Courting Alex

Alex Rose (Jenna Elfman) is a successful workaholic single lawyer in the city. She works for his father Bill Rose (Dabney Coleman). Molly (Jillian Bach) is her elevation-challenged assistant and Julian (Hugh Bonneville) is her lascivious neighbor. Tavern owner Scott Larson (Josh Randall) is taken with her and he's the spontaneous passionate one.

This is based on a British sitcom. It lasted one season. Twelve episodes were made but only eight were aired. I remember getting bored. Elfman was coming back to TV a few years after Dharma. She made the Looney Tunes movie in between and nothing else of note. The role is the complete opposite of Dharma and it doesn't fit her. If she never did Dharma, this could have been a standard single gal sitcom. No one is inventing anything new here. I rarely laughed and the standard laugh track does not help at all. Randall is stiff in this role. Bach adds her height to the comedy. I didn't know Bonneville back then. Coleman is the one big hope but he can't do much with this. It's one season and quickly forgotten.

Well, networks have to put something on. And when star directors like James Burrows (Cheers) and actresses fresh from perfect roles and sitcoms from the likes of Chuck Lorre's (Dharma and Greg) can't save the sinking ship, one knows there is a serious problem in Hollywood. Jenna did what she could in a soap romance comedy (they don't work at night) chick show (the guys are not in the room) and there was nothing wrong with the direction. But, there HAS to be something in the writing to direct. I think it is called...talent. Or funny would be nice too.

Yup, the writers killed the show. Or lack of writing. Fred Barron has a couple of great sitcoms in Dave's World and others...but what was he thinking here? Chuck Lorre went straight from Dharma and Greg to Two and a Half Men...arguably as funny or funnier than Dharma and Greg. Fred just did not get a right crew together here...the cast did not work well, the characters did not work well and were not credible, and the storyline was terrible. I knew it was doomed when my girlfriend liked it. The kiss of death. It was like scraps of other hit shows were thrown into a blender and Fred Barron came up with what you get when you mix scraps together in a blender...garbage.

I now give myself a half hour break to shampoo the cat; Every Wednesday night at 8:30pm pacific 7:30pm central. What a pile of crap. The commercials have more entertainment value. Fire the writers, fire the cast, put the poor crew on paid leave. This dumb show jumped the shark before the shark was born. I would certainly hope someone in programming at CBS knows the best time to air this program would be at 3:30 AM Saturday morning. That way most of America would be spared the lame idiocy this show has to offer. Whether one uses his or her time to shampoo the cat, read an entire life insurance binder or simply smash ones privates flat with a wooden mallet, anything will be surprisingly less painful than one horrible second watching, "Courting Alex".

Let me say going into this, I love Jenna Elfman and I think she's a talented comedian and actress. Maybe it's because Dharma Montgomery was such a defining character and thus is difficult to follow up, but this somber junket of a show just doesn't showcase her talents at all. I've now seen three episodes, and I may have chuckled two or three times in total. The cast is likable enough, but the writing is far too formulaic and the stock characters are ill-defined. This sitcom isn't even as well done as the one it replaced, "Out of Practice," and believe me, that's not saying much. If you haven't seen it yet, don't bother. It'll be gone by spring.

I saw two episodes of this sitcom, and by god it was one of the worst shows ever. I was never a fan of Jenna Elfman- no offence, i'm sure she is a really wonderful person but in regards to her work, I have never really liked anything she has done. and this sitcom is one of them. Courting Alex is one of those sitcoms which shouldn't really be classified as a sitcom, because it is so excruciatingly bad and so unfunny, i turned off after watching 15 mins of two episodes of this show. Fred baron did a great job with Caroline in the City, which is one of my favourite sitcoms ever, and yet with this show and My family- a UK based sitcom,it is thus disappointing that with these efforts, he hasn't really delivered.

Courting Alex was utter dross- I have never once laughed at any of those situations or those episodes, the writing was truly horrific to say the least. Though i'm not surprised it got canned, as I didn't warm to or connected with any of those characters; they had no personality, no spark- they were just so one-dimensional that there really wasn't much you could say about each of them.

Thank goodness that this show is no longer running in syndication because it was awful, from start to finish.