(S05E08) Ah, Dave Foley. His sad sack Tom has been good for a laugh more than a few times, and he was used to good comic effect again this week. In the double blind-date scenario with Christine and Richard, his counterpart was the lovely Jennifer Grey, real-life wife to Clark Gregg.
The New Adventures of Old Christine is a rare comedy in that it can work in guest stars like this without it detracting from either the ongoing character moments, or taking the spotlight away from the main cast. Too often when a show gets deeper into its run, like Will & Grace in its final years, it becomes a cavalcade of celebrity guest-stars, as if the writers have run out of ways to keep things fresh with their own core group.
Christine has mixed things up just this season by breaking up Richard and New Christine and having Matthew move in with Richard in a swinging bachelor pad. And they shook it up again this week.
Hey there gentle TV Squad reader! Have you got nothing but time on your hands right now? Do you need a healthy activity to occupy your time? Have you completely lost the will to go on living? Then put down that suicide cocktail and pick a pen or pencil for this "Kramer Counting" challenge!
Someone at Funnyordie.com has compiled all of Cosmo Kramer's entrances from all 174 episodes of Seinfeld into one viral video. I've tried counting them and got three different totals on three different tries. See if you can count the number of entrances. As an added challenge, the only rule I made for myself is that they must include the actual Kramer played by Michael Richards coming through the door, not the guy playing Kramer on Jerry's show-within-a-show, Jerry. I also counted scenes where someone is opening the door for Kramer but not the final scene were Kramer is running out the door.
I gave up during the fourth try since my eyes completely melted out of their sockets, a sign that I should really stop doing something. The same thing happened when I tried to do a review of Michael Strahan's Brothers.
(S05E07) I guess the fate of Marion Ross was handled off-screen, because Matthew and Richard are settling into her old digs, and she was nowhere to be seen this episode. Now that I think about it, though, she could be shacking up in Matthew's old digs out in the backyard. It would make for a pretty funny callback to have her character pop back up. Maybe even act as if Christine didn't even know she'd moved in back there.
I wasn't as impressed with the forced obligatory "we're different but now we're roommates" storyline for Matthew and Richard. Hopefully, now that it's out of the way, the writers have some ideas of some fun things they can do with the mismatched pair. In five seasons, we've not seen a great deal of interaction between them, but their differences could make for some good comedy.
(S05E06) Little Ritchie is growing up so fast! This week he's going to a school dance ... with the most popular girl in school!? Could Christine's whole world be changing? How can the meanie moms be mean to her if her son is dating the most popular girl in school? How can Christine screw this up? By being herself.
Meanwhile, Richard realizes he can no longer live at New Christine's house -- which is really his house -- so he starts to look for a new place to live, and finds a place where I'd sure as hell want to live. But there's a major problem with it, and he and Matthew have to tackle that before anyone can move in.
All in all, I think Christine is continuing a solid run of quality episodes. It helps that of the shows on ABC's Wednesday night comedy block, this veteran is up against Hank. And Louis-Dreyfus and friends are doing a fine job of beating it week after week.
(S05E05)This could turn out to be the single most important episode of The New Adventures of Old Christine. Dare I say it was "a very special episode of" The New Adventures of Old Christine? Oh, who am I kidding, things will never change, but isn't that why we love it.
It was a lot of fun seeing Eric McCormack as Matthew's mentor in therapy, as well as his office-mate. That's an easy way to set him up for a recurring role on the show for awhile. And they gave him a shady past, which is an easy way to write him off the show at a moment's notice.
He was there to give Christine someone new to bounce her craziness off of. I absolutely loved their first scene together. Christine all hopped up on diet pills from the '70s, dressed like Maude and working as a temporary fill-in as Matthew's secretary. Every week Julia Louis-Dreyfus cracks me up with just how undignified she's willing to look for this role.
