after Noam Pitlik left? The acting became more exaggerated, the stories less realistic, and the preachiness moved in. They were more cartoonish. They also had more morality plays about illiteracy, rape, child molestation, etc. I really think he added a professionalism that the other directors couldn't. After all, this was the guy who directed Barney Miller.
shareI don't agree. I think the show and its characters grew with Don Corvan at the helm. Pitlik was good and gave the show its foundation, but I think he encouraged the actors to play their roles as stereotypes. With Corvan, they're allowed to breathe and stretch a bit more. Yes, some episodes are a bit more cartoonish, but that is because of the writing, not the directing.
I think the one in an earlier season, though, directed by Pitlik, where Belvedere is tied up by the woman and held hostage in her home was completely unrealistic. So even Pitlik directed the occasional looney tunes episode. Again, it was the way some of the plots were crafted. The writing staff tried to do irreverent things from time to time. Sometimes it worked, other times it did not.
But overall, I think the show's quality is consistent. In another thread, I mentioned my two or three least favorite episodes. And yes they do come from the later seasons. But the later seasons also had some truly outstanding episodes, too. The final season's offerings 'Big' and 'Paper Mill' are both superb and should not be missed.
I think Hewitt, especially, became worse. In the first seasons he was more sarcastic and had a dry wit. In the later seasons he camps it up more, rolls his eyes, and generally performs more "schtick". The character loses it's subtlety. My favorite Belvedere line was in the episode about Wesley's party. A snotty little girl is giving him a hard time and he touches her dress and says, "Is this flammable?" I've been watching two of these every day for the past few months and I definitely prefer the first three seasons. I enjoy a lot of four and five, but so far six is a disaster.
shareIt might have been a third season episode, the one where Belvedere teaches Heather to drive, and he rolls his eyes and does a lot of campy expressions but I thought it was hilarious. I think Hewitt was a natural born ham and I'm glad he gets to cut loose a bit-- he becomes less stodgy than the uptight British stereotyped characters we see on so many American sitcoms.
There's a tendency for fans of long-running shows to automatically say a TV program has jumped the shark by the last season. While I did not care for 'Truckin,' I did love the baseball episode, the one with the big kid who becomes Wesley's friend and the one where he writes papers for other kids and teaches a classmate how to read. So I don't think this series really jumped the shark. They did lose some of the original writers and the original director but it's a character-driven sitcom, and I think the characters were still well intact in later episodes. Plus, you can't expect a show to still be as fresh as it once was when it produces more than 100 episodes.
The one gripe I do have is that I think the minute Kevin moves out, he has less reason to be involved in the stories. I liked the one where Belvedere helps him fix things at the apartment building, but in a way that almost seemed like another sitcom. They should have spun Kevin off to his own show, because he is in a different environment and less a part of the domestic scene with the other characters. It is like they are trying to find excuses for him to return home, or for Belvedere to go visit him (strangely, George and Marsha barely go see him). It's a little bit forced, the way they try to keep Kevin in the main stories. When Denise went off to college on 'Cosby,' she got her own series. They should have done that with Kevin and his girlfriend Casey.
Papermill and Homecoming are both more like after-school-specials than sitcoms. I don't really need to see stories about rape and illiteracy on a show like Mr. Belvedere. Where is it written that comedies should be relevant?
shareI will have to see the rest of season 6 to be fair to the show as a whole (it has been 20 years), but I think the first four were the best for several reasons. Kevin in the house is one thing. They seemed to realize that the apartment stories weren't all that interesting in season 5. So far (up to Homecoming) season six has seemed to rectify it simply by having him at home more.
I guess having Wesley "mature" was the biggest mistake. Of course he couldn't be cute and little forever. He made the transition to his teens without coming off dumb or gawky unlike say Jerry Mathers, but he sometimes seems like a neutered version of Wesley later on.
Mainly he should have always remained an antagonist of Belvedere. Young teens are as big of pranksters as kids, just different sorts of pranks are needed. I loved Brainbusters because it was the old Wesley back again. Sure an episode like "Almost Heaven" was a nice reminder that Wesley loved the big guy, and vice versa, but "The Debate" should have been a full on prank war between the two.
