Welcome to a new Sitcom Tuesday! Coverage of Arrested Development will begin soon. In the meantime, I’m excited to set the figurative table by resurrecting an entry from this blog’s decade-long run. Here’s how it works: I’ll provide a link to a piece that I first published many seasons back, and then I’ll offer a bit of updated commentary. But, as I always caution, please be gentle; this early article is from a long time ago, and my standards have changed as I’ve changed — I’ve improved as a thinker, a communicator, and a television-watcher.

So, let’s revisit… The Ten Best THE JOHN LARROQUETTE SHOW Episodes of Season Three: https://jacksonupperco.com/2018/04/03/the-ten-best-the-john-larroquette-show-episodes-of-season-three/

I already had the opportunity to share some updated thoughts on The John Larroquette Show when I reran the first season two years ago (see here), and that basic adjudication still stands. In a nutshell: the first season of Larroquette’s followup series to Night Court is the most memorable, thanks to a strong tonal conceit that enables a premised construct with depth, adding comic nuance and narrative purpose to the depiction of its lead. However, in an effort to make necessary improvements — because it never was great, lacking a uniformly excellent sense and/or application of its characters, not all of whom were as well-defined — the network foisted ill-advised changes on the show that just made it worse, leaving the initial season to remain its high point. I don’t have much to add now, except that I was interested in rerunning the series again because of Mitchell Hurwitz, the creator and executive producer of our forthcoming Arrested Development. Coming from the Witt-Thomas camp (where his most notable credit had been The Golden Girls), Hurwitz was an important presence throughout the run of The John Larroquette Show. In fact, he ascended into an executive producer role — his first on a sitcom — here in Three, which is a real improvement over its direct predecessor, due to several narrative developments that simplify dynamics within the ensemble, along with, I would argue, Hurtwitz’s own guiding sensibility. Specifically, the show becomes a bit looser and more experimental this season — with fantasy sequences, metatheatrical gags, and heck, stunts like a whole episode where Betty White plays a version of herself in a musical production of The Golden Girls. Now, a lot of this is not exactly character-related, and the year is never truly able to rival the implied promise of that tighter, more focused freshman season. However, this freer, more imaginative temperament does restore a temporary mojo long missing to the series, and for our purposes, I think it serves as something of a preview of Hurwitz’s own personal ethos, which he would cultivate and display more explicitly on Arrested Development, another show that enjoys an aura of creative abandon with a unique comic appeal. More on that soon…

Come back next week for more sitcom fun! And stay tuned tomorrow for a new Wildcard!