By Tom Shales
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 8, 2000
Ed is a man's man, a woman's man and an Ed's man. He's also an Ed's Ed. Admittedly, "Ed" is not a very unusual or distinctive name. And there's the point. Thus is it perfect for Ed: It's something for him to rise above.
Stevens. Ed Stevens.
Doesn't have quite the zip of "Bond. James Bond."
But in his own way, Ed is every bit as fascinating. Remember, we said in his own way. And okay, maybe not every bit. How about every other bit? How about just a little bit? This, finally, is what knowing Ed tells us about Ed: We want to know more.
The golden opportunity comes tonight when "Ed" premieres on NBC--at 8 on Channel 4. Even if the new season's shows weren't the blah, bland blanks that most of them are, "Ed" would stand out. For one thing, it isn't often that the season's best new comedy is also its best new drama.
"Ed" is.
Played winningly and winsomely by Tom Cavanagh, a Canadian actor who is bound to remind viewers of a young James Stewart, Ed Stevens is, at the very beginning of the show, a successful Manhattan lawyer married to a woman who bears a strong resemblance to Janeane Garafolo. But as we learn in a rushed prefatory montage, on the same day that Ed is arbitrarily fired, he comes home to find his wife in bed with, of all people, the mailman.
Wounded, but not mortally, Ed decides to return to his home town, A Place Called Stuckeyville, to pursue other pursuits. Before the first episode is over, he will own a bowling alley, set up a small law office inside it, and dare to date the dream girl (Julie Bowen) of his high school years. "I'm going to have the best of both worlds," he tells her, trying to convince himself. "It's a new millennium, Carol."
"Ed" is the best of both worlds, too--the brainchild and love child of Jon Beckerman, a longtime writer for David Letterman, and Rob Burnett, executive producer of Letterman's "Late Show" on CBS. And yet "Ed," from Letterman's Worldwide Pants production company, is airing on NBC, the big, bad, mean old network that insulted and infuriated Letterman back in the '90s by giving Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show" job to Jay Leno instead of to him.
It was Dave's defining Ed moment.
What could induce Letterman to have dealings with NBC again? Money, of course, that all-purpose inducer. But also the fact that many of the executives who pigheadedly (and numskulledly) chose Leno over Letterman have left the network now, replaced by boys and girls against whom Letterman presumably bears no grudge.
Is Letterman really involved in "Ed" or does it just bear his trademark? "Dave loves the show," says Burnett, 38, from his "Late Show" office in New York. "He's really excited about it. He reads all the scripts. He's co-producing with Viacom and NBC Studios, so after they give notes, he'll weigh in. I also think you can see Dave's influence throughout the show. Jon has written for 'Late Show' for eight years and I grew up writing for Dave, so the sensibility is very similar."
As Burnett mentioned in a previous interview, Letterman even wrote a couple of lines in the premiere. One that Burnett cited comes from the mouth of a bowling alley employee named Shirley, who has been asked to list all the interesting things about herself. She thinks for a moment. Then: "I got a kitty named Kenny . . . 'cause Kenny the Kitty sounds so good." Yes, that sounds like Letterman, all right.
In addition, though--and as a reassurance to all those people who have deep, festering grudges against Letterman--the show is also in the best tradition of American comedies about small-town heroes; sort of Capra without the corn. It speaks playfully to the love-hate relationship many of us have with the towns we grew up in, especially if they really were towns and not cities.
The characters one meets in Stuckeyville are small-town in classic and yet original ways, starting with Phil (Michael Ian Black), an overbearing yet somehow lovable clod who works and sleeps at the bowling alley. Phil has a refrigerator full of Asian beef and a repertoire of catch phrases gleaned from too many years of watching too much television: "Gary Coleman, man! That's my favorite pop cultural reference!"
Phil's recipe for bringing the bowling alley back from the dead and persuading townsfolk to come there to bowl has an elegant simplicity to it: "Fill the place with whores," he says.
At the high school, one of the standout students is a kid named Warren (Justin Long), who has a huge crush on the prettiest teacher. He tells her he wants to stay late after class so they can discuss "the Bard of Avedon," Bill Shakespeare. And he has a funny bit with a squirting whipped-cream can that keeps interrupting his clumsy wooing.
