Watching Ellie

Julia Louis-Dreyfuss pulls off the impossible. She stars in a sitcom where the character she portrays is about as far away as possible as she can get from the one she portrayed in "SEINFELD". The only similarities here is that surprisingly, she chose to name herself 'Ellie' in this sitcom where her name in Seinfeld was 'Elaine'. A coincidence perhaps?

Nonetheless, this sitcom had me thinking prior that I was only going to witness another poor offering starring a Seinfeld allum portraying the same character as before (ie. Kramer - "THE MICHAEL RICHARDS SHOW", George - "THE BOB PATTERSON SHOW"). I decided to give "WATCHING ELLIE" a shot and I was pleasantly surprised!

Julia Louis-Dreyfuss is Ellie. From what the pilot offered, Ellie is a jazz singer at a local club. Her life is full of comical mishaps and characters that she must interact with on a daily basis and she appears to have a sister of a somewhat flighty-nature. Ellie's lifestyle is amusing. She is sort of like 'Ally McBeal' without the dancing babies and dramatization of events that play out to the sound-track of Barry White.

"WATCHING ELLIE" supposedly plays out in real-time. There is a time counter in the corner of the television screen that counts down from '22:00' minutes. In the pilot, Ellie scrambles to ready herself for her jazz gig while the toilet in her bathroom is over-flowing, unbeknownst to her. Her sister has stolen her favorite dress that she wants to wear and now her apartment is becoming flooded with water! Enter surprise number two, Peter Stormare (ie. "FARGO", "O' BROTHER WHERE ART THOU", "DANCER IN THE DARK")!! An actor who I never thought I'd see starring in a generic sitcom, he portrays a pathetic handy-man with an un-placeable accent (Swedish perhaps?) who can't help but ogle over Ellie as she calls on him to try and fix her broken toilet. When he slips and knocks himself out, Ellie dashes a few floors down to seek advice from a Doctor who assists in the situation while completely nude.

Ellie herself has several character flaws. While not completely naive to the current events that shape her lifestyle, she has a male neighbor who has an issue with her by advising her constantly that the elevator is 'out of order' when it is in fact working (therefore forcing her to take the stairs every time) and she is also having an affair with a member of her jazz outfit who is (surprise, surprise) married!

Unlike the character of 'Elaine' that she portrayed on "SEINFELD", Ellie is a character that you can sympathize with. She does come off as a loser of sorts, but there is also a lot of 'human' in her character that some people will be able to identify with.

I really enjoyed the pilot, but will "WATCHING ELLIE" be able to keep its head above water with smart writing and not curse itself with repetitive jokes and turn into puerile trash (ie. "JUST SHOOT ME", "ALLY MCBEAL")? Only time will tell.

In the meantime - well done Julia Louis-Dreyfuss!

My Rating - 8 out of 10

Really not a bad idea, but Julia Louis-Dreyfus is no Lucille Ball. I didn't buy it when she accidentally closed the grand piano. She's an okay singer, I guess, but I find it odd that they would name her charactar "Ellie". I know it's supposed to be "Eleanor" but it sounds too close to "Elaine". This show really wasn't that funny, but that's not to discredit Louis-Dreyfus as an actress. With the right script and a better time slot, she could make it work! I would also like to see her in movies again.

I was not expecting too much with this show - seeing the success of most spin-offs from Seinfeld failed, I was hoping Watching Ellie wouldn't suffer the same fate...but the show was just plain terrible. While the real-time format was somewhat original (sorry, "24" made it first), there was absolutely no structure whatsoever to the show. There were random events after random events, and the show literally became...well, a show about nothing - and not in the good way. The jokes failed regularly; while I applaud their decision to avoid a laugh track, there's something else they should have done away with: sitcom jokes. While the show is not all sitcom jokes, there were enough in there to realize just how bad such styled jokes are without a laugh track to encourage your humor. There was no Sex and the City humor in here, or even Malcolm in the Middle humor. Frankly, there was no humor. The little clock was no longer a means to orient yourself in Ellie's world - instead, it became more of a dragging clock. It is kind of like being in school, watching the clock and waiting for the 12:00 lunch bell...and the clock just drags sooooo slowly. Watching Ellie crashed and burned pretty damn badly.

Sorry, let me rephrase that: it was the best of shows, THEN it was the worst of shows. After its brilliant initial run proved it too sophisticated for a mass network audience, the lovely and genuinely charming Watching Ellie disappeared. Now it's back, in a grotesque, dumbed-down version with the same actors playing characters who have the same names and I guess are supposed to be the same characters. The only problem with this is that there is no character consistency; and indeed in the new version there are no characters at all, only are sit-com stereotypes. The 'humor', now that it can't be rooted in the characters (as, again, there are none) is reduced to the utterly predictable and insultingly stupid. (The man Ellie gave the finger to could have been her big break - what a shock! Her boyfriend isn't cheating on her, he's trying to further her career - who could have guessed?!) In lieu of the laughter that will no longer be forthcoming from the audience, the producers have kindly supplied the canned variety.

The original Ellie, as fans will fondly recall, allowed amusing events to happen naturally, preferring a handful of genuinely funny moments in a half-hour to five lousy punch-lines per minute. They didn't even require that each episode end with a joke. Audiences, confused and perplexed by the lack of formula (duh, what am I supposed to laugh at? duh, this sure isn't Will and Grace!) stayed away in droves.

Rather than making 'Ellie for Dummies,' why couldn't the show have been transferred to, say, HBO, where intelligent, laugh-track-free comedies seem to flourish? (Dare I point out that even Fox network, which airs Bernie Mac and Malcolm in the Middle, has recognized the value of the laugh-track-free, single camera, half-hour comedy?) Watching the 2003 version of Ellie is like having dinner with a former best friend who has since been lobotomized. And the food and the service are lousy too.

Is it just me or is this show really..bad? It tries Way too hard to be like Seinfeld, but nothing will ever be that good. I think Julia Louis Dreyfuss is very talented, but I think she is much better in a supporting role, especially as Elaine. The first half of the show (of the first episode) wasn't bad, but then it took a terrible turn for the worst. I mean come on, is this the best you can come up with? Its basically stupid slap stick comedy, which is probably because the writing is so bad. It was also very boring. I liked how they had a clock in the corner, it came in very handy when I could tell how long I had left in watching this unfunny series. I'm sorry Julia. You should have done a Seinfeld Spin-off. Learn from Kelsey Grammer. He wanted to do a show after Cheers about a guy in an accident that has people wait around on him and be his helpers. But another guy told him to keep the character of Fraiser. Now look at him. He's making millions PER EPISODE.