Listen Up

I've spent some time reading the comments on this site about "Listen Up." The show, although doing well rating wise, does not appear to be a favorite amongst IMDb users.

I think the show is a decent show. There are some great lines (i.e. "I had no idea this little hair could produce this much debris") among others. The show has good jokes. But it does lack something. One thing I can say is that if someone were to tell me what the first two episodes were about I wouldn't be able to provide the answer. The first two episodes haven't really been about anything. The daughter bans her father from her soccer games in episode 1. In episode 2 she defies him and gets more earring holes. These are not story lines with which to base an entire episode on. There's little substance there. The show doesn't have any meaning. Yes, comedies are supposed to be funny and are not to be mistaken for films that are supposed to inspire or deliver some great message. But there needs to be something.

"Seinfeld" didn't really have meaning either but the jokes centered around the little quirky things we do in our lives. This helped us relate. It made us interested. One of the better sitcoms we've had over recent years has been "Frasier" (mostly in its early years) but one thing that "Frasier" managed to do was to blend jokes with substance. Many episodes featured a serious conversation between characters that put life into perspective and revealed some truth. "Listen Up" has yet to provide something for us to grab onto. Each episode needs a conflict - one that can provide some humor but at the same time be resolved in the end such that Tony Kleinman learns something.

As for Jason Alexander and his acting thus far I have to say he's done a fine job. The little things he does is what makes his performance great - His pump of the fist when his son tells him that he's reading a book of zip codes for instance. The only thing I could perhaps fault him for is going into his yell voice too often and always with the same tone. But for the most part I have enjoyed his performance.

Everyone seems to be talking about how he's acting like George Constanza from "Seinfeld" and I'd have to say that he is. But this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Actors aren't generally supposed to act like a million different things. Actors are selling themselves. A director looks for a certain look, a certain quality in the actor's voice, and checks to see if the actor can act. Jason Alexander is Jason Alexander and he's going to be himself when he performs. He was cast to be the character he has always been. He's not a character actor. He's not going to seem like an entirely different person with each show or movie he is in.

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.

A TV series treatment of Sportswriter and ESPN commentator Tony Kornheiser's articles and essays is the basis for this show,which pair's Seinfeld's sharp comedic loser extraordinaire Alexander with jovial sitcom vet Malcolm Jamal Warner as very thinly disguised surrogates of Kornheiser and his co-host on ESPN's "Pardon the Interruption" columnist Michael Wilbon,respectively.

There might be fertile room for comedy here,and Alexander seems a little better fit for this than the previous "Bob Patterson",but this show couldn't relay to you enough how completely out of control he was with his family. Sure,his wife(Wendy Makkena)is sweet and basically supportive,but their kids,particularly the daughter(Daniella Motta) but I suppose even the son(Will Rothar)to a lesser degree,seem to regard their dad with an unrelenting source of aggravation. To make matters worse,at work,he is almost constantly falling behind his popular co-star in terms of respect or attention. All of this may not SOUND like bad elements for the show,but the show seemed to kind of hammer away at the same note,episode after episode,and it becomes pretty tiresome in a hurry.

Not a terrible show,but could've been better.It seems like of late,other than "Duckman",he seems to be more comfortable in guest roles("Monk","Friends" to name a few). I honestly believe Mr.Alexander has a pretty good show left in him A.S.(After Seinfeld),but as of yet,I haven't seen it.

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.

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.