pluto8

Norm MacDonald is one of those rare performers who has a great natural comic gift. He can just stand there with that silly look on his face and crack me up. His Burt Reynolds impression is hysterical, as are several other of his celebrity characterizations. But it's a puzzler as to why he can't do sustained comic work. He was often hilarious on Saturday Night Live in skit work, but his sitcom "Norm" was flaccid and suffered from the presence of tedious and boring side players. This new half-hour Comedy Central presentation is similarly lazy and loose. It feels as if it might have been written over a weekend and never rehearsed before shooting. The only flickering bright spots were the Andy Rooney bit and the skit with the guy who wanted a threesome for his birthday. But even they were weirdly paced and ended up being sort of one-trick ponies. Norm, we love you. Get some discipline and get to work.

PS. The fisherman in heaven in the opening scene is Max Wright, the befuddled character from ALF and also "The Norm Show."

The naked facts of Pete Rose's life would seem to be the stuff that

even an imaginative writer might have trouble coming up with:

major league baseball's all-time hits leader, a hometown boy who

became a hometown AND national sports hero, a player who

became an American icon for determination, grit and the

embodiment of willpower.

Then, for the traditional tragedy lover in all of us, comes the fall....a

tumble from living legend, to a man in public and possibly

personal denial, finally ending for Rose banned from baseball a

convicted tax cheat and weepy self-confessed gambler.

Unfortunately, "Hustle" seems to have missed every chance to

extract even a scintilla of pathos from Rose's life, instead

concentrating on a thin portrayal of the sordid events stemming

from his gambling addiction. Whether inside Pete Rose there's a

really a significant inner person worthy of close examination is a

good question, but it's a question that "Hustle" never even gets a

sniff of.

A miscast Sizemore and a way past prime Bogdonavich together

fail to create a single genuine moment.

The Cubs Curse, The Red Sox Curse....and now again the Seinfeld Curse. OK, I admit it. I watch Pardon the Interruption on ESPN. Or the show with the Yelling Guys, as my wife calls it. But I watch it for the sports info. Not because Tony Kornheiser is funny. Which he's not. Although he seems to think he is. He also seems to be under the delusion that he's clever. But all he's really good at is being loud. A sitcom based on him, and the characters he's created, would seem doomed. Especially a sitcom dogged with the tired writing, cardboard characters and banal situations of Listen Up.

On one level, I can see where the casting of Jason Alexander as the Kornheiser character (similar types) makes a certain kind of sense. But, of course, that still begs the question as to whether it was worthwhile to develop this stale show in the first place. And while the character of George Costanza was often hilarious as a cog in the big Seinfeld machine, Jason Alexander, now carrying the whole load on Listen Up, is forced to trot out all his old tricks. But, in the end, all he's really good at is being loud.