Townies

Lauren Graham might not have been given the chance to shine with this series but she is beyond proving her talent with the Gilmore Girls. She is a great actress who was overlooked by many for years and is now finally getting the recognition that she deserves. I really liked this show.

Townies centered on a group of 20-somethings stuck in a New England fishing town. Carrie (Molly Ringwald) was a good but sometimes outspoken Catholic girl who turned her back on religion despite the urgings of her mother and priest, and she kept Kurt (Ron Livingston), her sadsack best friend who vied for her affections, at arm's length. Pessimistic Denise (Lauren Graham) had a baby before marrying childish high school sweetheart Ryan (Bill Burr). Free-spirited Shannon (Jenna Elfman) wasn't looking to settle down, though she'd already run out of guys her own age to date. Carrie, Denise and Shannon worked as waitresses at The Pelican, a diner run by Marge (Conchata Ferell), whose dimwitted son Jesse (Joseph D. Reitman) was the busboy.

Molly Ringwald returned to the screen after a long hiatus and was touted as the star (which probably didn't help, since she was deemed a has-been) but this was really an ensemble show. And what an ensemble it was - not only did everyone have terrific chemistry, but all of Ringwald's costars were total unknowns at the time and they've each gone on to find success. The writing was a little wobbly at the start (as with most every sitcom), but they'd already begun to find their groove when ABC inexplicably dropped the show from the schedule. It wasn't "Friends" (which EVERY comedy of the day was compared to and vilified for not being), but frankly, it had a little more soul.

Scheduled on Wednesday nights where there were a whopping 16 sitcoms to choose from, most every show on that night did not return for another season - except for the ABC hits that surrounded this one (Ellen, Grace Under Fire & Drew Carey). Expectations were high, ratings weren't as good as they hoped, and instead of giving the show time to build an audience, the newly Disneyfied network pulled the plug without bothering to air the final 5 episodes.

The show got a supposed new lease on life in 2001 when Yahoo began offering them for free on their video streaming service, but online video quality was poor at the time and the site closed within a year. Since then, Townies has been relegated to oblivion, which I find very odd. A few jokes are dated 20-odd years later, but for the most part, the show still holds up remarkably well. And with the cast of familiar faces, this one seems like a perfect contender for sites like Netflix and Hulu... now that streaming video isn't tiny, pixely and continuously buffering.

Carrie Donovan (Molly Ringwald), Shannon Canotis (Jenna Elfman), and Denise Garibaldi-Callahan (Lauren Graham) are lifelong best friends in the fishing town of Gloucester, Massachusetts. They are waitresses at the local diner owned by Marge and her fry cook son Jesse. Childhood friend Curt (Ron Livingston) has a non-secret crush on Carrie. Denise marries baby daddy Ryan Callahan (Bill Burr). Shannon has dated every guy in town and dreams of escaping.

It's amazing to see these three beautiful ladies in this half-forgotten sitcom. I loved it during its initial run and fell in love with the girls immediately. Ringwald was the star at the time but she got panned for being past her prime. Elfman would shoot into the stratosphere in the next year with Dharma & Greg. It would take Graham a few more years to get her Gilmore Girls. It's too bad that Ringwald suffered from 80's stardom hangover. The higher you climb, the further people want to pull you down. The show could never survive the perceived Ringwald hangover. It is a standard network sitcom by veteran TV producer Matthew Carlson. Essentially, it's a single gal sitcom even though one of the gals gets married in the pilot. It does not last more than a half year run airing only ten episodes.

'Townies' was only on the air about a half a year, barely a blip on the radar screen, so to speak. But the critical reaction to it seems to have had a much greater impact on the careers of two of its actresses than one would think.

The show was about three young women from New England (Molly Ringwald, Lauren Graham and Jenna Elfman) who work in a seafood restaurant and dream of someday leading more exciting and fulfilling lives elsewhere. It had some appeal, owing to the three lead actresses and co-star Conchata Ferrell. But its male characters weren't drawn too well and overall the level of humor never rose too high and the show was soon cancelled. But that's not quite the end of the story.

TV critics seem to have a herd mentality at times, and one of the things they all seemed to agree on was now that Molly Ringwald is down, kick her. Story after story recounted her early success in some of John Hughes' movies, and her subsequent failure to attain the same level of popular acclaim when she sought more adult roles. 'Townies' was just seen as another in a line of inglorious failures.

If the critics decided that Ringwald could do no right, they were equally sure that Jenna Elfman could do no wrong. It almost became a requirement that anyone writing about the new TV show 'Dharma and Greg' had to include a line pointing out that Elfman was the sole shining light on an otherwise dismal show. As far as I was concerned, both the assessments of Ringwald's and Elfman's work on the show were exaggerated, but both became like articles of faith to many TV critics. They show this pack mentality all the time. Examples: 'The Simpsons' is the TV equivalent of The Second Coming; 'Suddenly Susan' is the worst comedy on TV; Tea Leoni was wonderful on 'The Naked Truth' no matter how bad the show was; and 'Encore, Encore' with Nathan Lane was an unredeemable bomb because its pilot wasn't made available to critics for preview.

Viewers deserve something better than these "company line" types of opinions from TV critics. As for 'Townies,' it hasn't been seen again, so many people will never be able to decide for themselves.

By no means Townies was not the greatest of sitcoms, but it wasn't a bad half-hours viewing. The series dealt with the lives of a group of twenty-somethings dealing with living in a financially struggling, fishing-reliant, town in the US. After graduating high school, their lives have gone nowhere important, with the three main cast members (Molly Ringwald, Jenna Elfman, and Lauren Graham) working in a diner, the main focus of the series.

The show struggled to find its voice at the beginning of the series, but once it did, it was obvious that the show was capable of achieving greatness. It's a shame that the series was cancelled so prematurely, because with a bit of time, and a better timeslot, the show could have been met with great success.