Newhart season 7

Of the sitcoms I’ve profiled at this blog, some emerged out of the gate fully formed (Murphy Brown, Bewitched). Others took a while to get their bearings: to figure out how to most successfully showcase the characters and mine the comedy. And that’s not that unusual. A whole lot of promising sitcoms don’t catch fire till Season 2; the first season is a bit of a learning curve for the writers, and come Season 2— if the show is filmed before a live audience — you get to share in the audience’s exhilaration, when it’s apparent to all that the show has been (sometimes only subtly, but nonetheless momentously) transformed, and the laughs have blissfully multiplied. And then there are the shows that don’t reach maturity till a little later. Both The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Designing Women become the best versions of themselves in Season 3: the former through a soft reboot, the latter through a careful rebalancing act.

But how about a sitcom that becomes the very best version of itself in Season 7? How often does that happen? Newhart most assuredly does, and part of that is that the show is a late bloomer. In fact, if you think of Newhart, Bob Newhart’s second successful sitcom (following his ‘70s hit The Bob Newhart Show), you’re unlikely to think of the first two seasons at all. The first season premiered in 1982, and — in addition to Newhart (as Vermont innkeeper Dick Loudon, an author of how-to books newly transplanted from New York City), Mary Frann (as his wife Joanna) and Tom Poston (as handyman George Utley) — the cast included Steven Kampmann as their next-door neighbor Kirk Devane and Jennifer Holmes as their maid Leslie Vanderkellen. By Season 2, Holmes — who’d made little impression — was replaced by Julia Duffy as her deliciously self-absorbed cousin Stephanie; Kampmann was written off at the end of Season 2, and Peter Scolari, who’d made two appearances that season as TV producer Michael Harris (one of the medium’s first portrayals — and satires — of a yuppie, a term that had only recently come into use), was upped to series regular come Season 3. By Season 3, Michael and Stephanie were (perfectly) paired, and Dick — in addition to writing how-to books — was now hosting a local Sunday talk show called Vermont Today. By Season 3, Newhart starts to feel like the show we all remember.

So consider Season 3 of Newhart — under new showrunner Dan Wilcox — its inaugural season, and consider Season 4 the season when everything starts to click (its own Season 2, just two seasons late): when the cast really begins to gel, and the writers learn how to mine the character quirks for maximum effect. Audiences and critics took notice (TV Guide marveled at how the series had been reupholstered and rejuvenated), and that season, Newhart and two of his supporting players (Duffy and Poston) were nominated for Emmys, the first time that had happened. And when Wilcox decided to leave at the end of the season, David Mirkin and Douglas Wyman — who’d been staff writing for a few years — took over the reins, and the show was put to its toughest test. For a few seasons, it had been comfortably nestled between Kate & Allie and Cagney and Lacey, in an unassuming 9:30 slot. At the top of Season 5, it was moved up a half-hour, to the tentpole slot, and industry wags were doubtful it was up to the challenge. But Newhart surprised them, holding on to all of its audience from the previous season, and actually scoring its best seasonal ranking since its debut season. At the end of Season 5, the show was rewarded with five Emmy nominations, for Newhart and all of the supporting players save Frann, plus a writing nod.

