Thursday, September 14, 2006

New TV Series "Help Me Help You"

Daughter quotes: It's just like How It's Made. Except it's different. (remarking on the show, "John Ratzenberger's Made In America".

Life . . is messy. (We hear in Ted Danson's voice, at the beginning of the free video preview of this show at abc.com) We can't control life. And we don't like that. Sometimes we get so mad we just wanna . . . jump out a window. And then . . . we land on our boss.

This is the first I've heard of Ted Danson's new fall show, Help Me Help You. Apparently he's the shrink (not sure what type of mental health professional, probably ologist I'd guess) and the show is about group therapy. Rather, it seems to be about all the funny that arises from all sorts of therapeutic boundary violations, and all the other usual boundary violations you'd see in a sitcom. Well, those would all fit under therapeutic boundary violations, since, by definition, anything outside of what the therapeutic relationship generally entails, is a therapeutic boundary violation . . . .

Anyway. For some reason I'm drawn to mental health professional types; I find them fascinating. Hope Healthpsych and others don't think I'm wierd now, but I s'pose given my lifelong struggles it's possibly an understandable thing, anyway.

So I guess we'll see how this show is. If it's a complete wreck, and always goes for the cheap laugh, or if there's actual some "real" interaction that goes on in the midst of the funny.

Yeah, it's a sitcom, it's not about "real", but I find sitcoms that do the same old thing all the time, and ALWAYS go for the cheap laugh, to be old and tired right out of the box.

So here's hoping that there's some surprising moments of actual connectedness going on in there, and not just people laughing at each other's problems, and peeping thru the doctor's windows, ad nauseum.

I knew Ted Danson had grey/white hair, but it looked kind of cartoonish/exaggerated on the screen; this doesn't bode well, if they exaggerated that because age = authority/wisdom or whatever, for him to come across well as a shrink. Or maybe it really IS that white now. Poor Sam must be rolling over in his fictional grave; he was SO proud of his head of hair, among other things.

On a different comedic series note, but still on ABC: The Knights of Prosperity actually looks like it could be funny, and not just the same old thing . . .


4 comments:

Dr. A said...

All I can think of is Jerry McGuire when Jerry kept saying, "Help Me, Help You." And kept repeating it 10-15 times. Funny scene...

Anonymous said...

This is the first I heard of this new series. I hope to catch it when it is on. I mentioned a few months ago about a series about group therapy that had the name Normal in the title. It was pretty funny! I find doctors/ therapists interesting as well. I really liked the therapist(from "Taxi" series) in the movie "Ordinary People."

Sarebear said...

Dr. A, lol!

On a preview about ABC's new fall shows, I watched the part about this show. It looks like his grown daughter brings home a new boyfriend. The boyfriend is Ted Danson's character's shrink.

It's good to know I'm not alone in my interests. 8^D

HP said...

Wierd? No way, SB!

I expect it will be some time before this show makes it way down here...and then, dependent on its success, it will probably be shown at some ridiculous hour in the morning.

Sounds interesting. I'd like to see it (although I'm not that partial to Ted Danson).