's conclusion, it is once again Andrew whom we hear.

The Andrew character needs to develop quickly to get the audience to care about pregnancy from a man's perspective. Otherwise, auds may well wonder why the woman's perspective isn't the dominant one.

As much as "Underbelly" should be dominated by the husband-wife dynamic, sitcom only generates chuckles when the debate turns to the supporting cast, particularly Lauren's friend, the childless divorce lawyer Cooper (Rachael Harris) and Andrew's layabout buddy Danny (Michael Weaver).

In the three episodes supplied, Cooper not only gets the best lines, Harris displays more command of her character than the other actors and steals every scene in which she appears. She's tough, attractive, saucy and yet likable.

Another of Lauren's pals is Julie (Melanie Paxson), late in her pregnancy with her first child and who only sees the bright side of joining what Cooper calls "the mommy cult." It's rainbows and roses vs. depression and diapers.

As anyone would expect, "Notes" is painted in broad strokes: Child rearing is either all fun or all evil, and there's never even a hint of ambiguity. When Andrew decides they're not only poor but that they'll need more than $1 million to get their "kid" through college, he shifts into overwork mode in his job as a landscaper -- oh, call it what it is, he's a gardener -- with some artistic ambition. His overwork leads only to him messing up, with no comic or poignant payoff.

ABC is debuting the series with back-to-back episodes starting at 10 p.m. on April 12 before shifting to its regular slot, Wednesdays at 8:30 p.m.

A Review from The New York Times

TV Review | 'Notes From the Underbelly'
What to Expect When a Sitcom’s Expecting: Desperate Friends and Life Lessons
By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN
Published: April 12, 2007

“Notes From the Underbelly” is a revolting sitcom about pregnancy. Watch and you’ll lose your appetite for life. The characters are alternadads and shopaholics who consider “Lost” pornography and make sex jokes that belong in 40th-birthday cards by the Har-Dee-Har line.

“Notes” has one of those pushy set-ups in which a noxious central couple is supposed to be normal, while their friends are wacky and desperate. Just turn it off and forget, for the evening, that you have ever heard of television. (It starts tonight on ABC. Forget that too.)

Andrew (Peter Cambor) wants a baby, and Lauren (Jennifer Westfeldt, who played the title role in “Kissing Jessica Stein”), his wife, does not. Then, before the opening credits of the first episode, Lauren wants a baby after all.

She becomes pregnant. She finds it hard to give up expensive clothes. Andrew finds it hard to give up nothing. He’s gung-ho for fatherhood. He’s so annoying in the first episode, he might break some sort of prime-time record.

Lauren comes to embrace pregnancy with the generic neurotic pluck that now defines most bland television blondes. To underscore how boring she is, her two friends are good-and-evil caricatures: a cookie-sweet housewife, Julie (Melanie Paxson), and a barracuda single lawyer, Cooper (Rachael Harris), who sleeps around.

There are too many good comic actors in Hollywood for a show like this to have a dud cast and, sure enough, both Ms. Paxson and Ms. Harris have skills. Ms. Harris’s flat affect and convincing sophistication are an antidote to the tone-deaf goofing on display elsewhere. And Ms. Paxson comes through in scenes of bravura condescension, as when Julie instructs a barista on how to make a custom whipped coffee drink. “Now stay focused,” she chirps. “And I’ll walk you through it.”

By Episode 2 Andrew has decided he wants Lauren to quit her job as a college counselor at a prep school. As a landscape architect he wants to be the family’s sole breadwinner.

By the episode’s end everybody has learned the dangers of multitasking and the wonders of work.

“I thought I could do it all, but I can’t,” Andrew says in a moonlit reconciliation scene with Lauren. “Notes” has a nice continuity to it. Just as almost nothing before this has been funny, this fake-poignant moment isn’t touching.

NOTES FROM THE UNDERBELLY

ABC, tonight at 10, Eastern and Pacific times; 9, Central time.

Created by Stacy Traub; Kim Tannenbaum, Eric Tannenbaum, Barry Sonnenfeld and Ms. Traub, executive producers. A production of the Tannenbaum Company, Hill Three Productions in association with Warner Brothers Television. Based on the novel by Risa Green.

WITH: Jennifer Westfeldt (Lauren), Peter Cambor (Andrew), Michael Weaver (Danny), Rachael Harris (Cooper), Melanie Paxson (Julie) and Sunkrish Bala (Eric).

A Review from USA TODAY

'Underbelly' is vulnerable

By Robert Bianco, USA TODAY

Some shows just seem to miss their window of opportunity.

Granted, there probably never was a very large opening for ABC's Notes From the Underbelly, the latest underpowered, not-quite-a-comedy from a network that seems inordinately fond of the form.

Even had it premiered in September, odds are this serialized sitcom that hoped to spend a season following a young couple's first pregnancy would have died long before that fictional baby was born.

But it isn't September, it's April, and viewers already have soundly rejected a host of shows in the same vein as Underbelly.