Mirkin and Wyman’s Newhart was tougher and leaner than Wilcox’s; it’s not a style that plays as well today as it did then — it’s a little heartless — but in 1986, it seemed invigorating. But by the new showrunners’ second season, you could feel a bit of a malaise setting in. It was the same writing staff, but they seemed tired. Mirkin admitted, “I received an Emmy nomination for writing [the fifth season opener, “Co-Hostess Twinkie,” guest-starring Julie Brown], but then this horrible thing happened. I was there for about four years, and I realized that I had sort of ‘done’ the multi-camera sitcom. I was chaffing at its limitations.” And sure enough, you see it on the screen. Mirkin’s last scripted episode depicts a series of dreams by, in turn, Dick, Stephanie, Michael and finally Larry, Darryl and Darryl, the countrified trio (and audience favorites) who had moved in next door when Kirk departed. The final act is devoted to Larry dreaming that he and his brothers guest on The Tonight Show. It’s undeniably funny, but it’s also symptomatic of a showrunner who has very little left to say about the characters. You sense throughout Season 6 that the writing team is tired, and running shy on inspiration. In Season 5, during November sweeps, they’d devoted a two-parter to Stephanie and Michael falling out, when he takes an interest in another woman. Their impasse — brief as it was — felt exhilarating. The following November sweeps was devoted to another Michael-Stephanie two-parter, in which they once again sense something amiss in the status of their relationship. They decide to get married — then don’t. Sitcoms in the 1980’s, of course, weren’t dynamic and serialized as they are today (unless there was a built-in will they/won’t they component, a la Sam and Diane); changes to the status quo were rare. But nonetheless, Newhart finished its sixth season feeling very much like a series treading water.

That was my observation at the time; little did I know it was shared by the cast. But when I got around to writing this essay, and did a little research, I learned the cast had expressed concerns as well. In the syndicated Gannett News, Scolari had confessed, following Season 6, “We went for a lot of readily accessible laugh material last year.” Occasionally the cast felt like they were going through their paces “by rote. As the end of the season came, and we began to wind down, we thought, you know, maybe we’re trying to go to the well once too often here, or recreate our greatest hits.”

Mirkin and Wyman departed after Season 6 — pretty much all the writers did — and CBS, for the first time in the show’s history, brought in an outside team to showrun: Mark Egan and Mark Solomon, fresh off three seasons producing the hit Linda Lavin starrer Alice. CBS clearly recognized that Newhart needed an infusion of fresh blood. The start of Season 7 was delayed by a writer’s strike, and the first Newhart episode didn’t air until late October, and in a new 8 PM timeslot. It was a solid effort by Dan O’Shannon and Tom Anderson, two of the new staff writers, in which, when a prisoner uses one of Dick’s how-to books to escape, the town decides all of his books should be burned. It was a good choice for season opener, a situation where Dick could serve as a lone voice of sanity in an increasingly daffy town, but it didn’t suggest any kind of turnaround for the show. Newhart seemed very much like a series whose best years were behind it. Two weeks later, Murphy Brown premiered (in Newhart’s old 9 PM timeslot), and a few weeks after that, Designing Women began its third season (in Newhart’s old, old 9:30 timeslot) and really caught fire. It seemed clear that they were the future of TV comedy, at least on CBS.

There are some strong and promising episodes among the early Season 7 entries — and solid introductions to the new writers: Billy Van Zandt and Jane Milmore score with “Goonstruck” (Duffy's personal favorite episode of the series), in which Stephanie finds herself smitten with the stonemason replacing the inn’s fireplace; Bob Bendetson delivers a sturdy piece of writing when Dick finds himself the foreman of a jury in “Twelve Annoyed Men and Women,” which had the added bonus of introducing town librarian Miss Goddard (Kathy Kinney, pre-Drew Carey). But still, this appears to be the fate of Newhart in its twilight years: the occasional lively episode in a sea of standard standalones.

And then something odd happens when episode 9 rolls around: Michael loses his producing gig at WPIV — and doesn’t get it back by episode’s end. On the contrary, for someone like Michael Harris, whose sole skills are a snappy delivery, a gift for alliteration, and a way of turning every greeting into a pun, the best job he can find in the tiny town of Stratford, VT, is at a local retail store, Circus of Shoes. Within a few episodes, Michael is struggling to afford the lifestyle to which Stephanie has grown accustomed. He shows up at the inn with a tiny boxed gift for his “Cupcake,” who — seeing it — comes skipping down the stairs:

Stephanie: Ooh, a gift. You remembered!
Michael: Well, natch. Any suitor worth his salt knows that Cupcake Day comes but once a year.
Joanna: I don’t believe I’ve heard of Cupcake Day.
Stephanie: Michael created it for me two years ago to help fill that long void between Valentine’s Day and Easter when I didn’t get any presents.
Joanna (ironically): I wish I’d known. I haven’t even begun my Cupcake Day shopping.
Stephanie: Don’t worry about it. There’s a three-day grace period.
Michael: Since I’m in this minimal monetary mode, instead of the traditional diamond trinket, I opted for something a bit more... symbolic.

