News about 'Back to You': It's awful

September 19, 2007

By Doug Elfman
Chicago Sun-Times

It's too bad Fox's new sitcom "Back to You" starts as a miserable and insufferable flop. But at least the first episode isn't as unbearable as the soul-eating second episode.

The sitcom (debuting tonight before the season opener of " 'Til Death") is an always-laughing-audience comedy starring Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton as news anchors in Pittsburgh. A traditional American stage farce trapped in a faux-contemporary setting, it's like "Frasier" joins the newsroom from "Bruce Almighty." Sorry for the insult to "Frasier" and "Bruce Almighty."

Jokes fail fast due to routine-sitcom punch lines and off-kilter direction (by legendary James Burrows, surprisingly). You can see the setup coming for jokes, every one of the rotten little creatures, like when a guy says, "Sometimes I can be a little whiny," and a woman responds, "I believe that's pronounced 'little weenie.' " Whoa, that's a new one, geniuses.

Here's the best joke from the first two decrepit episodes, as delivered by Fred Willard in a waste of his skills: "Last week I told a perfectly harmless PMS joke, and she threw a bottle at me. Whose point did she prove there, huh?"

There's no need to belabor this compost. But I would like to add that there's an allergy story line here that ABC's awful "October Road" just aired, very similarly, last season. And Grammer is great for 10 seconds when he's supposed to seem gloomy, which makes me think he might be compelling in an uberdramatic role.

Anyway, "Back to You" stinks, shames the sitcom form, is written and directed with smelly gusto, and is not original, funny or redemptive by any universal standards known to science, creation or TV executives. Congratulations, crappy show, you may be the unfunniest sitcom on broadcast TV. I salute your achievement.

Doug Elfman