Welcome to another Wildcard Wednesday! Alongside the next seven weeks’ coverage of MTM’s Newhart, I’ve got several of the company’s forgotten short-lived comedies queued for discussion (mostly in a single post coming in late October — stay tuned). For this entry, we’re going back to the time of Newhart’s first sitcom, The Bob Newhart Show (1972-1978, CBS), to highlight one of the single-year flop comedies that MTM premiered (and wrapped) during the 1974-’75 season: Paul Sand In Friends And Lovers (1974-1975, CBS). But, before you get too excited, I’m not actually able to analyze the series. Of the 15 produced episodes (not including the sold pilot that aired in May), I’ve only seen one. However, I’ve always wanted to highlight the show here — for several reasons. For starters, this was one of MTM’s first bombs (along with that same season’s The Texas Wheelers). Second, it was created by Jim Brooks and Allan Burns, who helmed The Mary Tyler Moore Show — and Rhoda. And third, I’ll always be interested in a show from the sitcom’s Camelot, where character-driven comedy was a practiced principle.
Scheduled in a delicious, but tricky slot between All In The Family and Moore’s show, on which star Paul Sand had guested in a memorable (but, I think, perhaps overrated) early installment, Friends & Lovers was originally built around the idea of a man having a platonic relationship with one of his ex-girlfriends. But it moved away from this concept after the pilot. The broadcast series’ premise had Sand as a double bass player in the Boston Symphony Orchestra; his co-workers were Dick Wesson, Steve Landesberg, and Craig Richard Nelson, while at home he palled around with his brother, Michael Pataki, and the brother’s wife, played by Penny Marshall, post The Odd Couple but pre Laverne & Shirley. Recurring players included the aforementioned ex-girlfriend, Lynne Lipton, and the brothers’ parents, Jack Gilford and Jan Miner. On staff were MTM regulars like producer Steve Pritzker (The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Silver Spoons), Michael Zinberg (Mary Tyler Moore, The Bob Newhart Show), and Monica McGowan Johnson (Mary Tyler Moore, Laverne & Shirley), along with future notables Steve Gordon (The Practice, Good Time Harry) and Linda Bloodworth-Thomason (Designing Women, Evening Shade), who wrote with actress Mary Kay Place. Other scribes included Bud Wiser (One Day At A Time, Who’s The Boss?), Phil Mishkin (All In The Family, The Odd Couple), Allan Leicht (Kate & Allie, Ryan’s Hope), Gordon Farr & Arnold Kane (Bob Newhart, We’ve Got It Made), Mark Rothman & Lowell Ganz (The Odd Couple, Laverne & Shirley), Coleman Mitchell & Geoffrey Neigher (Rhoda, Gimme A Break!), and David Pollock & Elias Davis (Mary Tyler Moore, New Dick Van Dyke, Carol Burnett, MASH).
Early publicity predicted Friends And Lovers being the year’s hit — after all, it was coming from the same stable as two of CBS’s established classics. But initial reviews (see below) were unenthusiastic, and when it lost too much of All In The Family‘s lead-in (despite ending the year in the Top 30), executives decided that the ready-to-go The Jeffersons would fare better. (They were right.) Now, I’d like to be able to play amateur diagnostician and pinpoint the series’ ills, but I haven’t seen enough to do so accurately. Nevertheless, my hunch is that Sand’s persona, built on the unpredictability of improvisational theatre, wasn’t conducive to the MTM straight-man-anchoring-an-ensemble design. (Allan Burns and others have alluded to holding similar hindsight-based beliefs.) While Moore’s pragmatic vulnerability and Newhart’s nonplussed curiosity informed their shows’ comedic sensibilities and provided perspective, it would have been difficult to supply Sand with material that could have adequately reinforced the spontaneity inherent to his own strengths, especially when positioned as the “logical smart one” around varying degrees of relatable foolishness. Also, perhaps it had the wrong “Producer-Writer”…
But, you can come to your own half-baked conclusions by screening the sole episode I have, the series’ 11th aired, “Maid In The Snow,” which was written by Monica McGowan Johnson, directed by Tim Kiley, and broadcast by CBS on November 23, 1974. Enjoy!
Come back next week for another Wildcard post! And tune in on Monday for our monthly Musical Theatre post!
Boy, you sure can see how this one influenced THE TONY RANDALL SHOW, especially in the music and opening and closing sequences!
Hi, Mark! Thanks for reading and commenting.
Well, most of the company’s ’70s sitcoms featured openings with the protagonists walking through their respective cities, so it’s very on-brand… stay tuned soon for more forgotten MTM in the weeks ahead!
Any idea as to why “Paul Sand in” was actually part of the title? I always thought it was an odd choice. Even the opening credits make it look like it should just be called “Friends and Lovers.” Could the wordy title have contributed to its failure I wonder?
Hi, Christopher! Thanks for reading and commenting.
Press referred to the series as PAUL SAND IN FRIENDS AND LOVERS, FRIENDS & LOVERS, and THE PAUL SAND SHOW. But the official title was most commonly used — I imagine out of fear that one wouldn’t inherently associate Paul Sand with the confusing FRIENDS & LOVERS moniker (which itself doesn’t seem to fit the series’ actual developed premise following the initial May pilot).
I don’t, however, think the show failed because of its name. It was axed because its numbers compared unfavorably to its lead-in; it lost viewers. Its location made sure it could be seen, but it frankly doesn’t seem to have been written well enough to deserve going between ALL IN THE FAMILY and MARY TYLER MOORE. Metaphorically, it was a $500k house on a $1.5mil block. In a lower-priced neighborhood, it might have had a better chance, for the standards would have been lower. (I think, however, that the show simply needed to be better — no matter where it was placed. Let this be a comfort: if good shows often fail in subpar time slots, then subpar shows can also fail in good time slots.)
Hardly a flop. I loved the witty banter and especially Paul Sands. How sad it was so under appreciated. If anything it was too sophisticated for the usual sitcom lead ins. What a loss just Like “Doublle Rush”, .”Love and War”, etc.
Hi, Deborah! Thanks for reading and commenting.
Unfortunately, with a 15-episode run behind the season’s #1 show (ALL IN THE FAMILY), PAUL SAND IN FRIENDS AND LOVERS lost an average of nearly 1/3 of the night’s audience and barely made the year’s top 30. I called it a flop because it was given the primest of primetime real estate and very obviously failed to perform up to that block’s standards. Placed elsewhere, perhaps more leeway would have been extended to it… but then again, it probably wouldn’t have even gotten the numbers it did manage simply by being between two Emmy-winning hits…
However, I firmly believe popularity has no bearing on quality, and although I’ve only seen one episode (and since read a couple of scripts), I too wish more of this series were available so that it could be better appreciated — or rather, better appraised. As a multi-camera sitcom from MTM, which had established a reputation for “sophistication” (evidenced by the two shows that followed FRIENDS & LOVERS — both of which, incidentally, performed better in their debut years behind weaker lead-ins), it’s inherently worth noticing.
Where the show fits within that company’s own standards of quality… well, my thoughts based on what I have seen are discussed above.
Thanks for sharing your opinion — and be sure to check out our coverage of LOVE & WAR, if you haven’t already!