It’s a cupcake. And Stephanie does not take it well.

Joanna: Stephanie, Michael has been going through some hard times.
Stephanie (to Michael, disheartened): Well, how I am supposed to get in the holiday spirit when you give me something like this on the second holiest day of the year?

Guilted and humbled, Michael offers to take her to their favorite restaurant, Maison Hubert. But when his credit card is rejected, Stephanie is forced to ask for money from a snobbIsh couple across the room, who manage to make her feel smaller than she already does. (Stephanie: “Please, Mr. Wallingford, don’t make me beg. I’m not good at it.” Mrs. Wallingford: “I think you’re marvelous at it, dear.") And Michael’s only recourse is to show up at the inn the following day with a gift box ten times as large as the last one — and a promise to do better. (“They’re letting me work double shifts at the shoe store, and for extra money, the owner said he’d train me to become a cobbler. It’s a lost art.” Dick: “Yeah, I mean, when you think about, where are the young cobblers coming from?”) Stephanie’s bounce restored, she exits up the stairs to open her gift; she’s barely out of sight before Michael doubles over in desperation, rattling out his lines at double speed.

Michael: Dick, I need twenty grand fast.
Dick: What?
Michael: OK, eighteen.
Joanna: Michael, we don’t have that kind of money.
Michael: Don’t plead poverty with me, doll! I’m late on my mortgage, I’ve missed my last two Turbo Z payments, I’ve got the repo man rapping at my door, and I just wrote a bum check to pay for that gift. I’m drowning! (He starts to sob all over the front desk.)
Dick: Michael, we’d like to help you.
Joanna: You see, our money is tied up in the inn.
Michael: Then — sell it.
Dick: We’re not going to sell the inn to support your extravagant lifestyle.
Michael: And here I was thinking I could count on you when things got tough. I guess you don’t know the meaning of friendship. (Screaming) You should look it up sometime!

He sobs even louder, then Stephanie emerges in black mink, overjoyed with her new gift. Dick and Joanna glare at Michael, who beats a hasty retreat. And the audience, understandably, howls. The show is more alive than it’s been in years. And after a chance meeting with the town shrink at the shoe store (and after losing that job, because he stopped to talk to the shrink), Michael realizes he has to break up with Stephanie; as he tells her, “This is only the tip of my topple. But I’m not going to drag you down with me.” And as with his firing at WPIV, there are no quick fixes by episode’s end. Newhart is in uncharted waters.

“Cupcake on My Back” is a great script by Egan, Solomon, Van Zandt and Milmore, but a recitation of the lines only tells half the story. Scolari puts spins on them that aren’t on the page, ones you can’t help but marvel at. Unexpected syllables accented for maximum effect; whole speeches delivered under a veil of comic desperation and tears. These episodes charting Michael's downward spiral do wonderful things for the cast. Not just for Scolari and Duffy, but especially for them. Scolari reveals all of the anguish and fear of failure that lurk beneath Michael’s happy-go-lucky facade. From the moment he loses his job — and basically, his sense of self — he goes to pieces. And Stephanie has no idea how to adjust to the new status quo, as she makes her way through her own stages of grief: “first denial, then shopping, then hating the other person’s guts so much you want to see them fry in the flames of eternal hell — then more shopping.” In the episodes following the breakup, Duffy conveys more honest outrage and vulnerability than in the five years prior.

