They seem to be tossing some quality-laden casts at shows this year. Threshold, Kitchen Confidential, How I Met Your Mother… and here’s Out of Practice, a show that has Henry Winkler (who gave what looked to be a goodbye performance on Arrested Development tonight), Stockard Channing, Paula Marshall (oh, they do so have to DVDize Cupid at some point). And then there’s the brief appearance by Jennifer Tilly, which is interesting on a couple of levels. One is that Kelsey “Frasier” Grammer directed this episode, and Tilly played Frasier’s girlfriend twice… once on Cheers, once on Frasier, different girlfriends. The other is that the character is specified in the script as 32 years old and enhanced by plastic surgery… and while I don’t know whether the quite attractive Ms. Tilly has been surgically enhanced, I do know that she’s 47.
The key character is a couples counselor whose marrige falls apart (yes, that’s giving away a bit of the pilot, but the rhythms make that clear that’s going to happen within the first couple minutes.) The wife is set up as one of those harsh, unseen women that we’ve seen in previous sitcoms from some of the same behind-the-camera folk – Vera on Cheers, Maris on Frasier. The rest of the family are doctors of varying kinds, and are in varying degrees meddlesome and self-centered. The family, not the relationship, is the center on which this series turns.
But when you have a five individuals, you have 10 person-to-person relationships there. If you have a good series, each of those relationships is different. Getting that right takes time. There were mostly silly basic sitcom joke laughs in this first episode, and it didn’t add up to much, but again, this is a show with potential. Since it has a good time slot (following Two-and-a-Half Men), it may find the time to reach that potential. I expect to be back for at least a couple more episodes, particularly if they keep showing an underdressed Jennifer Tilly…