Welcome to a new Wildcard Wednesday! This week, I’m spotlighting the sitcom that Patricia Heaton jumped into not long after The Middle. It’s a single-season multi-cam called…
CAROL’S SECOND ACT (Sept 2019 – March 2020, CBS)
Premise: A middle-aged divorcée starts her career over as an intern at a teaching hospital.
Cast: Patricia Heaton, Kyle McLachlan, Ito Aghayere, Lucas Neff, Jean-Luc Bilodeau, Sabrina Jalees, Ashley Tisdale, Cedric Yarbrough
Writers: Emily Halpern & Sarah Haskins, Becky Mann & Audra Sielaff, John Blickstead & Trey Kollmer, Andy Roth, Ari Berkowitz, Darrin Bragg, Margee Magee, Broti Gupta, Allison Gilbert, Asmita Paranjape
Thoughts: Following The Middle, sitcom stalwart Patricia Heaton found it difficult to stay out of the arena, jumping back into a new half-hour network comedy after only a year away. With two successful family shows under her belt, she opted this time for something different. As with the forgotten Back To You that buffered Raymond and The Middle, Carol’s Second Act is an ensemble workplace comedy. And a multi-cam. Only, here, the setting is a hospital, where Heaton’s Carol is a middle-aged former teacher who took the opportunity to radically change her life following a divorce, going back to school to finally pursue a dream she had long buried: medicine. Now she’s an intern at this teaching hospital with peers and superiors who are several decades her junior — in fact, they’re the age of her adult daughter. Carol is, essentially, an eager but glaring fish-out-of-water. There’s a lot of comedic and dramatic potential there. Unfortunately, Carol’s Second Act lets down this premise and central character in every way. Most importantly, the ensemble is not well-designed — particularly the other interns, who aren’t defined comedically. What’s more, although there’s an initially oppositional dynamic between Carol and her stern resident, that interpersonal conflict quickly melts away, leaving a dearth of relationship-based comedic and dramatic tension within the main cast. That is, there aren’t a lot of specific character clashes that are helpful for both laughs and story. A romance between Carol’s daughter and one of the other interns is terribly predictable, as is Carol’s own brief romance with a recurring surgeon played by Patrick Fabian. Indeed, there’s nothing inspired or individualized beyond the logline, and because that’s not played well within story either, this is below-average sitcommery. Interestingly, the last episode introduces Heaton’s former Back To You costar Kelsey Grammer as her ex-hubby, setting up the prospect of his being her new boss and possibly a new cast member. That may have finally been a material-rich dynamic worth exploring as situation comedy. But alas, it was too little too late. Carol’s Second Act only had one.
Episode Count: 18 episodes produced and broadcast.
Key Episode: “Pilot” (09/26/19)
Why: In the absence of any promising episodes, I look to the pilot for how it sets up its premise… the thing that the remainder of the series lets down, largely because the elements within the situation are not well crafted and/or conducive to strong weekly use.
Come back next week for another Wildcard! And stay tuned Tuesday for more Middle!