In Season 5, when Stephanie confronted Michael’s new girlfriend Susan, and was met with a litany of things Michael and Susan had in common, she countered, “The things that Michael and I share go much deeper, like fashion.” In Season 6, when Michael proposed, in order to alleviate the sameness that had crept into their relationship, Stephanie took no time to ponder the gravity of the moment; her instant, instinctive response was “a wedding might be fun.” Two big laugh lines from the two big Michael and Stephanie two-parters, and they're funny — but ultimately, they speak to an issue that grew frustrating as the show settled in for a long run. Michael and Stephanie were amusing because they were paper-thin, because — as the saying goes — down deep, they were shallow. But after four seasons, that became limiting and rather irritating. Was that all there was to their relationship? Were they truly in love? Did they matter to each other? In Season 7 we learn the answers, and the show actually gets funnier for telling us. Delving deeper into Stephanie and Michael’s relationship doesn’t undermine the laughs; on the contrary, it amplifies them. It triples them.

And by the time the Michael-Stephanie story arc kicks into high gear, it’s like we’ve been walking over a minefield we didn’t know was there. In “One and a Half Million Dollar Man,” easily a series highlight, a half-dozen plotlines — including Joanna’s new real estate job, introduced seven episodes earlier; Michael’s ongoing quest for cash, which began six episodes earlier; the return of society snob Scooter Drake, first seen four episodes earlier; and Maison Hubert, introduced three episodes earlier — converge to steer Michael (now plying his trade as a street performer) into a very public meltdown. Two weeks earlier, Murphy Brown had stolen the Monday night spotlight with the introduction of Colleen Dewhurst as Murphy’s mother Avery, in the Emmy-winning “Mama Said”; a week later, Designing Women had garnered acclaim with what many — including myself — label its finest episode, “Full Moon" (in which Julia “moons Atlanta”). But on March 20, 1989, the spotlight was on Newhart, in an episode so daring and unprecedented, it was written up nationwide. (One syndicated column carried the headline "Can a nervous breakdown be funny?" The answer is yes — and also noisy and messy and altogether unsettling. In 1973, Mary Tyler Moore had won plaudits and an Emmy Award for an episode in which she was subjected to public humiliation. Critics lauded her as one of the rare stars to hold themselves up to ridicule: not slapstick ridicule a la Lucille Ball, but the kind that genuinely hurts. Peter Scolari kicks it up a couple dozen notches. I'm not one to watch award shows, let alone make proclamations that someone "was robbed" of a much-deserved win, but offhand, I can't think of a snub that bothers me more than Scolari losing the Emmy in 1989.) At the time, I was enthralled by the episode, but also unnerved. I had never seen a traditional sitcom do anything like it: chart a core character’s collapse in such a raw, painful yet sadistically funny fashion. It got under my skin as few TV episodes had.

When they took over the reins of Newhart in the fall of 1988, Egan and Solomon told the press that, in their opinion, the show “had become a little bit more of a sketch every week rather than stories out of the human condition, out of actual conduct and behavior." (Totally accurate.) Their goal was to “get to the human element.” (Scolari chimed in, with regard to Michael and Stephanie, "I think our audience is entitled to a little more out of these people who make references to baked goods all the time.") And miraculously, that’s just what they do. Once again, I didn’t see that interview — or those particular quotes — until I was researching this essay, but they corroborated everything I’ve long felt about Season 7. (For younger readers here, we didn’t have that thing called “the internet” back in 1988, so you could love a TV series, read everything about it that came your way, and still miss a lot.) How rare is it that a pair of showrunners come onto a long-running series, state their goals, and actually meet them? By Season 7, shows are often operating under the weight of their own machinery; they can be lumbering creatures, difficult to rouse, let alone rejuvenate. But Egan and Solomon do just that, triumphantly. From episode 9 on, there’s a sense of stakes being raised — of characters suffering genuine consternation and, on occasion, humiliation. And as a result, the characters get at once crazier and richer — an impressive combination. Pushed to the brink, they grow more manic, but reveal shadings and motivations and simple truths that had been hidden away.

