Flying Blind

Tea Leoni's presentation of her character in Flying Blind has always stood out as one of the most perfect presentations of the ingenue femme fatale in all of television (and most of cinema). Wild, extravagent, guileless and innocent, this presentation is a guaranteed heart-breaker for anyone who believes The Perfect Woman actually exists. The show as a whole, while flawed, still glowed as result of this unexpectedly successful collision of writing and actress.

I must also concur with other comments that this show got the short-shrift reserved for other real comic gems like The Ben Stiller Show and (dare I say it in print) Duckman. While a different genre entirely, Flying Blind was buried late in the Sunday evening programming where it too was doomed to a quick death (probably because Married With Children was busy leaving its "mark" on television).

This was such a funny series that, when it was canceled, I was stupefied. There are a lot of second-rate (or worse) shows being made all too often these days (especially the sitcom genre) but this wasn't one of them. It was brash, irreverent, high-spirited and had all the ingredients for a very successful series. I laughed my way through every episode. It never, ever disappointed. And when fresh faces were needed on "Ellen", at least Clea Lewis (Tea Leoni's wannabe hangaround friend in this series) was spotted and almost stole *that* show too!

Comparisons to "Dharma and Greg" are fair, although this series was better (I like D&G too, but not anywhere near as much) and the only thing Dharma and Alicia have in common is free-spiritedness. The comparison to "Mad About You," however, is ridiculous. Calling "Mad About You" a classic is even more ridiculous. That aside, as a network suffers through its infancy, many good shows fall by the wayside. Baby nets have very few resources available to sustain good shows if they aren't getting good ratings. "Flying Blind" thus died a most undeserved early death. And as "The Naked Truth" has replaced it in most people's mind's "Tea Leoni file" the chance of anyone purchasing the reruns seems slight; a shame, because I'd like to see it again. "The Naked Truth" was a good show too, but not as good as this one.

This show has been somewhere in my subconscious for the past 13 years. At the time that this show was on the air I was moving from my parents house in the suburbs (again, after moving back in with them) and just getting fully entrenched in the post modern art world in The Big City. This show captured that time perfectly, complete with post modern performance "pieces" being staged in their loft/warehouse apartment. I related to the unwitting suburban average Joe and the sophisticated metropolitan artists. The characters resonated true for me.

Of course it's been 13 years since I've seen it, and had the series not been cut off at it's inception I might not have built it up in my mind. But, for me, this show captured a time and a place that no other show since has captured. I kept waiting for it to get picked up again. I'm glad to see that other people remember it and that I wasn't the only person out there who watched it.

When will it come out on DVD? Oh, Flying Blind, why has thou forsaken me?

The good news about being on Fox in 1992 was - no one was watching, and you could get away with things you'd never get to do on a major network. The bad thing about being on Fox in 1992 was that almost no one watched. Which was a shame. Those few that tuned in were well rewarded.

The writing was sharp (look at what the writers and producers went on to do), the acting was brilliant (look at the cast), with incredible comedic timing, the production was...well, they had an early Fox budget, but they did what they could.

Some years later, Dharma and Greg would do another uptight guy marries into a free spirit family story. And while it was successful, it is a pale imitation of Flying Blind.

There is no show that I'd like to see come out on DVD more than this one.