It's another serialized, one-camera show with near-constant narration in a year when viewers have shown no great interest in serialized, one-camera, narrated sitcoms. And it's hard to spot anything in the pleasant but unremarkable Notes From the Underbelly that is likely to change their minds.

The happy couple here are Lauren and Andrew (Jennifer Westfeldt and Peter Cambor), who discover in the first of tonight's two special-preview outings they are (well, she is) going to have a baby.

The news thrills the compulsively overprepared Andrew, for whom having children is "all part of the plan." The more spontaneous, less structured Lauren, however, isn't so sure.

How lucky for her that she has two friends who represent absolute polar opposite positions on motherhood — the kind of friendships that exist only in a sitcom universe in which people purposely arrange their social sets to represent all aspects of the social and political spectrum.

Julie (Melanie Paxson) is a perky, stay-at-home, soon-to-be mom who throws parties where people decorate diapers; Cooper (Rachael Harris) is a driven, bitter attorney who hates babies, mothers and women on the mommy track. Cooper also gets the only funny lines, proving that bitterness has its benefits.

Andrew, of course, has to have a friend of his own: Danny (Michael Weaver), whose job as a mall musician leaves him plenty of time to hang around Andrew's house making inappropriate comments.

Why would any of these people want to share each other's company? Notes From the Underbelly can't be bothered to provide an answer.

There are a few amusing moments in the three episodes ABC made available for preview, such as the women's ability to spot Lauren's pregnancy based on her intake of alcohol and caffeine.

But the show just kind of rolls along, never quite provoking you to change the channel but never providing any great reason to pay attention either.

True, the birth of a first child is for many a shared experience, but shared experiences alone do not a sitcom make. It takes art and skill to turn life into comedy.

Someone at ABC should take note.

A Review from Entertainment Weekly

TV Review
Notes From the Underbelly (2007)

B By Gillian Flynn

A comedy about pregnancy seems doomed to a particularly sticky circle of humor hell: How many jokes about maternity underwear and morning sickness can one endure? My original guess would have been about 1.3, but it turns out that Notes From the Underbelly, exec-produced by Barry Sonnenfeld, is no mere ''pregnancy comedy.'' Underbelly stars Jennifer Westfeldt (Kissing Jessica Stein) as Lauren, a sensible thirtysomething who ambivalently decides to have a baby with her doofy, earnest husband(Peter Cambor). On their nine-month journey, they collide with all sorts of odd people, from the Stepford Wife whose business card reads ''Scrapbooker/Mommy'' to the new parents who corner them like undead ghouls so they can reveal how horrific parenting really is. As Lauren's cynical single best friend, Rachael Harris (Fat Actress) provides a needed blast of acid. ''Rainbows,'' she snaps when a pregnant friend asks her to say something nice. Unfortunately, for every scene with Harris, there's a grating counterbalance: Lauren's other friend, baby-voiced Julie (Melanie Paxson from the Glad trash-bag commercials), a chipper, pregnant housewife who's about as appealing as a butter mint stuck in the back of the throat — one of those irritating characters who exist only so we can roll our eyes and groan knowingly. Overall, however, Underbelly eschews cliché and makes pregnancy surprisingly laughable — including a very funny gag with a breast pump. A phrase I never thought I'd say.

An Interview with Rachel Harris from Comcast .net

Baby Talk and More with Rachael Harris of 'Notes'

By Victor Balta
Comcast.net Entertainment Editor
April 24, 2007

Rachael Harris has been making people laugh with small roles on “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “Fat Actress,” and as a commentator on VH1’s “Best Week Ever.” Now she’s the scene-stealing, cynical and biting sidekick, Cooper, on ABC’s new sitcom “Notes From the Underbelly,” which didn't premiere until April, long after other shows were introduced. She took some time last week to talk to Comcast.net about the hilarious show that has an uphill climb at being picked up for another season, and where she stands on having a baby.

Q: Had you been nervous all this time, while waiting for the show to air?
A: We were really nervous. I sort of liken it to horses in the gate, just ready to go. We had all this energy and we were ready for it to air. And, for good reason, I believe, they kept pushing us back, which I’m grateful for right now. If we’d premiered in the fall, I think that would’ve been tough. We just had to be really patient, really practice patience and faith that it would work out.
Q: So, I’ve been watching the overnight ratings like a hawk to see how things are going. Has that been your M.O. the past couple of weeks?
A: To be really honest, we have been checking the ratings. And then it’s that thing where, at the end of the day, you’re so powerless over the outcome. It’s like, ‘If it’s gonna go, it’s gonna go.’ It doesn’t matter where they position it. If people like the show, they’ll watch it. But I feel like it’s very smart, it’s such a departure from the traditional multi-camera sitcoms

Q: Is it as much fun to work on as it seems?
A: It really is. We have a great cast, and we’re fortunate enough to work with [award-winning film director] Barry Sonnenfeld, who I truly love. [Co-star] Melanie Paxson and I are very good friends now and that completely sprung out of being on the show. Jennifer goes back and forth [to Los Angeles] from New York, so we don’t get to see her as much. But we all genuinely enjoy each other, and I just love my character so much. I love how they write for Cooper and it’s great to get to say those words and express those opinions.