Once Michael loses his job, the quality of the scripts picks up dramatically. The writers by now have a clear understanding of the characters, and they seem energized by the opportunity to infuse the static sitcom format with a serialized thread. Every third or fourth episode addresses and advances Michael and Stephanie’s relationship, but even in the interim episodes, the change to the status quo is felt. Scolari and Duffy don’t threaten to take over the show; on the contrary, there are splendid showcases for everyone. A few weeks after Michael loses his job at WPIV, he’s unable to accompany Stephanie to a gala in New York City (he has to work late at the shoe store), so Dick takes his place. It’s a tour-de-force for Newhart, who finds his character seduced by high society, to the point where he’s upstaging Merv Griffin on a duet to “My Little Grass Shack,” and playing willing accomplice to Stephanie’s boastful exaggeration of his achievements. When one of the guests, informed that Dick owns a string of luxury hotels across the globe, insists, “The next time we weekend in Bimini, we’ll have to stay at your resort,” Dick is at a loss for words: “I don’t... I don’t recall having a hotel in Bimini.” But when Stephanie prompts him — “You know the one, Richard: the small one, on the bluff”— he picks up his cue eagerly: “Oh, the bluff one...“

With Michael and Stephanie on the outs, the writers are able to pair the principals in unexpected ways. In the episode after Michael loses his job at Circus of Shoes, he’s so anxious for a home-cooked meal — any home-cooked meal — that he accompanies Joanna to a dinner party at Larry, Darryl and Darryl’s that she can’t get out of. As George helps Stephanie drown her sorrows in cheap liquor, and Dick offers a commencement speech at a local school that isn’t quite what it appears, Joanna and Michael try to get through an evening at Larry, Darryl and Darryl’s without, as Joanna fears, “eating beetle.” (When Larry announces they’ll be bringing out the finger sandwiches, Joanna — anticipating the worst — frantically improvises, “You know what I like doing after cocktails? Holding our hands up to make sure all our fingers are there.” Larry to his brothers, after dutifully obeying: “Wonder what she’ll do when we serve the rump roast?”)

Through the course of the evening, we learn that the three brothers discuss politics and play classical piano. Even Larry, Darryl and Darryl get an upgrade in Season 7. Before the season started, there was speculation that they’d be featured more, to take advantage of the show’s earlier time slot, in what was still called “the family viewing hour.” (Solomon was quick to put that rumor to rest. He and Egan would maintain “a 9 PM level of humor.”) On the contrary, they don’t become more prominent; they’re eased into the ensemble — they become part of the texture of the show — so that episodes don’t have to revolve around them to feature them. And at the same time, they’re no longer merely backward rubes. In the episode where Dick and Stephanie are off in New York City, the remaining characters hold an all-night vigil in the lobby of the inn, hoping to get a look at a mysterious guest named L. Gardner, who checked in unseen and has eluded them for days. Is this L. Gardner male or female? As it turns out, both the Darryls have caught a glimpse. When one of them mimes a woman’s shape and the other a man’s, Larry is left to interpret: L. Gardner can only be “a swing dancer from a road company of the lilting Jerry Herman musical La Cage Aux Folles.” (George: “I was so far off.”) The writers have a delicious time suggesting that the brothers hail — and mysteriously fell — from privilege. By the end of the season, we’ll learn that they attended the opening of Phantom, and that Johnny Carson pays their utility bill. Season 7 broadens them as neatly as it does the rest of the cast.

Which brings us to the cast member who, aside from Scolari, benefits the most from Season 7: Mary Frann. There’s an awful lot right about Season 7, but it might well be the re-emergence of Mary Frann that's the most pure fun to watch. The previous showrunners scripted the series as if they hated her (and it was rumored that Newhart himself had little affection for her); reduced to set-dressing, she'd go whole episodes without a decent line, or Merkin and Wyman would do "special episodes" spotlighting the regular cast (e.g., the aforementioned "A Midseason's Night Dream") and pass over her completely.

