Jesse

In the beginning this was not a bad show, by beginning I mean the first season, then the powers that be decided to reformat by dropping several members of the case without explanation, and left Jesse seeking a new job, which she was not suited for. If they had kept things the way they were, that might have saved the series.

For those that liked The Single Guy, this also happened on that series, trading the one good couple on the show for a Bagel Shop, not unlike the coffee shop on Friends.

Jesse Warner (Christina Applegate) is a single mom to Little John in Buffalo. She lives at home with her father (George Dzundza) and two brothers, one voluntarily silent. Diego (Bruno Campos) is the new neighbor from Chile and her new love interest. She works at her traditional father's bar with girlfriends Carrie (Jennifer Milmore) and Linda (Liza Snyder). Complicating matters is her ex-husband, who walked out on her 7 years before, but is back to reinsert himself into her life. In the second season, she's studying to be a nurse and gets a job at a clinic. There are other changes including little odd ones like Milmore's hair and big ones likes the disappearance of her family. Dzundza is a big personality and the show feels odd without such a big part of her life.

This is a Christina Applegate vehicle. After the success of Married with Children, the folks at NBC thought they had the formula to built around Christina. As such, it always felt fake and chemistry never truly set right. It just seemed to be too many things going on in this show. When they make one character voluntarily mute, it just showed how silly the writers got. The desperation really showed when it gets retooled dramatically for the second season. It's just a random sitcom to showcase Applegate and nothing more.

The producers of Friends have done it again. A comedy about the struggles we all go through life displayed in the funniest way possible. Like, Friends, Jesse has great actors such as Christina Applegate (from Married.. With Children). All the episodes and the stories are very well done. No wonder this show reached the top-ten so fast. Extremely entertaining. I hope this show stays around for a long time.

The creators of Friends really only seem to have been able to come up with one successful sitcom and this one is not it. You can see this because half the cast was dropped after the first season and the show was completely reformatted, not for the better. Christina Applegate deserves better than this and hopefully she will find something. The only reason this show lasted at all was because of its timeslot after the mega-hit Friends and because it came from the creators of Friends.

Nice to see Christina Applegate finally get a starring role on TV.

I think this is a very mature role for her as a single mom with the prescription quirky family (who doesn't have one?).

But after the gloriously depressing Mafia! this is a gem. Fast punchy dialogue, yet there's still time for a little bit of romance with the new neighbour.

I've only just started to watch it here in the UK (CH4, mornings July 2001) so it's still early days, really.

Liked the episode about their "First Date" and the incident with the candy - classic "if it can go wrong, it will".

Well done, Christina for shaking off the Kelly Bundy image of being a dullard.

Go-o-o Jesse!