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| Nicole Sullivan on Miss Match. |
Autumn is a great time for
people who like to watch train wrecks. All you have to do is turn on the
television. Three out of four new shows won't be renewed for a second
season, and many won't make it to Christmas. As I write this, NBC has
already axed Coupling, an American show that was a ripoff of
a British show that in turn was a ripoff of the American show
Friends. Fox has cancelled Skin; apparently producer
Jerry Bruckheimer no longer has the Midas touch. I am tempted to conclude
that American viewers have suddenly acquired good taste, but this is
probably not the case. Either way, the 2003-04 season is already shaping
up to be a bad year for the networks: ratings are down across the board,
and particularly with males aged 18 to 34.
Nicole Sullivan on Miss Match.
Where does Miss Match fit into this train wreck of a season? At first glance it reminds me of The Equalizer (1985-89). In that series, Edward Woodward played an ex-CIA operative (always referred to in the show as "The Company") who has now entered into retirement. To atone for his life of dirty deeds, he becomes "The Equalizer," essentially a professional vigilante who helps ordinary people who are unable to combat injustices committed against them. In Miss Match, Alicia Silverstone plays Kate Fox, a divorce lawyer who makes a pretty good living from the spoils of failed marriages. She has a knack for matchmaking and starts a matchmaking service - perhaps she sees it as a means of atonement, perhaps she sees it as ironic - I really don't know. [Perhaps the title of the show, Miss Match, is an ironic play on words; i.e. Miss Match would never make a mismatch.] As others have noted, Ms. Silverstone is playing essentially the same character she played in Clueless - in fact, Kate Fox might as well be Cher after four years of college and three years of law school. The main difference between The Equalizer and Miss Match is that the former was the quintessential guy show - Robert McCall, Woodward's character, came off like Dirty Harry after four years at Oxford; Miss Match, on the other hand, is apparently targeted at women. The female characters dominate the show, starting with Silverstone's lead character, and all the male characters come across as emasculated wussies - at one point we get to see one of these sad creatures brooding over his impending 30th birthday. Making the show slightly more annoying is that the events unfold as flashbacks during a session with the main character's therapist. Watching a show like Miss Match for an hour will not quite deprive you of your will to live, but it will give you a rough idea of why the networks' ratings are down this year.
Needless to say, I
probably would never have watched an episode of Miss Match if
it weren't for the fact that Nicole Sullivan guest starred in a recent
episode of the series. In this episode, Ms. Sullivan played Rachel,
a 32-year old CPA who has (according to her) never been in love. One of
her friends signs her up for Kate Fox's matchmaking service, but she remains
skeptical. Kate matches her up with Jarred (Adam Goldberg), a book
store employee who looks exactly like what you would think someone
who works in a book store would look like. She falls in love with
him, but just to prove that not all problems are resolved in
one hour, we find out that Jarred is a "love addict" - whatever
that is (this is the plot twist). He eventually confesses to
Rachel, which precipitates the end of the relationship.
Rachel is devastated, but she comes away from
the experience convinced that it's better to have loved and
lost than never to have loved at all. [Or perhaps it's better
to have loved and lost than to have listened to an Olivia Netwon-John
album?] OK, so it's not exactly I, Claudius, but it's
as good as you're going to get from NBC on a Friday night.
Another vidcap from Miss Match.
Ms. Sullivan played her part convincingly, injecting just enough indifference into her role as the "romance is lost on me" CPA. Miss Match does not make for compelling drama, but the show is lighthearted enough to allow Sullivan to show a hint of the comedic ability that has been the hallmark of her career thus far. [In one of her better lines, she notes that "Sleepless In Seattle" put her to sleep.] She also does a good job in displaying the various emotional states of the character: indifference, elation, dejection, and finally, cautious optimism. Ms. Sullivan also gets good airtime here; she is in several scenes, which will likely be a welcome change of pace for Nicole Sullivan fans who have watched her character on King Of Queens gradually becoming marginalized. Ms. Sullivan is not as popular as Alicia Silverstone (although she did play her in the movie parody Clueless Of The Lambs), and the roles she has been getting reflects this, but this was a fairly subtantial role. Viewers will be advised to ignore the "A" plot, which involves a woman divorcing her husband and seeking one-half of the 10 million dollars he made after he was separated from his wife by writing and selling a computer program - otherwise, one might tend to think that if the wife introduced the husband to the man who bought the program, she has a strong case for half his earnings from the program. If you're a Nicole Sullivan fan, you probably won't regret watching this episode, even if you vow to never watch another episode of Miss Match again.
Video clips (in Windows Media 8.0
format):