From the first episode of Season 7, Egan and Solomon set out to make Frann a useful comedic force, and their efforts are not merely apparent, but gratifying. In the season opener, Stephanie ignores and insults a guest, who graciously notes to Joanna, “Good help is hard to find.” "We wouldn’t know,” she confesses, with a smile and a delivery that manage to be at once warm, caustic and self-pitying. The audience laughs in delight: laughter because the line is funny; delight because of who’s saying it — Frann has barely had a clever comeback in two years. (I noticed the change at the time, and was overjoyed.) As the season progresses, we see Joanna grow — almost despite herself — just as loony as everyone else in the town. During the all-night vigil for L. Gardner, Michael turns up, as in need of nourishment as ever: “Any French fries on the fryer, or fresh fruit in the fridge?” “I hate to hear myself say this,” Joanna replies, rolling her eyes at what’s to come, and at what she’s becoming, “but I’m afraid I can find a few frozen frankfurters in the freezer in front of the Fettuccine Alfredo from Friday.” And the audience roars. Roars and claps. The remodeling of Joanna Loudon, former comedic foil, has begun.

Egan and Solomon seem to find their inspiration for this new Joanna in a Season 4 episode, Barton Dean’s “Oh, That Morocco,” in which Joanna — feeling that she’s missing a sense of community in Vermont — got involved with a historical society that turned out to be a witches coven. That eagerness to belong is crucial to Egan and Solomon’s design. Frann was the only Newhart regular never to receive an Emmy nomination (her co-stars all had multiple nods), so it's a little daring where the showrunners ultimately turn for laughs: they play up Joanna's need for attention and acceptance. It could have come off as cruel — us not knowing where Joanna began and Frann left off — but instead, it's inspired: it taps into Frann's comedic strengths, and gives Newhart another crazy to play off of. And Frann looks so pleased to be trading quips with the rest of the cast that her pleasure is contagious. You can hear it in the audience response, which is not only amused but surprised: they don't expect her to be funny. (By the series’ memorable finale, she’s been so completely engulfed by her quest to fit in and her need to be noticed that, when a Japanese conglomerate purchases the entire town, she starts dressing like a geisha and gossiping in Japanese with the hired help.)

Here's Dick and Joanna after Scooter Drake, who’s looking to acquire property in Vermont, has offered them a million-five for their inn:

Dick: I know it's a lot of money, but I don't know if I can bring myself to sell this place.
Joanna: If we did, we'd be set for life. And do you have any idea what my commission would be?
Dick: Joanna, the seller pays the commission. You'd be paying yourself.
Joanna: Who cares? The important thing is, it'll put me in the million-dollar bracket at the office. I'll get a pin!
Dick: Oh well, let's dump this place if it means your getting a pin...

Suddenly they're Burns and Allen.

Season 7 of Newhart has so many highlights — in addition to the eight episodes noted above, there are three more absolute classics: "The Nice Man Cometh,” with Newhart’s buddy Don Rickles as a new talk-show host hired by WPIV, who seizes upon Dick as his stooge; “Murder at the Stratley,” in which Dick, having penned a roman à clef about a murder in a Vermont inn, becomes a prime suspect when Joanna goes missing; and “Malling in Love Again,” in which Stephanie and Michael, resigned to being apart, resolve to find each other ideal matches — at the mall. But let’s focus briefly, as this essay winds down, on one of my favorite unheralded entries: Bob and Howard Bendetson’s Joanna-centric "Homes and Jo-Jo." It starts during a filming of Vermont Today, with an inspired bit involving Newhart and a parrot named Petey (you have to see it to fully appreciate it, and should). Joanna is there to offer moral support, and the new station owner Mr. Grad is there, as always, to tear down Dick:

