With its new season looming I felt honor bound to lend a word or two about TVLand's original comedy series The Exes which commenced during the network's 2011 Fall season - brought to the cable subscriber world courtesy of Marc Reisman. Upon viewing the first three seasons in one long gluttonous session I have now officially deemed this series a sleeper keeper. The ensemble here could each easily carry this show on their lonesome but I tell ya this just may be the best group performance since Sally Field in Sybil in 1976. The casting folk didn't take on board any such light weights for this production. But its Wayne Knight's Haskell Lutz and Kristen Johnson's Holly Franklin (who resides in the third apartment from the sun here) that are really working the room, elephants aside. And since almost everybody that possessed a television set in the early 1990s will have been familiar with the Seinfeld series and Knight's Newman a background, front-line character from that must see NBC age (that incidentally outgrew itself, Thursdays are just Thursdays now in case you didn't get the memo), will be equally enchanted here with the curmudgeonly yet cuddly jolly good fellow he is.
Now Exes isn't bereft of following tried and true formulas those no-brainers that assure the yuks to keep on coming and all the pretty and petite Eden (Kelly Stables) would have to do to inspire a chuckle is simply stand next to statuesque Holly ah but I assure you this isn't just any Mutt and Jeff taking Manhattan. Holly is your not so typical typical self-aggrandizing solicitor whose inflated sense of self deflates itself every time she finds herself in a dead-end romance and Eden sure she may be slight in stature but she's no shirker in the self-preservation department. You may have to forgive Eden for her dalliance with Phil Chase (Donald Faison) which I surmise is about to get its ante turned up this coming fourth season. You see Eden may very well be the one who got away for Phil which is saying quite a bit being that the man has hopped on more mattresses than a bed bug with restless leg syndrome.
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| Faison and his paisans - from left Kristen Stewart, David Alan Basche and the wonderful Wayne Knight. |
And where else could you be endeared by a chap sat with a pair of binoculars studying his love interest from afar, erm from the terrace and into her left bedroom window and cooks up a fool-proof (ish) masterplan to go over and introduce his peeping tom self and unwittingly abducts her prized pooch and holds it for brownie points ransom, now that would be Haskell, the man who swears in all earnest, there is a difference between being desperate and lonely and miserable, but the woman who has actually won his ticker would be roomie Stuart's (David Allen Basche) oh so sultry street-smart sister from Staten Island (Leah Remini) who unfortunately has allocated Lutz to the 'just friends' column so what's a Haskell to do?
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| Eden's a real Philanthropist. |
And just who is this Stuart and where does one begin to break him down - well here we have a New York dentist so anal he should have gotten into that other profession invading people where they least appreciate it. Stuart is also a touch of a gastronome much to the pleased palate of Haskell, although we discover there are times that hearty eating Haskell feigns his satisfaction for some of the meals Stuart the stove slave prepares but he isn't the only unsatisfied customer of the brood - Eden herself confessed giving the same such signals of erroneous ecstasy in the boudoir with Phil. Hey, we weren't supposed to know what but that Holly has a hard time keeping things confided in her shtum.
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| Hello Haskell (Keep your blinds closed ladies) |
And although most of us like to keep our actual 'exes' in the past, these are just some of the reasons why you may want to rekindle with this fantastic five come early November.