Jesse

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!

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.

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.

I've just watched my first episode today. My first impression was that it was kinda fun to watch something where Christina Applegate didn't play a stupid bimbo. And after watching some more I found out that it was a very good series. It had lots of great moments. I especially liked the way Jesse handled the annoying man in the bar. This seems to be a very promising series. I'm looking forward to the next episode.

Christina Applegate returns to television since the end of her old show, Married With Children. What's surprising is how she plays someone who is somewhat serious instead of the incredibly stupid and, yes, sexy Kelly Bundy. Just shows how much talent she has. Anyway, I wouldn't say this is the best series NBC turned out, that probably being Seinfeld, but certainly not the worst, that being Jenny as far as I'm concerned. It's a basic comedy series like many of the others but proves itself to be enjoyable.