|
| Brooke Shields (left) and Nicole Sullivan (right) on Suddenly Susan. |
For Nicole Sullivan,
the 1999-2000 television season was largely one of qualified successes.
Talk To Me, the first sitcom in which she was a regular cast
member, debuted on ABC - then promptly fizzled, and was pulled from
ABC's schedule after only three episodes, never to return. She displayed
her versatility as an actress by making a guest appearance on a
dramatic series - but it was on Law and Order: Special Victims Unit,
the bastard progeny of Law and Order. The WB animated series
Baby Blues, in which Ms. Sullivan provided the voice of Bizzy,
the babysitter, finally aired - but the WB buried it during the late
summer, and even though the show gained some favorable critical attention
and the WB has even announced that the show will eventually return to
the WB's schedule, it seemed clear that the network didn't consider
the show to be a high priority. Finally, she hosted NBC's Later
for a week in November 1999, which turned out to be the highest-rated
week the show had that season up to that point - but it is not immediately
clear what, if any, favorable impact this had on her career, although
it may have been a factor in her landing a recurring gig as guest host
of E!'s Talk Soup.
Ms. Sullivan's guest
appearance on the November 1, 1999 episode of Suddenly Susan
(entitled "The Cheerleaders") seems to be another such qualified success.
In this episode, Nicole Sullivan played the role of Claire Teevens, the
fictional head cheerleader for the San Francisco 49ers. She is the
main guest star in this episode, and appears in a number of scenes -
which in late 1999 seemed to befit her status as a rising star. But
the role was on Suddenly Susan, which many people consider to
be the worst sitcom of all time - and there is much in this episode to
reinforce this unfavorable analysis, although in all fairness, in the
fifty-plus years of television history, there is probably at least one
show (and possibly more) that is even worse than this sophomoric,
formulatic television show. Suddenly Susan, in case you
forgot already, was an NBC sitcom (1996-2000) which starred Brooke
Shields as Susan Keane, a woman whom, on the verge of marriage, left
her fiancee at the alter and instead got a job as a columnist at
a hip San Francisco magazine called The Gate. The show never
quite jelled - none of the characters were credible as journalists -
and with the departure of Judd Nelson (the boss) and the suicide
of David Strickland (the rock critic) at the end of season three, the
show limped through season four - it was pulled from NBC's schedule
twice (after this episode, the show was pulled for November sweeps), and
after a brief post-cancellation run in June 2000, the show never
aired on NBC again. Unfortunately, I missed this episode during the
show's original run, but knowing that the show lasted four seasons,
I patiently awaited the re-airing of this episode in syndication. In this episode, Susan's
editor, Ian Maxtone-Graham (Eric Idle, replacing Judd Nelson in
the show's final season) instructs her to do an article on upcoming
tryouts for the San Francisco 49ers (the main rationale for his publishing
the article is that cheerleaders, as a general rule, are sexy, and sex
sells). A talent scout assumes she is auditioning, and on the spur of
the moment, Susan decides to try out for the squad. Suprisingly, she
makes the first and second cuts, and eventually becomes a finalist. The
head cheerleader, Claire Teevens (Nicole Sullivan) appears
at the auditions, and Susan quickly realizes that in order to make the
squad, she must impress Claire. When Claire asks her why she wants to
be a Frisco Girl, she claims that in high school, she didn't make the
cheerleading squad, and she wants to prove everyone who thought that
she didn't have what it takes to be a cheerleader wrong (the fact that
she was thus rejected figures prominently into this episode). Susan
immediately wins over Claire with this response, since Claire became
a cheerleader for exactly the same reason. Claire picks Susan; as she
prepares to make her debut as a Frisco Girl at the stadium before the
game, she and Claire encounter Nathan (Currie Graham), a
sportswriter at The Gate who also turns out to be Claire's
ex-husband. Finally, Susan rejects the cheerleading job, ultimately
refusing to compromise her feminist ideals for this opportunity
in spite of the frission she experienced when she initially made
the cut. This episode was not
utterly unwatchable, and even had one or two humorous moments, but
it was not the most constructive use of 30 minutes of my time, either.
It was not noticably superior, for example, than Talk To Me,
and while watching it, one gets a sense of why television critics are
currently discussing the decline of the sitcom. As a Nicole Sullivan
fan, I found this show mildly entertaining - I relished the irony of
her character suppressing Susan's sense of humor, telling her "jokes
are for the girls without the looks." But the best line of all belonged
(per usual) to Shields: walking through the tunnel prior to the game
with Claire, the two women clad in skimpy cheerleader outfits and
both wearing prodigious amounts of makeup, Susan says "I feel like
we're the Olsen twins, all grown up and fallen on hard times." [I have
a theory that mentioning the Olsen twins is always good for a laugh.]
Other than that, there is not much to get excited about here. Ms.
Sullivan appeared in several scenes, as I mentioned earlier, but
she was featured prominently in her guest roles on The Drew
Carey Show and Titus, and both of those shows are far
superior to this formulatic show. Ms. Sullivan's performance as head
cheerleader Claire is good; you can't accuse her of not giving it the
old college try but there is only so much she can do in this situation.
She is hampered not only by mediocre writing, but clearly she is also
inhibited by the desire not to overshadow Brooke Shields, as Ms. Sullivan
is undoubtedly a better actress than Shields. If you are a die-hard Nicole
Sullivan fan, then try to catch this episode in reruns if you haven't seen
it already; otherwise, unless you are a fan of Brooke Shields or of
bad sitcoms, don't waste your time.