Well, "Buddies" finally makes it onto the ABC lineup tonight, almost a year after it was first scheduled.
It wasn't worth the wait.You may recall that "Buddies" was originally scheduled to debut in mid-April 1995. ABC has already plastered the air waves with promos, bought ads in TV Guide and was ready to roll - when, about a week before the debut date, the show was yanked off the schedule, not to be heard from again until tonight (8:30 p.m., Ch. 4).
In the meantime, cast members were dropped, new actors were hired and some rewriting was done.
Not enough, however. This is another in an increasingly long line of weak sitcoms from ABC - and another dud from the producers of "Home Improvement."
(Does anyone remember "Thunder Alley?")
According to executive producer Carmen Finestra, ABC and the producers came to a "mutual decision" to dump the original version of "Buddies." And it was simply a matter of discovering that the show just wasn't working.
"You get into a situation where - oops! - they've already announced it," Finestra told TV critics. "We've got to do the three shows, but we're not feeling quite right about this. . . . And you keep delaying, thinking maybe we can make some adjustments.
"I think it just boiled down to the fact that we felt this was not 100 percent right. And the minute that happened . . . I think you just say, `Well, I think we have to bite the bullet.' I think it'd be more harmful to put this on the air and then yank people out, rather than never be on at all."
Actually, it might have been better had "Buddies" never made it on the air at all. Period.
The concept behind "Buddies" is simple - two young guys, one black and one white, are trying to build a business and build a life. But the show is heavy-handed about its racial attitudes, it's weak on humor, and its sexual content is rather more than you'd expect from the people behind "Home Improvement."
Originally, stand-up comedian Dave Chappelle was teamed with Jim Breuer as "Buddies" Dave and John, respectively. And Ari Meyers ("Kate and Allie) was cast as Dave's wife.
But after those first three ill-fated episodes, Breuer (who has since joined "Saturday Night Live") and Meyers were both dumped. Christopher Gartin was brought aboard as John, and Paula Cale (known as Paula Korologos when she co-starred on "Murphy Brown") plays his wife, Lorraine.
The black and white thing is the centerpiece of the show, and it's handled without either tact or wit. We're introduced to the two main characters with this exchange:
"You're the only black man I know can't play basketball," John says.
"Shut up, whitey," Dave responds.
While Dave, John, Lorraine and Dave's girlfriend, Phyllis (Tanya Wright) are all enlightened, the cast includes Phyllis' white-trash bigot of a mother, Maureen (Judith Ivy) and Dave's bigoted father, Henry (Richard Roundtree).
"Client comes in here, sees you black, he's gonna think you work for Casper," Henry tells his son.
And Maureen is a broadly drawn shrew. "Give me a lawn chair and a high-ball and I'm home," she says.
Terms like "honky" are thrown around with some frequency. In a subsequent episode, Phyllis comments on Henry's appearance as he approaches his 50th birthday by tossing out, "You know what they say - black don't crack."
That same episode revolves around the fact that Dave is followed around in a store by a security agent just because he's black - but the show is so poorly written that it's simply a succession of dumb jokes that make a real problem into a cartoon.
Not to mention that many of the alleged laugh lines use the lowest common denominator - sexual humor.
"You don't get it, do you?" John asks Maureen.
"Not like I used to," she says.
"Rabbits don't get it like you used to," John replies.
And that's one of the milder ones. References to wet T-shirt contests seem to amuse the writers greatly.
The show's portrayal of women is generally offensive - they all seem to be manipulative, shrieking shrews.
And this is supposed to be a comedy.
If the revised version of "Buddies" is really a big improvement, the original must have been truly dreadful.
NICE TRY, BUT: Some books should not be made into movies. Such is the case with Tim O'Brien's "In the Lake of the Woods."
At the very least, it should not have been made into the TV movie of the same name that airs tonight on Fox (7 p.m., Ch. 13).
Simply put, the story follows a senatorial candidate (Peter Strauss) whose campaign falls apart when it leaks out that he was involved in the massacre of a Vietnamese village. And when he and his wife (Kathleen Quinlan) retreat to a cottage by the Lake of the Woods, she disappears. Did he kill her?
The book is episodic, employing narrative, brief interview bites and the hypotheses of the narrator/
jour-nalist. An attempt is made to bring that style to the movie, but it just doesn't work. The end result is confused and dull.
And if the folks at Hallmark, who produced the movie, can't do it, then it probably can't be done.
In the case of "In the Lake of the Woods," read the book. Avoid the movie.