The cast of Talk to Me. Nicole Sullivan is the woman in the pink sweater (as if you didn't know).

"I can't please." - Nicole Sullivan, after flubbing a line on the set of Talk to Me

This page is perhaps the first "unofficial" page devoted to the new ABC series Talk To Me. Of course, here we are primarily concerned with the series qua a vehicle for Nicole Sullivan, but it's a page nonetheless. The show premieres on Tuesday, April 11, 2000 at 9:30 PM EST (after Dharma and Greg), and stars Kyra Sedgwick as Janey Munro, a New York morning talk show host with her own "tell it like it is" style. Beverly D'Angelo appears as her nemesis, a conservative talk show host called Dr. Debra, whose show occupies the afternoon time slot. Nicole Sullivan appears as Kat, Janey's sister and housemate. If memory serves, Kat is a social worker, although in the pilot episode she doesn't actually explicitly say what she does for a living (but she likes to help other people).

Unlike shows like Law and Order (which seem to revolve solely around the workplace or shows like Friends (which seem to revolve solely around the characters' personal lives, prompting the question "[W]hat do these people do for a living?"), Talk to Me seems to be split half and half between the character's work life and personal life. The idea that we are supposed to get is that professionally, Janey has her act together, but her personal life is a mess (she is constantly engaged in a search for the ideal man, which provokes a number of misadventures). This dichotomy is well-delineated in the pilot episode. For the most part, Ms. Sullivan appears only in the parts of the show dealing with Janey's personal life, which limits her air time, but for a supporting cast member, she gets some good lines and is pretty well represented here (watch for the line about how she has to pick the raisins out of oatmeal in the pilot - this was funny, in my opinion).

What are we to make of this show, both in general and as it pertains to Nicole Sullivan? The fact that this show is about a talk show host has prompted comparisons to Fraiser (some are accusing the show of being a Fraiser rip-off, although it's not likely that many of those making these accusations actually saw the show). Also, there has been some backlash against the show from fans of Sports Night, which it replaces (although the ratings for Sports Night were poor, the show has a small but dedicated following). The very fact that this show is replacing a relatively unsuccessful one indicates that having a good lead in (Dharma and Greg) does not guarantee ratings success. Creatively, the show is not all that innovative; it's not ground-breaking comedy in the tradition of many of the Golden Age of Television shows like Your Show of Shows or Seinfeld to cite a more recent examples. Much of the show's humor is derived from what I call stock devices (for example one episode features a variation on the heterosexual mistaken for homosexual). But one doesn't have to re-invent the sitcom to be funny or to find an audience, and in spite of the conservative approach of the writers, there is a considerable amount of humor in the show. And it doesn't hurt that the show has a stellar cast: Sedgwick, though not necessarily on anyone's short list of top "comedic" actresses, easily carries the show. D'Angelo is a veteran of many movies and TV shows, especially the Vacation movies, which didn't suck even though Chevy Chase was in them. And Ms. Sullivan, who can provoke laughter with her facial expressions alone, is a considerable asset to the show as well. Another strong point is that the show features several guest stars (guests on Munro's fictional radio show), such as Gene Simmons (in the pilot episode), Ed Koch (I think it's the second or third one), and Dr. Joyce Brothers (the season finale).

For Sullivan, this seems to be a venture with relatively little risk. Sedgwick is the star of the show and will undoubtedly shoulder a good degree of responsibility for the success or failure of the show. Ms. Sullivan, on the other hand, is unlikely to be seen as the decisive factor in this show's performance - although she will undoubtedly be in a position to take some of the credit should the show succeed. Finally, she was able to film the five recorded episodes without quitting Mad TV, still her main gig. Regardless of whether the show succeeds, this will represent her first regular sitcom role and will thus be another notch on her belt, one which includes a recurring role on Fired Up as well as numerous guest appearances on TV shows. And after having paid her dues for nine years in Hollywood, one could easily argue that Sullivan obviously is ready for prime time and her time has arrived.

Ratings for Talk to Me

* Greed replaced Party of Five in the 9:00 PM time slot on April 25th. Party of Five moved to Wednesday for the final two episodes.

   As you can see, the premiere episode of Talk to Me won its time slot. It is somewhat surprising the show did as well as it did, since it generally was not well-received by the critics. Moreover, there was some backlash from fans of Sports Night, which it replaced. [If ABC was looking to improve its ratings by replacing Sports Night, they may have made the right decision - Talk to Me did substantially better than the final episode of Sports Night, which garnered a 7.9 rating with a 12 share.] On the other hand, it is hard to get too excited about this initial success. The show had a very strong lead-in (Dharma and Greg did even better, with a solid 12.4/19). Moreover, most new shows get an initial boost as audiences will sometimes give a new show the benefit of the doubt. [In this case, they may have even gotten some help from angry Sports Night fans tuning in to see if the show was as bad as the critics said.] I myself was not very impressed by the pilot. I agree with some of the critics that the dialogue in the scenes in which Janey is doing the radio show seem too scripted; having Gene Simmons as a special guest didn't help much either (although the idea of a guest every week is a good gimmick). It is obvious, however, that Ms. Sullivan is probably the show's greatest asset - the pilot demonstrates that she has far better comedic instincts than Sedgwick, and she is not your average sidekick. At the end of the day, Sedgwick is the star, but Sullivan still manages to dominate the scenes in which she appears.

