Listen Up

I have watched all the "Listen Up" episodes to date. It started, as most TV sitcoms, rather slowly, but now the cast have hit their stride. The teenage son, Mickey, played by Will Rothhaar, has gradually become a main character of the ensemble cast. Rothhaar is a gifted comedian with truly inspired deadpan delivery. He's on his way to becoming a Major Talent, someday! The show's episodes are now well-crafted plots acted out by cast members who are really "clicking" together. In one recent episode, Mickey dated a girlfriend who turned out to be into Civil War Reenactment; she took him to Gettysburg in full 1860's regalia, and when he walked into the room dressed as a Confederate soldier, I nearly fell out of my recliner laughing. The look on his face was perfect! The boyfriend who can't believe he's really doing this for his girlfriend. Every show is a gem, now. Watch "Listen Up!" regularly and you'll find yourself becoming a delighted fan.

Did you ever watch the very earliest episodes of Seinfeld back in 1990? I can remember seeing them when they were new, and thinking that the show was nothing to get excited about. It improved at an almost imperceptible rate, until I eventually realized I was watching something inspired. I think this show, too, has shown gradual improvement in the quality of its scripts and the interaction of its cast. The show is really built around its star, Jason Alexander, and as an old Seinfeld fan I have a lot of good will toward Alexander and am willing to give any project of his a fair chance. Is there a certain amount of George Costanza in the role of Tony Kleinman? Undoubtedly, but it's a shtick that I still enjoy.

You can't go far wrong with Malcolm-Jamal Warner, a seasoned sitcom veteran and just plain likable guy. The interaction between him and Alexander is fun to watch, and they make a good team.

I know almost nothing about sports, and absolutely nothing about Tony Kornheiser, so that element of the project means nothing to me. To me it's not important, anyway, because as an earlier commentator pointed out, the show isn't about sports in the slightest. Although every once in a while a sports figure is trotted on to add a bit of color to the show, these scenes are just brief distractions.

I will admit, though, that the very tired sitcom stereotype of "smart wife and kids, dumb dad" is a little grating at times, and I'd appreciate it if this formula was not quite so overstressed in the show. One kink in that formula, though, is Will Rothhaar as Tony's son Mickey. This character started out as a cipher because of the scant amount of lines and screen time accorded him (the earliest plots seemed to be dominated by the relationship between Tony and his fairly obnoxious daughter). But Rothhaar, a highly experienced young actor, seems to bring a much-needed element of calm and softness amidst the more grating personalities of the other characters. The delivery of his lines are never overdone in the slightest but always note-perfect, and always get a laugh out of me. He turns what could be a cartoonish stereotype of a simple-minded slacker kid into an interesting, likable, and funny character, and I get a big kick out of the scenes where he's intimidated by his harpy sister.

I hope this show is given a chance to continue to grow and improve. I like its progress.

Let's say you own a hot dog stand. You hire this jerk to make hot dogs. He burns them all day long. For every customer, he turns the dog into charcoal when he tries to grill it. This goes on for a while, and nobody buys hot dogs. So you fire the jerk. Next day the jerk comes back, you re-hire him, and he starts burning hot dogs again. You lose a lot of money. The cycle repeats itself. This is how the networks run their business.

The sit com has been dead for years. The genre is just not funny anymore.It has run its course. Yet every year, the networks trot em out again, and lose more money. Jason Alexander was only funny in 'Seinfeld' because he was an unlikeable jerk. In anything else, hes just an....unlikeable jerk not in 'Seinfeld'. Hes got no warmth, no comic talent, no timing, no appeal. Yet this is what, the second or third attempt they've tried to use him to snatch some sort of audience? When are these execs gonna stop burning their dogs?

I watched this show for 30 straight extraordinarily dull minutes and didn't even grin. not once. I didn't smirk. I didn't breathe heavy. It was so dull it wasn't even embarrassing. I give it possibly 2 more weeks. The grill is on fire again.

The Cubs Curse, The Red Sox Curse....and now again the Seinfeld Curse. OK, I admit it. I watch Pardon the Interruption on ESPN. Or the show with the Yelling Guys, as my wife calls it. But I watch it for the sports info. Not because Tony Kornheiser is funny. Which he's not. Although he seems to think he is. He also seems to be under the delusion that he's clever. But all he's really good at is being loud. A sitcom based on him, and the characters he's created, would seem doomed. Especially a sitcom dogged with the tired writing, cardboard characters and banal situations of Listen Up.

On one level, I can see where the casting of Jason Alexander as the Kornheiser character (similar types) makes a certain kind of sense. But, of course, that still begs the question as to whether it was worthwhile to develop this stale show in the first place. And while the character of George Costanza was often hilarious as a cog in the big Seinfeld machine, Jason Alexander, now carrying the whole load on Listen Up, is forced to trot out all his old tricks. But, in the end, all he's really good at is being loud.

I'm a sports guy and I watch ESPN rather regularly, including Kornheiser on PTI. I also was a HUGE Seinfeld fan. So naturally, I thought this would be a show worth watching. Boy, was I wrong. "Tony" is one of the most wimpiest characters ever created next to Screech from Saved by the Bell and Mark from Step by Step. His character and his relationship with his daughter really give parenting a bad name. This show pretty much follows the new age mantra of "don't punish your kids, listen to what they have to say" BS. In one episode, Tony punishes her daughter only to feel - you guessed it - bad about it. So he tries to find ways to reward her so he wouldn't have to go through with the punishment. My God!

It seems they are really only trying to develop two characters in this show, Tony and his daughter. The "son" has a handful of lines in each episode and is portrayed as semi-retarded or highly addicted to the wacky weed. The mother hardly says a word and seems overly passive towards her kids. If someone was walking down the street and saw this group of people together, they wouldn't think they were a family. The show hardly talks about sports (Gee, wouldn't you think that a show based on a sports writer would have something to do with sports). I give this show the rest of the season and then the Axe. Side note: The opening credits sequence....LAME. Feels like something out of the 80's.