Unsolicited Advice

Every so often when I go about chasing down stuff interesting actors do, I run across something I think would be useful to a totally different discussion. I mentioned a couple of entries ago that I've been watching A Very Peculiar Practice , and that Captain Awkward would be proud of the talking involved in the central romance, but the good Captain would probably also be proud of the talking in a lot of the other relationships as well. The character of Rose Marie, for example, is an intentional parody of the stereotypical view of militant feminists. She goes by just "Dr. Rose Marie" because she doesn't believe in surnames as "patronymics", and she espouses the view that sickness is something men do to women. She likes to talk about the evils of the "phallarchy". I don't mind this, actually -- this thing is part comedy, after all, and most of these people are supposed to be untenably insane. It's quite clear that she's not normal, and ...

I've started watching through A Very Peculiar Practice . Normally, I hate sitcoms. I find most of them very irritating. You have a protagonist, who you're informed is a nice person but who never does much of anything to prove it, because the entire framework of the show is built on them being backed repeatedly into socially untenable corners and not doing anything sensible to get out of them. You could resolve most of these plots in about five minutes if someone, anyone , just sat down and went, "Look, this is awkward and all, but here's what's going on." But of course nobody ever does that, because if your protagonist grows any kind of backbone or accidentally buds some common sense, there goes the premise of your series. Davison has a knack for picking comedy projects that I actually think are hilarious. Including about half of his sitcoms, which I think is a record. I started watching this thing figuring I'd sit through a couple of episodes, see what ...