Flying Blind

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.

I remember this as the funniest sitcom ever (with the possible exception of Fawlty Towers). Hip, slick, witty and hilarious. Nebbishy Neal, a hapless wage-slave who lives with his parents, somehow wins the heart of hyper-It girl Alicia - the kind of girl who catapults around the world from one chic party to another, pursued madly by writers, artists, billionaires, Nobel-prize winning scientists (and four full-time stalkers who have got together to form a pop group which is very big in Sweden). His family are straight out of Neil Simon, her friends are from darkest Bohemia. Imagine a young Woody Allen dating one of the girls Carole Lombard or Katherine Hepburn used to play in those classic screwball comedies. Parker and Leoni are both adorable and hilarious and every one of the supporting characters and cast are great. The writing is genius.

The gods are jealous of perfection, so Flying Blind was cancelled prematurely, leaving those of us who'd come to love it in a state of grief and denial which has rendered bleak and futile our every waking hour since. If it's ever re-run do yourself a favour and check it out.

I've lost sleep over the sadness of losing this amazing show!

I just bought the full series from this link: http://www.sell.com/241R45 but haven't seen the DVDs yet. The seller said he's friends with Corey and sent him a set. Also said he sent a set to Tea, so I'm thinking they might be pretty good quality. The seller has excellent reviews. Only $19.95 including shipping.

While talking with the seller, he told me that Corey said the show was cancelled because 2 of the producers hated the other two producers! The producers and writers are brilliant: Malcolm in the Middle, Arrested Development... etc. The seller said there were more episodes written and ready to shoot, and the end of season one was left wide open for a season two but things just broke down on the set into havoc and everyone was miserable! The show wasn't cancelled as much as it fell apart! Corey had an opportunity to go back to Broadway and took it. That was it.

Corey and Tea are friends in real life, that's why they had such great chemistry on screen : ) Reading these reviews over the years has been comforting to me - to know others feel my pain and loss. Soon, I will get to re-live all of the joy of the only season of one of my favorite TV shows ever!!

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?