Grad: Let me tell you something about TV. It’s not radio. The audience wants to see people who are great-looking, with killer smiles.
Dick: Like Petey.
Grad: I had great hopes for him.
Dick: You may call me a radical, but I think people want to watch shows that have content,
Grad (amused): Dick, do you ever think before you speak? I could give Joanna a show, and she’d get better ratings than you.
Joanna: Oh, that’s very flattering, but I wouldn’t know the first thing about hosting a show.
Dick: Honey, he’s not saying he’s going to give you a show. He’s just saying he’d pick you over me and Petey.
Grad: Now wait a minute: that’s not such a bad idea, giving you a show. I mean, you’re great looking and.... (an idea) Smile for me. (She smiles, broadly.) You’ve got a killer smile.
Joanna: Thank you. You should hear me laugh.
Grad: Laugh for me. (She laughs, eagerly.) That’s marvelous. Joanna, what do you do at the inn?
Joanna: Well, I do the books...
Grad: There you go!
Dick (incredulous): You’re going to give her a show where she smiles and laughs and total receipts?
Grad: You think it needs more?
Joanna (not about to give up): Well, I’m also a real estate agent.
Grad: Bingo! That’s the show! And I’m going to try you out in Dick’s timeslot.
Dick: What?
Joanna: Oh, I couldn’t do that to Dick. (A pause.) Could I, honey?
Dick: No!

You get the sense Joanna would sell her own mother for a shot in the spotlight. But they work out a compromise: Joanna will take the timeslot before Dick’s. The resulting show, Your House Is My House — in which Joanna offers virtual tours of available homes in the area — is going well, until the station owner, in a quest for ratings, turns it into the salacious Hot Houses, complete with a libidinous male co-host whose patter goes way beyond innuendo. (His response to Joanna’s description of a new home’s kitchen: “Ever sprawl naked on a granite countertop?”) Stephanie comments on Joanna's latest episode, “After Joanna's flesh act, I had to take a ritual purification bath." Joanna insists, "I was selling real estate," but George admits, "It was hard to say what you were selling." And Dick, who should be outraged at the sight of another man fondling and ogling his wife onscreen, is so pleased that her high viewing figures are boosting his own that he’s disinclined to upset the status quo. (Joanna: “Thank you for letting your wife be degraded for some stupid ratings.” Dick: “Joanna, normally I would be the last guy to stand by and let you be degraded, but I mean, you know, it’s sweeps week.”) As Joanna fumes and storms across the WPIV soundstage, her angry stride unconsciously in time to the sax-driven Hot Houses theme song, Frann is a marvel: statuesque and stunning, with that gift for seemingly perpetual outrage that Carole Lombard once exuded. Never sexier than when angry, never funnier than when indulging her own self-delusions.

It was so common — and too easy — for critics in the '80s to reduce Frann to "she's no Suzanne Pleshette” (Newhart’s wife from his previous sitcom). No, she wasn't — did she have to be? Forget recasts from Dick Sargent on, I think Mary Frann had the toughest shoes to fill, and she could never catch a break. Until Season 7. Season 7, as joyously surprising, riotously funny and genuinely disturbing now as it was then. If you’ve never seen Newhart, Season 7 is well worth a look, and an easy place to jump right in; just be a little patient with the first third — the final two thirds more than make up for it. And if you watched Newhart, but bailed before the final two seasons (as CBS bounced it around the schedule), rest assured that in Season 7, it's still the same fabulous fruitcake of a series that you remember: only nuttier and richer than it was.

Do you enjoy in-depth looks at hit shows? If so, I delve into Rhoda Season 3, Maude Season 2, WKRP in Cincinnati Season 4 and Bewitched Season 2; serve up my 10 Best Mary Tyler Moore Show episodes and my 10 Best Designing Women episodes; pen an appreciation of the underrated Mike & Molly; and offer up some thoughts as to why The New Adventures of Old Christine took such a tumble in quality over its five seasons. Or if you have prefer dramas, check out my write-ups of Criminal Minds Season 8, Judging Amy Season 6, Voyager Season 4, Gilmore Girls Season 7 (and the subsequent Netflix miniseries), Cold Case Season 4, and fourteen essays devoted to each season of the great nighttime soap Knots Landing. I also look back at Murder, She Wrote and pick out The 10 Best "Murder She Wrote" Mysteries -- not (necessarily) my top episodes, but the best whodunnits.