'Til Death

When first released, 'Til Death was a show that had me in stitches. I cannot remember another sitcom that has made me laugh aloud so often with each episode. Having been divorced twice and single for more years than I can remember, this show takes a look at marriage that will make you roar. What makes it work is the fact that it compares a pair of crazy newlyweds to a couple married over twenty years - The Woodcocks and the Starks.

However, sadly, the show dispenses with the anchor of the show (the characters who play the Woodcocks), and the sitcom sinks to the bottom of ridiculous. Gone are the laughs and the beginning of the slow death that leads to cancellation.

I just felt like I went through another heartrending divorce that has left me convinced I'll never marry again.

Score: Definite 10 before the demise of the Woodcocks; 3 after they left the show.

I think this show seems kind of promising, especially since Brad Garrett from "Everybody Loves Raymond" is the star of the show. Brad Garrett plays a guy named Eddie Stamm who is one of those unhappy married guys who has been married for over 8,000 days to his wife, Joy Stamm (Joely Fisher). Then one day a newlywed couple (Eddie Kaye Thomas and Kat Foster) moves in next door and they try to teach the newlyweds on how marriage actually works. I liked the jokes where Brad Garrett is teaching Eddie Kaye Thomas about his marriage life and how everything else is pretty obvious in marriage. I hope this show lasts. This show premiered on FOX, September 2006.

BOTTOM LINE: IF YOU LIKE BRAD GARRETT ON "RAYMOND" THEN YOU WOULD LIKE HIM ON THIS SHOW

Brad Garrett is the glue holding this together. Everybody else is playing off his character & he is doing fine, much the same way he did well on that Raymond series. In a way Garrett is the Raymond of this series. Fox has been giving this show a chance and is getting rewarded as the show is improving and the ratings are going up.

The scripts have had a wide range from somewhat funny to very funny. At first, it looked like these marriages between the two couples were totally different. The Woodcocks marriage was the eyes wide open smitten stage while Garretts union was the yes we've been together forever stage. The comedy was based upon laughing at how naive the Woodcocks were.

What has happened is that we are seeing the two marriages evolve. Woodcocks marriage is finding out it takes more than being smitten to make things work and they are learning to cope. Garretts marriage is finding out that even though they are comfortable they can still find heat and new things in their relationship. This is helping the show evolve into more than it was when it started.

The actress who is playing Garretts wife on this show is really evolving into a much better comedian as this show grows. Woodcocks wife who is supposed to be the young trophy one is still a bit up on the shelf so to speak. What is going to be interesting is to keep watching as the couples continue to change, in funny sort of ways each show.

There is some class warfare comedy undertones here as Garrett is the long time teacher & Woodcock is the young Administrator who is his boss. This helps the show along at times too.

I read the first several messages on the board here, and people who don't like this show seem to be doing so for two main reasons - they think the longer-married couple is too bitter and unhappy, and they keep comparing the show to Everybody Loves Raymond. Well, I hope the show gets at least a few more episodes to reveal to those of you who aren't paying enough attention that Brad's character and his wife do really love each other and are trying to make their marriage better. A related idea the writers could emphasize is that the Woodcock's marriage will get stronger when the kids take off the rose-colored glasses and begin to love the people they married, not the idealized version of those people. And as for comparing to ELR, if you feel you absolutely must, this show is a lot kinder and more loving than that one.

Network: Fox; Genre: Sitcom; Content Rating: TV-PG (some crude humor, mild language and adult situations); Available: DVD; Perspective: Contemporary (star range: 1 - 4);

Seasons Reviewed: 2 seasons

Eddie Stark (Brad Garrett) had a good thing going. After being married for 25 years, he and his wife Joy (Joely Fisher, "Ellen") have been lulled into a complacent lifestyle of low expectations and general acceptance of all of each other's annoying habits. That is, until obnoxiously chipper newly married couple (Eddie Kaye Thomas and Kat Foster) move in next door. Soon Joy is wondering why Eddie doesn't behave like that for her anymore and Eddie is forced to give the new guy marriage advice.

Watching " 'Til Death" I had the kind of thought that my usually optimism TV watching mind never lets me have: maybe there just isn't anything else for a sitcom to say about marriage. In "Death" a newly married couple experiments with pornography, wives use sex to get new patio furniture and a husband refuses to put his name on a girly birthday gift his wife bought. And so on. In typical sitcom fashion the women are hot and domineering and the men are either wimps or slobs. "Til Death" is not ashamed at all of being a studio audience sitcom. I honestly feel like I'm watching a remake of something I've seen years ago, just re-cast with Brad Garrett and Joely Fisher in the leads.

With "Death", Fox is loudly touting the return to TV of Brad Garrett. And with good reason, the multi Emmy-award winning actor was a breakout star on "Everybody Loves Raymond". In lull episodes Garrett's Robert could always be counted on to turn a one-liner into a huge laugh. And I'd watch Joely Fisher read the phone book. Garrett and Fisher have the veteran acting chops to balance out the amateur silliness of Thomas & Foster.

As you can imagine the show is nothing to get excited about. Naming the newlyweds the Woodcocks is only the beginning of many odd, lame sex jokes. The gags are broad and silly, nor are they tethered to anything more than a sitcom reality shaped by decades of cliché. Fox is asking Garrett to work magic with a script that is well beneath him, but the guy is such a pro he is able to get a few scattered laughs out of this material. Anybody can be funny with good material but it takes real talent to make OK material funny. It's that commitment that makes "'Till Death" better than "According to Jim", "Yes, Dear", "The King of Queens" and other bottom-of-the-barrel family and not-so-family sitcoms.

While playing a totally different character, Garrett's involvement only heightens the reality that " 'Til Death" is the kind of marriage sitcom that "Everybody Loves Raymond" was an evolution away from. Both are realistically cynical towards marriage and family, but "Death" doesn't have the depth or reason behind it. The situations are just as minuscule but on "Raymond" they always revealed a greater, nastier truth. On "Raymond" the arguments often built to an epic meltdown. Here our couple gets in a mild spat and make up happily at the end. Oh yeah, the old sitcom happy ending is back. The days of shows like "Married… with Children" and "Unhappily Ever After" that looked at marriage with cliché-busting, anti-establishment acerbic pessimism are gone, reverting back to this Oprah-esquire feminized view where everybody fights but underneath it they all love each other and there isn't a problem that can't be solved in under 30 minutes of TV time. I thought we'd gotten past all this.

If you expect more from your comedy don't even slow down here. Go in with low expectations and " 'Til Death" is an empty, inoffensive, fairly watchable sitcom. This is the type of show that I would probably be forced to watch if I was over at someone else's house. But with Garrett and Fischer at the helm, this one isn't as agonizing as it could have been.

* * / 4