Coming of Age

The story of a newly-retired couple settling into their new home at an Arizona retirement community, this show was never given a fair chance to find an audience. The Hales (Paul Dooley and Phyllis Newman), were relatively sedate people (though his temper was often set off by the loonies they met), but the Peppers next door (Alan Young and Glynis Johns), the neighborhood hotpants (Ruta Lee), and the Little Hitler who ran the place (Kevin Pollak) made up most of the comedy.

I have an episode of this I taped because it had Bob & Ray in the cast. The series bears a striking resemblance to the BBC series "Waiting for God" where the residents of the retirement community are continually battling with the manager of the place, who is a young, smarmy, disrespectful man. I taped this but never watched it, but it was pretty good. Not sure where they put this show but if it was a lead-in or lead-out to one of their well-known, popular shows it might have had a chance. The cast was impressive: Glynis Johns, Phyllis Newman, Paul Dooley, Alan Young and others. It was written and produced by Emily Marshall, who may be a relative of Garry Marshall. There are people who tape at least one of every new show just for posterity and time and hindsight is kind to some programs after they are cancelled. The Associates was one - a show about lawyers starring Martin Short to name one. In the old days the minimum series order was always at least 13 weeks but nowadays the networks may order only a few or if they order more than a few and the show is cancelled, they'll "Burn them off" during the summer when no one will see them or they'll never see the light of day, then the network will reduce its costs and the public will never know anyway. Just think how many more shows would have survived if they had been laced adjacent to a popular show or given more time to accumulate a decent-sized audience (St. Elsewhere; Seinfeld, etc.)