Big Day

It's wedding day for Alice (Marla Sokoloff) and Danny Garfinkle (Josh Cooke) at her parents' home. Her mother Jane (Wendie Malick) wants to control the wedding. Her father Steve (Kurt Fuller) wants her to not marry the immature Danny. Lorna (Stephnie Weir) is the harried wedding coordinator. Becca (Miriam Shor) is Alice's sister. The Garf (Stephen Tobolowsky) is Danny's wacky dad.

This is one of those high concept sitcoms where everybody has to be wacky. It comes off badly. At least, there are no laugh tracks but they replace it with a constant wacky music soundtrack. It doesn't make the show any funnier. I like the actors and it's not like this is anything offensive. It's just not funny.

This show was much better when it was on the BBC and titled The Worst Week of My Life.

Stephanie Weir and Wendy Malick should certainly be credited with being the only saving grace this show, but esp in Stephanie's case, being the funniest part of the show.

The show certainly has the ingredients of a hit with a great cast. While the Americanized version of another British sitcom, The Office, translated well, that has largely been because past the pilot, they have pretty much made the show their own, and not relied solely on the British show's format. This show needs to do the same thing.

The Worst Week of My Life was a great BBC series. Big Day should grow up, and have it's big day and start walking on it's own.

I have this show a chance, even though I wasn't in the mood for "Another Desperate Housewives" Other shows I have seen have some bad acting in it, but man...this one. The guy who played the Delivery guy was Awful! He had no characters and was just as useless as an extra! Are they just giving anyone roles now? I don't think he is ready yet to perform in TV and film. I shut it off half way through his performance ;) although the rest of the characters are pretty good. I would have given this show another chance but the casting was off in some places. Maybe is it ever jumps to a network, other than the one it is on. Perhaps with a better casting director who doesn't just give important featured spots to just anyone, i can watch it. Seriously. The delivery guy! AWFUL!

This is a well-cast show with only the barest of plots...but it works. The writers have pulled out all the insanity cards and are having entirely too much fun with them. Every time one crisis is averted (or determined to not, really, be a crisis,) another one arises. And the actors seem to throw themselves with unmitigated glee into whatever situation the writers conjure up--from dealing with the obnoxious grandmother to taking down a dragon. It is, however, a warm-hearted show--even though they keep throwing roadblocks into the wedding day, you have no doubt that, in the end, the happy couple will be just that...the happy couple. (Of course, since we haven't gotten to the end of the day yet, I could be wrong...but I'm willing to bet, oh, a box of albino Monarch butterflies that it'll all come together.)

This show is brilliant! However, you do need to watch each and every minute of each and every episode, or you won't have a clue what's going on.

Thank goodness I have Tivo.

The plot is too complicated to get into here. We have...

*The bride, a super-nice girl (maybe a little too nice), who is marrying...

*The groom, he's a camp counselor, for goodness sakes, yet everyone likes him except...

*The bride's father, a neurosurgeon who thinks his daughter could do better, and who is married to...

*The super-uptight mother of the bride who wants everything to be perfect, which is why...

*The wedding planner is losing her mind. Among the guests who are not making things any easier are..

*The bride's sociopathic sister, who swallowed the contact lenses of...

*The groom's callous, womanizing best friend and best man, which means that...

*The groom's gay friend who is still in the closet and has a crush on the groom is jealous of the best man as well as the bride. Speaking of the bride...

*Her old boyfriend is here, and he's trying to get her back, any way he can. Also a problem is...

*The groom's new-agey father, who has so far given the mother of the bride a foot massage she will never forget and has apparently had a premonition that the mother's rather difficult mother will die some time that day, although that's not entirely clear.

What is clear? Well, so far we know the mother of the bride's ex-boyfriend will show up. Someone in the family will die that day. A stripper will show up with the father of the bride's wallet that he left at a strip club that morning. It's rained, it's been sunny, the wind has blown the tent away, and the unpredictable weather will probably continue to be a problem. The bride lost all the wedding gifts to her sister in a game of Hungry, Hungry Hippo, and the groom lost their honeymoon because of a military takeover in the country they were supposed to fly to (and neither has told the other yet). The entire state seems to be attending another, absolutely perfect wedding on the same day. The wedding planner quit, although so far no one seems to care. Oh, and there's a kid's birthday party next door with a huge blow-up bouncy castle that overshadows the tent.

This is a brilliant show, but you should watch it from the beginning to fully enjoy it.