Flying Blind

It is still one of the best sitcoms I have ever seen. Hip...funny...fabulous...witty...charming...gorgeous! I adore Flying Blind! Although it preceded both...I could best describe it as a mix of (the movie) Party Girl and Dharma & Greg. Perhaps that was the problem... it was too hip, to soon. Great cast...great writing...great premise...and a VERY bad decision in cancelling it!

The good news about being on Fox in 1992 was - no one was watching, and you could get away with things you'd never get to do on a major network. The bad thing about being on Fox in 1992 was that almost no one watched. Which was a shame. Those few that tuned in were well rewarded.

The writing was sharp (look at what the writers and producers went on to do), the acting was brilliant (look at the cast), with incredible comedic timing, the production was...well, they had an early Fox budget, but they did what they could.

Some years later, Dharma and Greg would do another uptight guy marries into a free spirit family story. And while it was successful, it is a pale imitation of Flying Blind.

There is no show that I'd like to see come out on DVD more than this one.

Tea Leoni's presentation of her character in Flying Blind has always stood out as one of the most perfect presentations of the ingenue femme fatale in all of television (and most of cinema). Wild, extravagent, guileless and innocent, this presentation is a guaranteed heart-breaker for anyone who believes The Perfect Woman actually exists. The show as a whole, while flawed, still glowed as result of this unexpectedly successful collision of writing and actress.

I must also concur with other comments that this show got the short-shrift reserved for other real comic gems like The Ben Stiller Show and (dare I say it in print) Duckman. While a different genre entirely, Flying Blind was buried late in the Sunday evening programming where it too was doomed to a quick death (probably because Married With Children was busy leaving its "mark" on television).

This was such a funny series that, when it was canceled, I was stupefied. There are a lot of second-rate (or worse) shows being made all too often these days (especially the sitcom genre) but this wasn't one of them. It was brash, irreverent, high-spirited and had all the ingredients for a very successful series. I laughed my way through every episode. It never, ever disappointed. And when fresh faces were needed on "Ellen", at least Clea Lewis (Tea Leoni's wannabe hangaround friend in this series) was spotted and almost stole *that* show too!

I remember this as the funniest sitcom ever (with the possible exception of Fawlty Towers). Hip, slick, witty and hilarious. Nebbishy Neal, a hapless wage-slave who lives with his parents, somehow wins the heart of hyper-It girl Alicia - the kind of girl who catapults around the world from one chic party to another, pursued madly by writers, artists, billionaires, Nobel-prize winning scientists (and four full-time stalkers who have got together to form a pop group which is very big in Sweden). His family are straight out of Neil Simon, her friends are from darkest Bohemia. Imagine a young Woody Allen dating one of the girls Carole Lombard or Katherine Hepburn used to play in those classic screwball comedies. Parker and Leoni are both adorable and hilarious and every one of the supporting characters and cast are great. The writing is genius.

The gods are jealous of perfection, so Flying Blind was cancelled prematurely, leaving those of us who'd come to love it in a state of grief and denial which has rendered bleak and futile our every waking hour since. If it's ever re-run do yourself a favour and check it out.