Q: I’m glad you mentioned that, because I absolutely despise this question, but, in this case, it seems appropriate. What traits do you share with your character?
A: [Laughs] I love that you despise that question. What I love about Cooper is that she’s very direct. She’s very analytical, and that’s not like me. I definitely am an emotional gal. And I think Cooper is cooler than I am. But that sort of delivery and sarcasm is very similar to mine. That’s not hard for me, to be sarcastic like her and biting at times.

Q: That’s a good point, because I think people who see you on [VH1’s] “Best Week Ever” don’t know if you’re really being yourself there, or playing a character.
A: Oh, well, they never would tell me what to say on “Best Week Ever.” A lot of times I don’t like to talk about celebrities. That was something that came up on “Best Week Ever” a lot of times, where I didn’t want to talk about celebrities unless it was somebody who is enormously out there. There were times – and I wrote about this in a [magazine] piece – where I did kind of regret some of the things that I said about people. But it was always the people who were out in the media all the time. But Cooper is different in a way, because she’s really not into pop culture. Cooper’s a little bit above pop culture. She is very driven, and I have to say that I have been driven in my career, so I do look at that as a good thing.

Q: Here’s another question I don’t like to ask, but this show is relatable for so many people considering pregnancy and I have to ask where do you stand on having a baby?
A: The show’s perfect for me and my friends because my husband and I have been having the conversation about whether we’re going to pregnant and what we want to do. We’re all in our 30s, so you don’t look at it like you would if you got married in your 20s. Then, it’s an easier decision, I think. I don’t know. I know that, for me, the older you get, you do start to think about how is this going to affect my life? And you realize the importance of the decision a little bit more. So I completely relate to the benefits you get from having a child, but also the tremendous sacrifices and knowing that when you do it you’ll be a parent you can really rely on. In the past 10 years, I think, people have been really looking at [becoming] parents in a different way than they did 20 years ago, and we’re trying to show that, but in a very funny way!

An Article from USA TOADY
Published on November 26, 2007

ABC's 'Underbelly' is still flabby

By Robert Bianco, USA TODAY

Haven't we suffered enough?

We've already had to endure one of the least inspired fall network slates in recent memory — only to see returning favorites and the few worthy new shows threatened by a corporate-greed-driven strike.

And now, as if to add insult to injury, ABC relaunches its off-key Notes From the Underbelly, a sitcom that was greeted with a collective shrug last spring.

You ask, "Why bring it back?" ABC looks over the wreckage of what it laughingly calls its comedy development and asks, "Why not?"

Here's one reason: By linking the show to Samantha Who? and pushing that Christina Applegate charmer up against Two and a Half Men, the network has endangered its first funny, popular comedy in eons. Either ABC has a death wish, or producing a sitcom people actually like violates some hidden executive edict.

If you missed it last season — and most of you did —Notes is yet another example of what has become an ABC specialty: a serialized, one-camera, cute-without-ever-actually-approaching-funny comedy.

On the plus side, the show does seem to have cut back some on last season's near-constant narration (another ABC constant). Otherwise, though, no improvements have been made in a show that desperately could have used some.

As before, we're tracing the pre-baby jitters of the pregnant Lauren (Jennifer Westfeldt) and her husband, Andrew (Peter Cambor). In typical sitcom fashion, they're surrounded by friends who only exist to represent wildly divergent positions on the parental/spousal scale: Julie (Melanie Paxson), a wildly perky stay-at-home mom; Cooper (Rachael Harris), a sarcastic, baby-loathing career woman; and Danny (Michael Weaver), a playboy slacker.

In the real world, people who have this little in common tend not to spend every waking moment together. But then if Notes had any connection to the real world, the writers wouldn't attempt to mine laughs out of Lauren and Andrew trying to outbid each other for the services of a mariachi band, or out of Julie commandeering a tour bus as a giant baby carriage.

The shame is that the actors are actually fine, which makes you think they might have been better off liberated rather than kept together. Westfeldt and Cambor are as charming as it is possible to be, given the show's constraints, and Harris is so bracingly astringent, she almost makes you think her lines are funny — no easy task. Even Weaver and Paxson show enough skill to make you think they're deserving of less clichéd roles.

Unfortunately, the parts they're all playing are almost alarmingly weightless. Is it too much to ask to have a sitcom in which every other line isn't some absurd non- sequitur no one would ever say, leading into some ridiculous argument no one would ever have?

If, by some off chance, you have friends who are this annoying and stupid, then feel free to watch. And if, heaven forbid, you actually are this annoying and stupid, do the rest of us a favor and don't breed.

We have enough problems in this world as it is.

For another Review from Notes from the Underbelly go to http://www.popmatters.com/pm/tv/reviews/33302/notes-from-the-underbelly/