"The New Adventures of Old Christine" is Hot, Hot, Hot!

It's always wonderful to report that a show has more than lived up to its hype, and last night's The New Adventures of Old Christine was terrific, one of the best I've seen, with Julia L-D in top comedic form with lots of really funny physical comedy business. The interaction between Julia and Jason Alexander was great, and Christine's repeatedly inappropriate exam room chatter was perfectly horrifying and hilarious. Later watching her get juiced up on hormone cream was a true delight, and she gave the mean mommies a good talking-to, which I'm sure we all loved!

There's such a disarming self-absorption to Christine's character, plus a very nice portrayal of a solid and hilarious female friendship between Christine and Barb, played by the always dead-on Wanda Sykes, who especially got a chance to shine in the last couple of episodes where she and Christine's wonderfully droll brother Matthew (played by Hamish Linklater) were briefly intimately involved with each other. The scene last night between Julia and Wanda where Wanda tosses her the "old lady cream" was amazing, with Julia as Christine experiencing a wildly escalating comedic meltdown, a performance which should be enough her assure her an Emmy win next time, hands-down. It was brilliant.

Really a top notch episode last night, but since CBS doesn't offer it for viewing online, I guess you'll just have to catch it in reruns if you didn't last night. Come on, CBS, what's the deal here? This is exactly the kind of show that the burgeoning female internet demographic would flock to online. There's a bad disconnect here and CBS should be working hard to get The New Adventures of Old Christine up on the web. It's a puzzling omission, but oh, what a show!
(If you check the comments, I'll post a link where you can watch the show, at least....)

(I forgot to mention that The Big Bang Theory was also terrific, but you can watch that online, so go do it!)

The Monday Funnies on CBS -- Big Bang and Old Christine

I'm going to keep blogging about this terrific show until somebody watches, I swear it! CBS' charming and very amusing comedy The Big Bang Theory is in the middle of its batch of new episodes, so now is a great time to catch with the antics of the talented cast on this under-appreciated show.

There are no precocious children and no cantankerous oldsters in this one, just a vivacious cast playing adorable and impossibly vain brainiacs, plus one cute girl to stir things up. If you like jokes about Star Trek, 2001, physics, unrequited lust, the string theory, superheroes...served up with a generous ladling of loopy absurdity, The Big Bang Theory is your show. I haven't seen an episode yet that didn't deserve genuine chuckles, and though the description of tonight's ep sounds like it comes straight from the land of Leave it to Beaver (in other words, it's simplicity itself) -- The Pancake Batter Anomaly: When Sheldon comes down with the flu, the rest of the gang wisely avoids him -- I can't wait to see what the fellas dish out. Really, just give this show a try. It's a clever mix of physical and intellectual comedy -- a little bit Marx Brothers, a little bit particle accelerator -- and it's a delight. The Big Bang Theory airs straight up at 8pm.

A delight also, is The New Adventures of Old Christine, airing at 9:30pm on CBS. The big hoo-ha about tonight's new episode is that it reunites Seinfeld stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Jason Alexander, in a guest appearance as Christine's gynecologist, in a tale about Christine's descent into perimenopause. We'll see if the old magic is still there, and expect plenty of double and triple entendres -- the show is pretty smutty, but that's all right (it's usually pretty funny material), and it's not as inappropriate or crass as Two and a Half Men, let's say. (I haven't fallen for How I Met Your Mother, but that's clearly another Monday night fave for CBS. Good for them!)

I also have to put in a good word for Fox's New Amsterdam, which is hanging in there and is certainly the best romantic drama about an immortal man since...well, CBS' Moonlight on Friday nights. New Amsterdam has an appealing leading man in Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, and you movie fans might be interested to learn that writer/producer Allan Loeb was also w/p for Things We Lost in the Fire which is out on DVD and PPV now. (I can recommend the movie for an absolutely wonderful performance by Benicio Del Toro. Can't wait to see him as the Wolfman!)

So your dance card is full tonight. And if you're going to watch Dancing with the Stars or The Bachelor instead, please just don't tell me about it....

Liking -- Mostly -- "The New Adventures of Old Christine"

Does anybody else like Julia Louis-Dreyfus in her recently-returned-for-a-third-season comedy The New Adventures of Old Christine? For one thing, it's good to have a Seinfeld alumnus with a hit, so props to Ms. Dreyfus for pulling that off, and for getting the Emmy for Best Actress in a Comedy at the 2006 ceremony.

There have been a lot of things to like about the show since it began, especially Andy Richter's appearances a while back as a sad sack boyfriend, the acerbic and intensely likeable Wanda Sykes as JL-D's colleague, and the loopy and lovable Hamish Linklater (pictured with JL-D) as her brother Matthew (my favorite character). Back this season as Christine's handsome boyfriend is the charming and talented Blair Underwood, and her qualms about dating a man so impossibly gorgeous are at the heart of a lot of great material on TNAoOC. The entire cast is crisp and competent and frequently funny, from Richard Gregg as Christine's ex-husband, to the trio of ladies -- Emily Rutherfurd, Alex Kapp Horner, and Tricia O'Kelly -- who play, respectively, Christine's husband's new girlfriend also named Christine, and the two "mean mommies" who bedevil old Christine whenever she visits her son's school.

Though The New Adventures of Old Christine is consistently funny, I occasionally feel a little bit of an "ick" factor with some of the humor, always related to a sexual joke. I am, as friends will attest, one of the least prudish people in terms of what I think is funny, but I wonder if it's the presence of a kid on the show that bugs me in terms of the sexual content? (I feel the same way about Two and a Half Men, which I think goes beyond ick into smarmy.) This is definitely adult comedy. Even with the occasional fleeting off moment (for me, anyway), the show always delivers smart and often delightfully absurd comedy, thanks particularly to Julia and her great gift for dialogue along with her considerable ease with physical comedy. As a woman of a certain age (she just turned 47 about a month ago), Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Christine has a whole menu of insecurities to explore, and while the occasional pointed barb is accurately flung, more often than not it's pure comedy that makes this one click.

You have to give kudos to the cast and creative crew behind this one, and to CBS for bringing it back. Along with the popular How I Met Your Mother and my favorite The Big Bang Theory (which is on hiatus right now and boy do I hope it's gonna make the cut for a second season!), Monday nights on CBS are a haven for sophisticated comedy on a par with NBC's Thursday night. How bad can things be when you've got Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Tina Fey representing TV comedy? Lucy and Ethel would be proud.

Check out the website for The New Adventures of Old Christine at CBS. The show airs Monday nights at 9:30pm. And here's a nice article about TNAoOC co-creator Kari Lizer! Enjoy!