Wednesday, September 29, 1999
Miss these premieres, you don't miss much
BY JOHN KIESEWETTER
The Cincinnati Enquirer
After the big premiere week, here comes the premiere weak.
Tonight, the debuts include a bland CBS comedy and a WB drama that tries way too hard to be Popular.
• Work with Me (8:30 p.m. today, Channels 12, 7): Work with Me just doesn't work for me. Probably won't work for you either.
Kevin Pollak (Grumpy Old Men) stars as a Wall Street lawyer who quits his firm and joins his wife's (Nancy Travis, Almost Perfect) modest law practice, winding up working in the kitchen-supply room.
He's jealous of every man who walks into the office, and makes a fool of himself.
This prompts his wife to say such things as: “Have you suffered a head injury that I don't know about?”
Or: “How do you not give yourself a headache?”
Work with Me would have been more workable if CBS had switched the roles, making Ms. Travis the fish-out-of-water hot-shot. The only laughs come from the couple's secretaries, Stacy (Emily Rutherfurd)and Sebastian (Ethan Embry), who are trying to keep their romance secret. But that joke will soon be stale.
Work with Me? Not tonight, I have a headache.
• Popular (9 p.m. today, Channel 64; then moves to 8 p.m. Thursday): Another high school, and its only distinction is the two overweight kids who don't look like they came from a GAP commercial.
Nothing else rings true in this WB drama about Brooke McQueen, the elitist cheerleader (Leslie Bibb, The Skulls) whose dad gets engaged to the mother of her rival, Sam McPherson, an earnest sophomore wannabe journalist (Carly Pope, Disturbing Behavior).
The dramatic plot points are laughable. Do you really care who makes the cheerleading squad? (What big high school has only four cheerleaders — picked by the incumbent sophomores, not a moderator or older students?)
Do you care about the color of Brooke's fingernails? Or if Sam gets a nose ring?
Do you care if the star quarterback leaves practice early to audition for South Pacific? (He gets the lead role, of course, which results in a nasty shouting match during rehearsal with his dad, who didn't know he had quit the team. Yeah, sure.)
Sara Rue (Zoe, Duncan, Jack & Jane),who resembles a young Camryn Manheim, and Ron Lester (Varsity Blues) steal their scenes as the overweight kids trying to fit in. When Carmen (Ms. Rue) is told she's too fat to be a cheerleader, she declares: “I have no intention of Ally McBeal-ing myself.”
If you want a really popular teen series, watch Dawson's Creek, NBC's new Freaks & Geeks, or wait until the debut of Roswell, WB's far superior high school drama (Oct. 6).
Children's center will be named for Sabin
Children's consolidates services to treat related disorders
Cabbies try to dodge danger
Police seek 3 who fled after cabbie's killing
Web site spreads blessings for pets
Christian school in city 'a natural'
City cash could save hotel for the poor
Growth gets blame for dwindling aquifer
I-71/75 bids to reopen
Thirsty Tristate gets rain
Anti-lice ammo
How to eradicate head lice at home
Don't make yourself sick
Woman advocates use of natural hormones
GET TO IT
Miss these premieres, you don't miss much
Shakespearean actor portrays reluctant legend
Bauer denies infidelity rumor
Boone orders more studies on sewer plant
Condo owners sued over family-size cap
County to let administrator OK small deals
Covington vying for Weed and Seed cash
Dayton picks police chief
Doctors: Ex-guard insane
Girl recants; conviction quashed
Housing authority taps new director
MainStrasse businesses want new rehab program
Nurse sentenced for taking patient's morphine
TRISTATE DIGEST
Youngsters get a sample of how politics works