There are also some very weird musical sequences thrown in later on that are hit or miss. "Truckin" had a great scene of Christopher showing off his real life Peter Pan roots singing "I Am The Pirate King", but the music montage of "That's What Friends Are For" in "Paper Mill" is cheesy and the music suddenly appearing when Angela and Heather make up in "Pigskin" is super corny too.
I don't know I guess it feels like season 1-4 has a sense of ease to it where season 5 and 6 feels like they are sometimes trying too hard. It's still a good show, but just less sure of itself or more uneven. When asked in another thread I could only think of one episode I actually didn't like, so critique aside Mr. Belvedere remained far better then most of what passes for TV these days.
Was it in Papermill that Marsha and Heather did a song and dance as teacups? That was horrible. I looked forward to watching seasons 1-4, 5 got tiring, and now watching season 6 is more like a chore but I have to watch them. Kevin moving out was a big mistake (and Casey just said goodbye and was never heard from again?), Wes is sometimes a more thoughtful person than Belvedere, I'm not really sure what Marsha does anymore, and George is just a buffoon. I started off saving a lot of episodes on my DVR but I don't anymore. But then again all shows run out of steam eventually. It's just sad to watch it happen.
shareWhere is it written that comedies should be relevant?
There was a trend in the 80s, on dramas (like Highway to Heaven and St. Elsewhere) as well as sitcoms, to be socially relevant-- to mix serious issues in with the more light-hearted plots. It was just a different era and entertainment or what passed for it was regarded a bit differently.
Personally, I did not think 'Homecoming' was done as well as it could have been. Tracy Wells did a nice job, but the writing was too predictable. We knew the minute George and Masha were falling all over the guy that he would turn out to be a bad apple and try to harm their daughter.
Also, I have a feeling there was a slight rewrite. Like in the original script it is left to our assuming the guy did rape her in the car. But then it turns out she got away, which seems hard to believe, even if she did sock him in the groin. I am sure he had the car doors locked and she would not have been able to get out, and it looked like it was a secluded area and even if she screamed at the top of her lungs, she would not have been rescued. So the way it was set up, it looks like she was supposed to be a date rape victim.
But then in the confession scene with Mr. Belvedere, she says it was just an attempted assault, which doesn't quite follow, given everything we learned about him leading up to that. I guess they decided to keep Heather and her virginity intact. And they probably figured it would get too dramatic if she had been traumatized more severely (the way it plays now she just had a good old-fashioned scare). Plus if she had been raped, she doesn't tell anyone until a week later. And there would be a chance she could have gotten pregnant if she hadn't gone to the emergency room right after and been given something to prevent a pregnancy. So they avoid all that by saying she escaped from the event physically (though not emotionally) unharmed.
Yes, it was one of the preachier episodes. And while the scene with George tossing the guy out after he learned what had happened was supposed to make us stand up and cheer, it did seem a little too tidy and somewhat hokey. I guess we can give them points for effort. They tried, within the 25 minute format of the show, to address something that might help girls in real life.
As a kid this episode resonated with me. Oddly the joke about Angela's date having dandruff in his eyebrows was what I remembered most seeing it again. I felt shocked when her date turned on her. To the 13 year old me it was utterly shocking as date rape was just becoming an issue. If I had heard of it, I had never thought of it before.
I really doubt they would have had Heather actually get raped any more than they would have Wesley get molested. It would have been too big an issue to do one episode and move on from. It would have changed the characters in too deep of ways. Plus it would have been too dark and sad which may be the template for entertainment of today, but thank goodness it wasn't when Mr. Belvedere was on the air.
You feel good at the end of very special episodes of Mr. Belvedere, uplifted. If anyone had actually been hurt the message would have been diluted by the real pain of the character. Plus any jokes at all throughout the episode would seem completely out of place. I can't say Homecoming is a great episode exactly, but it handled the issue with good taste and actually left some room for a funny b story. Actually the one odd thing is that minus the rape scene and aftermath the rest of the episode has a lot of laughs.
"Tonight, on a very special episode of...". As I soon as I heard that I would change the channel. Save the sermons for Sunday.
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