    Ratings Update (April 18, 2000): Talk to Me slipped to a 7.1 rating (with an 11 share) in week two, finishing third overall in its time slot. This is not only a considerable drop from the week one ratings, but it also represents a sharp decrease from the show's lead-in, Dharma and Greg, which garnered a 12.4 rating (with a 19 share) in the 9:00 PM time slot. I am not that surprised by this decline, given the relative weakness of the pilot episode. The second episode, in my opinion, was much better than the first. There are some weaknesses in the dialogue - the segments in which Janey is doing her radio show still do not seem spontaneous enough - but there is more than enough here to keep the viewer interested. "About Being Gay" is about Janey, bored at a banquet dinner for the station's advertisers, kisses a lesbian (Paulina Porzikova) as part of a bet with her co-host. When the lesbian turns out to be attracted to her and wants to start a relationship, Janey feels guilty and worries about how to tactfully end the relationship. The viewer gets a better sense of where the writers are going with these characters after this episode. Janey is apparently supposed to be a female version of Howard Stern (she even has lesbians kissing on her show); her rival, Dr. Debra (played by Beverly D'Angelo), is pretty much a Laura Schlessenger clone (Schlessenger's adverts even refer to her using her first name - i.e. Dr. Laura). As for Kat (played by Nicole Sullivan), she describes herself as "a full-time volunteer." [Last week left me wondering what she did for a living;] Again some of the funniest moments in the show are engineered by Sullivan - she adopts five dogs to save them from being put to sleep, calls Dr. Debra, and talks about two dogs having sex in front of a nun. I would wager that most people who saw both episodes would agree that ABC would have been better off showing this episode for the premiere rather than the one they actually aired April 11th. As it turned out, those who tuned out after the first week missed a good show.

    Ratings Update (April 25, 2000): Talk to Me slipped to a 6.9 rating (with a 10 share) in week three, finishing third in its time slot. Although the show's lead-in was much weaker - the Dharma and Greg episode was a rerun (it nevertheless finished a close second in its time slot with 9.4/14) - two weak performances in a row do not do much good for the cause of renewal. Both Fox and the WB are gaining ground, with strong showings from Greed and Angel. But the big winner in this time slot was NBC: rival sitcom Just Shoot Me won the time slot. Of course, ABC will likely wait until all five episodes are aired before making a final decision on the series and the show could engineer a comeback in the ratings in the last two weeks (Ms. Sullivan's timely appearance on The Late Show could help, although this is probably wishful thinking). Overall, though, it seems rather unlikely that after a consistent ratings decline in weeks two and three that the show will suddenly find an audience again. I have no further information on this episode, which by the way I taped but have not yet screened.

    Pulled from lineup (April 28, 2000): Talk to Me has been pulled from ABC's lineup in favor of Sports Night, which will return to its Tuesday 9:30 time slot for the last two weeks of the season (May 9 and May 16). The last episode of Talk to Me will air on May 2, 2000. I can't say that this news comes as much of a surprise. Since Talk to Me is doing no better than the show it replaced (indeed, for the last two weeks, it has been doing worse), a decision was made to give Sports Night another chance. While the future of both shows is in doubt, it seems highly unlikely that Talk to Me will be on ABC's fall lineup, which tends to suggest that ABC's removing the show from the schedule is a de facto cancellation. The show had the smell of death from the very beginning: almost all the reviews were negative to a greater or lesser extent, and it didn't help that there were many Sports Night fans who reckoned that the best way to get Sports Night back on the air would be to badmouth the show which replaced it. But neither of these factors would have been very significant if the viewers gave the show good ratings (many successful shows were initially panned by critics; witness The Drew Carey Show). The fact that the ratings were high in the first week and down in the next two weeks suggests that the viewing public agreed with the critics. The weak pilot episode sealed the show's fate, and viewers never returned. Moreover, Talk to Me represented the weak link in ABC's otherwise dominant Tuesday night lineup (Millionaire scored top honors; Dharma and Greg finished a close second behind NBC's Will and Grace in spite of the fact that it was a rerun, and NYPD Blue won it's time slot). For Talk to Me to finish third and lose considerable ratings from its lead-in was considered unacceptable.

    I just screened the third episode, and it was OK; since Nicole Sullivan is the best thing this show has going for it, it's just as well that the story was about her. "About Makeovers" is about Janey hatching a scheme to get Kat (Sullivan) a makeover on E's Fashion Emergency (apparently this is a real show: supposedly E! did a segment about this show but since E! shares a cable channel with CSpan 2 on our cable system, I didn't see it). Her plan involves making Kat look so pathetic that they'll have to put her on the show; this entails putting her in a wheelchair and claiming that she lost one hundred pounds (the scene in which Kat appears in a fat suit is arguably the funniest scene the show has had thus far). It also involves matching her up with her co-host, Rob (David Newsom), on whom she has a crush. The scenes in which she appears on Fashion Emergency are kept brief, so the episode is not reduced to being a 22-minute commercial for the E! show. At several points Sullivan rescues somewhat mediocre material, but the show still ends up being fairly standard fare. What I noticed in this episode more than in the previous two is that she is the only member of the cast that can really provoke spontaneous laughter. 

Video clips (in QuickTime 4.0 format):

• Clip from the first episode. (1 minute 34 seconds; 1.5 MB) Janie (Sedgwick) and Kat (Sullivan) have a conversation about raisins. Then Sedgwick leaves and Sullivan walks the dog. OAD: April 11, 2000.

   Appendix A - History of This Page

Version 1.0 (April 8, 2000) - First posting.

Version 1.1 (April 15, 2000) - Ratings update for pilot episode.

Version 1.2 (April 19, 2000) - Ratings update for second episode and brief synopsis of episode.

Version 1.3 (April 25, 2000) - Ratings update for third episode.

Version 1.4 (April 28, 2000) - Update on current status of show; brief synopsis of third episode.

Version 1.5 (January 14, 2003) - Added clip from first episode.