Among the many endearing things about "Ed" is that just when it seems to be walking down a path already trod senseless, the show makes a sharp turn to the left or right and comes up with something surprising and fresh. It may hark back--all the way back--to small-town comedies that such once-popular artists as Buster Keaton and Joe E. Brown made in the '20s and '30s, but it has themes, observations, insights and sly asides all its own.
"Ed" is in another tradition, the tradition of really good shows or movies that made it to fruition only with great difficulty. One reason "Ed's" showing up on NBC is that even though it was originally developed two years ago for CBS, the network passed on it once executives saw the pilot. That's especially odd considering "Ed" is somewhat in the style of a fondly remembered CBS hit, "Northern Exposure." Nevertheless, it went over the heads of CBS Entertainment President Les Moonves and his staff.
Burnett does not want to bad-mouth Moonves other than to express confusion over the decision to jettison "Ed." When the project was taken to a more receptive NBC, a new pilot was made. The old pilot had gone into much more detail about Ed's life in New York, his soon-to-end job and his soon-to-crumble marriage. This version survives in that three-minute montage you'll see at the opening of the premiere; it's the original pilot boiled down. The new version gets Ed more quickly embarked on disproving Thomas Wolfe's declaration that you can't go home again.
Among the many elements that make "Ed" authentic is that it's not shot on a Hollywood back lot. Indeed, not even in Hollywood. "Ed" is produced on the East Coast, and the town of Stuckeyville is played by the real town of Ridgewood, N.J., with some scenes shot in neighboring burgs. The house where Ed's married friends and their baby live is a real house, not a set. That's a real bowling alley, too, which Worldwide Pants is leasing while the show's in production.
The battle for "Ed" is hardly over now that the show is actually on the air. "Ed" does not have, at least not in wild abundance, "edge," the quality most coveted in TV shows right now. The lust for "edge" explains why MTV has just launched a program called "Jackass"--whose star, in the premiere last Sunday, let himself be placed inside a portable toilet that was then turned upside down.
By sharp and merciful contrast, "Ed" isn't a gross-out, isn't nasty, isn't even dirty.
Its Sunday night time slot is definitely tough--opposite "The Simpsons" (a show that Burnett, like all good comedy writers, admires) and "Malcolm in the Middle" on Fox and the long-running old folks' hit "Touched by an Angel" on CBS. ABC, meanwhile, airs "Wonderful World of Corporate Parent"--official title, "Wonderful World of Disney." At least "Ed" was spared ABC's steamrolling smash "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire."
Burnett isn't complaining about the time slot NBC has given the show, however. The only other one-hour slots available (assuming NBC does not want to move "ER" or "Law and Order," two of the fairest assumptions in the world) were Monday at 9 and Wednesday at 8. Burnett thinks what "Ed" got is a better fit than either of those.
And besides, considering the fact that "Ed" looked dead when CBS turned its thumbs down, Burnett is happy that the show is playing anywhere at any time at all.
"It's so rare in TV to be rejected and then picked up somewhere else," he says. "We would have been happy on Pax," a reference to a justifiably obscure and very corny cable channel. "We're so happy to be able to do the show the way we want to do it, we'd settle for having it air somewhere in Thailand."
Fortunately, the makers of "Ed" will not have to settle for that. And in pursuing their own vision and bringing to life their own ideas about Ed and his eclectic environment, they haven't had to settle for many compromises or restrictions, either. For that reason and simply because it's so quirkily enjoyable, one wishes for Ed and for "Ed" good health, good luck and good fortune.
To paraphrase what Richard Burton sang in "Camelot" four decades ago: "In short there's simply not a more congenial spot for happily-ever-aftering than here--in--uhhh--Stuck-ey-ville."
Or as Ed himself says to a fellow Stuckeyvillean fairly early in the opening episode, "I'm starting to grow on you." Is he ever. Five or six years of happily-ever-aftering will let him grow on us even more. Please, America: Find "Ed."
NBC's "Ed": Well Worth Getting To Know