(S05E03) I don't think it's giving anything away to say that the entire cold open to this episode of The New Adventures of Old Christine was done in the nude. I kept expecting Daniel Radcliffe to come traipsing through Christine's bathroom door. And for the record, I don't think I'd ever be comfortable enough around any ex to be able to have a normal conversation with both of us completely nude.
I've been a fan of this show since the first episode, and in all honesty, as we're sitting here in the fifth season, I'm surprised every year that it comes back. Not because I don't think it's a good show, but because it never has a huge audience and it seems to fly completely under the radar. And I say that with Julia Louis-Dreyfus having been nominated for her work on this show.
If the meta-ness of my headline confuses you, I apologize. It's the best way I could phrase it, because it's kind of mind-blowing in concept.
At today's HBO session at the TCAs, Larry David came on stage to talk about the upcoming season of Curb Your Enthusiasm. In it, as we all know, he'll be reuniting the Seinfeld cast on the show. And what will they be doing? They'll be working on... a Seinfeld reunion episode.
"The context is that for years I've been asked about a Seinfeld reunion," said David, "and i'd say no it's a lame idea. And then i thought it might be very funny to do that on Curb, and I kept thinking about it and different scenarios of how to pull it off."
When he talked to Jerry Seinfeld and the cast about it, they were all game. "So doiung a Seinfeld reunion show on Curb we'll see writing read through rehersals show being filmed. You won't see the entire show, you'll see parts of the show get an idea of what happened eleven years later."
Let's be honest. There are really only four or five real contenders for this category, and most of them were nominated last year. But it's not like the talented Tina Fey (30 Rock), Mary Louise-Parker (Weeds), Julia Louise-Dreyfus (The New Adventures of Old Christine) and America Ferrera (Ugly Betty) don't deserve the recognition. They all fit the bill, and most of their shows were damn good this year.
I'd be happy to see any one of them go home with the gold on Emmy night. I'd also love to see some recognition for Christina Applegate's work in Samantha Who?, a great show that got the ax earlier this year.
It's been a good long while since Michael Richards has been on television. If you don't know the reason why, then you either don't watch TV or you've been frozen since 1952 and had your body reanimated to combat the deadly disease for which you've found a secret cure.
If it's the second option, then stop being so selfish and share your cure with the world. Stop being so cold, no pun intended.
2009 could mark the beginning of Richards' comeback, as he and the rest of his Seinfeld pals will make an appearance during the new season of Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Suffice it to say, the number of women who became famous on Saturday Night Live before graduating to solo success is few and far between. Sure, Gilda Radner can be considered a pioneer in the art of sketch comedy. And Julia Louis-Dreyfus undoubtedly honed her comedic skills before becoming a sitcom icon on Seinfeld. And, yes, Tina Fey can easily be considered a heroine to comedy nerds everywhere who have witnessed her climb from Weekend Updateanchor to Mean Girls scribe to single-handedly decimating the vice presidential chances of one certain gun-wieldin', six-pack-totin' Alaskan governor.
But, sadly, the number of men who left Studio 8 for the superstardom of Planet Hollywood (not the theme restaurant) easily outnumbers the ladies. For every Amy Poehler, there's a Will Ferrell. And a Bill Murray. And a Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy and Adam Sandler (although, to be fair, there's also a David Gary Kroeger, A. Whitney Brown, and Charles Rocket for every Melanie Hutsell, too). (And for the record, no, you shouldn't recognize those names.)
This isn't the first time ABC has offered to be Christine's home. It made a similar offer last season, then CBS decided they did want Julia's sitcom after all. Apparently ABC's head man Steve McPherson is a big fan of the show.
What's a better place for a Seinfeld reunion than on the other television show of its co-creator? EW reports that the cast members of the Seinfeld NBC television series will be reuniting for a multi-episode arc on Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm on HBO.
Granted, Julia Louis-Dreyfus has a career at the moment with The New Adventures of Old Christine, but the others haven't really had a hit in a while. Jerry had his short-lived Microsoft commercials, Michael Richards had his on-stage racist blow-up and Jason Alexander is...somewhere, I'm sure.
