Viewpoints: The Second Season

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

Television's Second Season got started before the disastrous First Season was fully under way, and it threatens to continue with premieres into the Third Season, otherwise known as Reruns.

The Second Season may turn out to be memorable only because of a bench mark program, an offering against which all future shows must be measured. This is ALMOST ANYTHING GOES (ABC, Saturday, 8 p.m. E.S.T.), beyond doubt the worst thing ever offered in prime time. What happens is that the producers go round to small towns and get up teams to compete against one another in a series of games and races that are cunningly devised to make the participants look like idiots--generally through the simple expedient of putting grease on one or more of the obstacles they are called to surmount. These revels are surrounded by a hokey Superbowl atmosphere--bands, cheerleaders, a team of "sportscasters" who "analyze" the action and conduct inane interviews with the participants. It is all awful, as attempts to turn the sadistic impulse into comedy always are.

There are a number of other programs scrambling around down there in the pits with A.A.G. It is difficult, for example, to decide which is the worst new sitcom. For sheer witlessness, the nod should go to LAVERNE AND SHIRLEY, (ABC, Tuesday, 8:30 p.m. E.S.T.), a spin-off from Happy Days, in which the title gals (one cannot bring oneself to use a more dignified term) are employed in a Milwaukee brewery in the early 1960s--a situation about which we are for some reason supposed to feel nostalgia. Penny Marshall, who plays Laverne, has chosen not to characterize her role but to do an imitation of the inimitable Judy Holliday.

But hold. Norman Lear's latest entries, though marginally more professional as productions, are more offensive. His newest target for simple patronization is fat people. THE DUMPLINGS (NBC, Wednesday, 9:30 p.m. E.S.T.)--don't you just love the title?--are chubby James Coco and padded Geraldine Brooks. They are the proprietors of a Mom and Pop lunch counter who are required to coo repulsively at each other and rub flab, while their slender customers express ironic wonder that these lard tubs are actually happier than they are. Gross.

In ONE DAY AT A TIME (CBS, Tuesday, 9:30 p.m. E.S.T.), Lear makes the same mistake that the producers of the late Fay did. Instead of the humor inherent in the show's situation--a formerly married woman's adjustment to the single state--he has chosen to cram it with familiar sitcom gags.

POPI (CBS, Tuesday, 8:30 p.m. E.S.T.) may safely be ignored. It is the latest comedy about minorities--in this case Puerto Ricans--to argue that people respond to being discriminated against by becoming more lovable.

Astonishingly, Danny Thomas' new show, THE PRACTICE (NBC, Friday, 8:30 p.m. E.S.T.), should not be ignored. Thomas is your basic, crusty old family doctor, and, to be sure, he cannot resist the occasional opportunity to show that he is more than a mere comic. Yet the show's structure is sound. Danny's son is a Park Avenue practitioner whose sharp dress, smooth manner and cleverness about tax shelters drives the old boy to outrage. The gag writing, at least in the opening episode, is plentiful and sharp--up to Mary Tyler Moore standards.

The same may be said of the best of the new variety hours, RICH LITTLE (NBC, Monday 8 p.m. E.S.T.), which uses its star's talents as an impressionist very shrewdly. Since there is no one Little cannot imitate, there is no area of show biz he and his cohorts cannot satirize. The program is up against killer competition (Rhoda and Phyllis) but well worth channel switching to catch.

DONNY & MARIE (ABC, Friday, 8 p.m. E.S.T.)--Osmond, that is--are not to be accorded even the briefest benefit of the doubt. The family's patented musical style is basically "Gee whiz, kids, I've got a swell idea. Let's put on a show." This is an impulse that should have been dealt with in preadolescence.

THE SONNY AND CHER SHOW (CBS, Sunday, 8 p.m. E.S.T.) represents a triumph over adversity. They are divorced, she is carrying another man's child, and somehow they manage to put together a very engaging premiere. In part, they do so because they confronted headon, with the right blend of edginess and good humor, their slightly grotesque circumstances. They will probably do more for the cause of amicable separation than all the Norman Lears.

Among the new crime dramas, CITY OF ANGELS (NBC, Tuesday, 10 p.m. E.S.T.), is a stylish period private-eye piece. Movies have been doing this sort of thing a lot lately, but on television the show comes as a relief from such doggedly contemporary cop shows as THE BLUE KNIGHT (CBS, Wednesday, 10 p.m. E.S.T.) and JIGSAW JOHN (NBC, Monday, 10 p.m. E.S.T.), which feature veteran character men (George Kennedy and Jack Warden respectively) in veteran plots. Physically, Kennedy has a beefy Tightness for his part that adds some realism to the preternatural goodness with which TV cops are currently afflicted, but who needs it?

Probably there is no need for THE BIONIC WOMAN (ABC, Wednesday, 8 p.m. E.S.T.) either, unless you are a Six Million Dollar Man looking for a mate. But there is more wit inherent in the new show's conceit than there is in that of the original model: superhuman physical prowess is unexpected in a lass as comely as Lindsay Wagner. On the opening program, for example, Wagner, whose cover job is schoolteaching, delivered homilies on peace and cooperation while abstractedly tearing a telephone book in half. One hopes the show's writers will keep this spirit of comic-book irony going.

Finally a warning. ABC has a mini-series of Irwin Shaw's RICH MAN, POOR MAN (Monday, 10 p.m. E.S.T.) that makes Beacon Hill look like the later Henry James. Vulgar in characterization, tacky in execution, yet earnestly convinced that it is offering a panorama of postwar American life, it does not even give viewers the consolation of being unintentionally funny. The only hope is to draw a team from the cast and enter it in Almost Anything Goes. It would be a socko--and merciful--finish for both shows.

Richard Schickel

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