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Published on Monday, September 30, 2002 - 1:49am |
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CBS's STILL STANDING 1.1!!
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I am – Hercules!!
A sitcom starring Mark Addy (“The Flintstones in Viva Las Vegas”) and Jamie Gertz (“Twister”), from the folks behind “Yes, Dear.”
9:30 p.m. Monday. CBS.
So now there's an assembly line for CBS Monday-night comedies? This generic, genial show is awfully familiar — and just as forgettable. Never as funny as the show it most resembles (The King of Queens) or the show it follows (Everybody Loves Raymond), at least it's not as creaky as Yes, Dear. For that, credit Addy (The Full Monty) and Gertz (Ally McBeal).
Original ideas are hard to come by in CBS' "Still Standing." Yet another sitcom about dumb men and the women who love them, laffer gains little mileage out of a collection of setups and punchlines that have turned up on every other family half-hour since the dawn of time. Affable Mark Addy is the potential charmer here -- despite an awkward comfort level, he's as cuddly as he is dopey -- but there really is little reason to tune in unless you missed the same bits on "Yes, Dear," "King of Queens" and "Everybody Loves Raymond," the net's Monday lineup that Eye execs are trying to safely complement. … Really silly stuff here, and it's up to Addy and Gertz to do most of the heavy lifting. That's a mixed blessing: They both have their moments, but neither of them looks or sounds ready to carry the load.
Placed anywhere else on the primetime schedule, "Still Standing" would be just another zinger-laden run-of-the-mill sitcom, albeit neatly wrapped in a bright package. … The writing is sharp and the comic performances are smooth, but there isn't the slightest temptation on the part of exec producers Joey Gutierrez and Diane Burroughs to present this family as anything more than a collection of characters with a knack for turning nearly every other line into a quick joke. … Director Andrew Weyman gets the right shots at the right times, almost always getting maximum laughs for each line. More importantly, as long as there's a "Raymond" locomotive, the CBS Monday night train should chug along just fine.
I am – Hercules!!

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