Three of the cast members (Seinfeld, Dreyfus and Alexander) have appeared on Curb before, but never together. I still catch Seinfeld on re-runs time to time and at its best it still makes me laugh out loud.
I credit the excellent writing (and success) of Seinfeld more to Larry David than Jerry itself. It's nice to see the cast come back to where I consider its excellence came from.
The New Adventures of Old Christine is one of my favorite sitcoms and last night's episode included what I saw as a tribute to TV icons Lucille Ball and Mary Tyler Moore, as well as Seinfeld. Yes, Julia Louis-Dreyfus had a true Elaine moment that was not only hilarious, but a real wink to her Seinfeld fans.
The CBS sitcom came up with a doozy of a situation, although it felt familiar to me, which I'll explain why in a moment. Christine was determined to prove that she was not afraid of living alone and wound up locked out of her house. She climbed back in through a bathroom window and got her foot stuck in the toilet bowl!
Michael Ausiello has an odd bit of news about the Julia Louis-Dreyfus sitcom, The New Adventures of Old Christine. In a blind item he posted a few days ago, Ausiello alluded to a crazy curveball that writers were planning to throw on a "sort-of hit" comedy. The twist is supposed to be so huge that it will completely change the direction of the show in question. He reveals the blind item in this week's Ask Ausiello, and if it's true, it's a doozy. (Warning: Potential spoilers ahead!)
The list of qualities that made Arrested Developmentsuch a great show is quite long, but somewhere near the top, right after the cast, is the list of recurring characters who were so hilarious. Here my ten favorite acquaintances of the Bluth family.
1. Barry Zuckercorn (Henry Winkler) It is a credit to the brilliance of Arrested Development that an actor like Henry Winkler, who will forever be identified with the role of Fonzie, can be identified with a character who could not be more different. The hilarity that comes from Barry's sexual deviancy and complete legal ineptitude is reason enough to watch.
(S05E08) Ah, Dave Foley. His sad sack Tom has been good for a laugh more than a few times, and he was used to good comic effect again this week. In the double blind-date scenario with Christine and Richard, his counterpart was the lovely Jennifer Grey, real-life wife to Clark Gregg.
(S05E07) I guess the fate of Marion Ross was handled off-screen, because Matthew and Richard are settling into her old digs, and she was nowhere to be seen this episode. Now that I think about it, though, she could be shacking up in Matthew's old digs out in the backyard. It would make for a pretty funny callback to have her character pop back up. Maybe even act as if Christine didn't even know she'd moved in back there.
(S05E06) Little Ritchie is growing up so fast! This week he's going to a school dance ... with the most popular girl in school!? Could Christine's whole world be changing? How can the meanie moms be mean to her if her son is dating the most popular girl in school? How can Christine screw this up? By being herself.
(S05E05) This could turn out to be the single most important episode of The New Adventures of Old Christine. Dare I say it was "a very special episode of" The New Adventures of Old Christine? Oh, who am I kidding, things will never change, but isn't that why we love it.
(S05E03) I don't think it's giving anything away to say that the entire cold open to this episode of 
If the meta-ness of my headline confuses you, I apologize. It's the best way I could phrase it, because it's kind of mind-blowing in concept.
Let's be honest. There are really only four or five real contenders for this category, and most of them were nominated last year. But it's not like the talented Tina Fey (
It's been a good long while since 
Suffice it to say, the number of women who became famous on 
If this doesn't put a nail in the coffin of the 
What's a better place for a Seinfeld reunion than on the other television show of its co-creator? EW reports that the cast members of the Seinfeld NBC television series will be 
Michael Ausiello has an odd bit of news about the Julia Louis-Dreyfus sitcom, The New Adventures of Old Christine. In a 
The list of qualities that made 
Mike Henry and Daryl Hall on a Cleveland Show Thanksgiving
The TV Squad Podcast: The Prisoner, '80s TV, soap news and more
Let's talk about spoilers ...
