'Til Death

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

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.

This show was so good but the new season is horrible. Woodcocks were great - why did they take them out? Kenny was the best character - made me LOL and he is gone. WTF? The Allie and Doug characters are lame - no other word to describe watching them outside of painful. I fast forwarded past most of "the wedding" episode - if I wanted to watch a cartoon I would. Now Til Death has added their political comments to the show in "the wedding" episode. We don't tune in to hear your political agenda. Boston Legal did that and they are off the air. The worst part of the show used to be the one scene in every episode (yes we noticed) where Joely would have her fake boobs (we know they are fake, too) hanging out and now the entire show is horrible. Change is not good - change it back or I'm out and I bet many more people are too.

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.

The first two seasons of this are a decent funny sitcom. It is basically about a long time married couple who have a newly married couple move into next to them. This is fine for the first two seasons. However in Season 3 the newly married couple disappear and are erased from history.

It then just becomes about the established married couple. However a few episodes for Season 2 were inserted into Season 3 so the newly married couple just suddenly appear. Season 3 is also out of order so Kenny (who was my favourite character) is living with them with no explanation until later on in the season when he moves in.

Season 4 just loses the plot completely. Kenny disappears. A rich man and his young wife move in (if he was rich why would he live in a working class suburb??) An ongoing joke about the married couples, daughter's boyfriend thinking he is living in a sitcom stops being funny after the first episode the joke appears. One episode involves cartoons of the characters (and jumping a shark). It felt like they knew it was the last season and all the ideas they had for another six seasons they were cramming in. This is without the fact the daughter changes actress four times (twice in Season 4).

It is a shame as the acting is great. The first two seasons were good but it just all falls apart. I really wish I had left it alone after Season 2.