BiggestLeahFan
01-04-2007, 11:27 AM
Here it is:
Here's a recent article about the King of Queens in the New York Times!
January 3, 2007
TV
Hey! Never Underestimate the Average Joe
By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN
“The King of Queens,” the longest-running live-action comedy currently on television, is the opposite of an acquired taste. Like pizza or the Doors, the show just hits the spot — the simple, happy sitcom spot.
But you can train yourself to disdain “The King of Queens.” Determined viewers have had nearly nine seasons, and a campaign of rerun-saturation so thorough that you might begin to suspect a state sponsor, to muster complaints. They have come up with two. Unable to say it’s not funny, detractors say “The King of Queens” is unconvincing. Slim, go-getter secretaries like Carrie (Leah Remini) don’t marry lugs who drive trucks like Doug (Kevin James), do they? Others don’t buy Jerry Stiller as Carrie’s dad. He’s always George’s dad of “Seinfeld” to them.
Inside, though, that first conviction doesn’t go away. “The King of Queens,” which ends this season, now that Mr. James is turning to other pursuits, is funny. It’s brisk, perceptive and unpretentious. It works. See for yourself tonight on CBS.
In the late 1990s, when writers were taking stock of the would-be new economy, they decided that the back-end of retail — the part that involved getting merchandise to consumers — was not obsolete. Whether or not people shopped on the Internet, they still needed a way to get their goods. Warehouses and roads, stockers and drivers.
Thus, in 1998, while Fox and NBC were peddling “Getting Personal” and “Conrad Bloom,” comedies about front-end figures like art directors and admen, CBS banked on a fat deliveryman. The overgroomed swingers foundered, but “The King of Queens” persisted. Its hero, Doug Heffernan (not a relative), worked for a U.P.S.-like company that hasn’t gone under.
When that new economy became kind of upsetting, then, and we didn’t want to think about it for a while, it was nice that the old economy, with its outer boroughs and its cardboard boxes, could still make us laugh.
“The King of Queens” may no longer exemplify a cultural trend. But people watch it. According to CBS, 8.7 million viewers tune in each week. After tonight’s episode, the series goes on hiatus until April 9; it’s expected to do as well or better for its seven valedictory episodes.
Just as “The Pilgrim’s Progress” begins when the everyman comes upon a book, “The King of Queens” begins when Doug comes across a television set. That anachronism, a pre-digital, 70-inch technology coffin, is intended for enshrinement in Doug’s basement in the series’s pilot episode. He hopes it will attract his slobby friends to the rec room for sports viewing and dissipation. But Arthur Spooner (Mr. Stiller), Doug’s father-in-law, shows up to wreck the plan when his house burns down.
Doug adapts, but Arthur’s arrival is this comedy’s original sin. Anyone who suggests that it’s Carrie who gets the raw deal in the marriage is not thinking straight. As far as I’m concerned, the spouse who brings a parent into the marital home puts everything in hock to the other spouse, and must spend a lifetime paying for it.
Here's a recent article about the King of Queens in the New York Times!
January 3, 2007
TV
Hey! Never Underestimate the Average Joe
By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN
“The King of Queens,” the longest-running live-action comedy currently on television, is the opposite of an acquired taste. Like pizza or the Doors, the show just hits the spot — the simple, happy sitcom spot.
But you can train yourself to disdain “The King of Queens.” Determined viewers have had nearly nine seasons, and a campaign of rerun-saturation so thorough that you might begin to suspect a state sponsor, to muster complaints. They have come up with two. Unable to say it’s not funny, detractors say “The King of Queens” is unconvincing. Slim, go-getter secretaries like Carrie (Leah Remini) don’t marry lugs who drive trucks like Doug (Kevin James), do they? Others don’t buy Jerry Stiller as Carrie’s dad. He’s always George’s dad of “Seinfeld” to them.
Inside, though, that first conviction doesn’t go away. “The King of Queens,” which ends this season, now that Mr. James is turning to other pursuits, is funny. It’s brisk, perceptive and unpretentious. It works. See for yourself tonight on CBS.
In the late 1990s, when writers were taking stock of the would-be new economy, they decided that the back-end of retail — the part that involved getting merchandise to consumers — was not obsolete. Whether or not people shopped on the Internet, they still needed a way to get their goods. Warehouses and roads, stockers and drivers.
Thus, in 1998, while Fox and NBC were peddling “Getting Personal” and “Conrad Bloom,” comedies about front-end figures like art directors and admen, CBS banked on a fat deliveryman. The overgroomed swingers foundered, but “The King of Queens” persisted. Its hero, Doug Heffernan (not a relative), worked for a U.P.S.-like company that hasn’t gone under.
When that new economy became kind of upsetting, then, and we didn’t want to think about it for a while, it was nice that the old economy, with its outer boroughs and its cardboard boxes, could still make us laugh.
“The King of Queens” may no longer exemplify a cultural trend. But people watch it. According to CBS, 8.7 million viewers tune in each week. After tonight’s episode, the series goes on hiatus until April 9; it’s expected to do as well or better for its seven valedictory episodes.
Just as “The Pilgrim’s Progress” begins when the everyman comes upon a book, “The King of Queens” begins when Doug comes across a television set. That anachronism, a pre-digital, 70-inch technology coffin, is intended for enshrinement in Doug’s basement in the series’s pilot episode. He hopes it will attract his slobby friends to the rec room for sports viewing and dissipation. But Arthur Spooner (Mr. Stiller), Doug’s father-in-law, shows up to wreck the plan when his house burns down.
Doug adapts, but Arthur’s arrival is this comedy’s original sin. Anyone who suggests that it’s Carrie who gets the raw deal in the marriage is not thinking straight. As far as I’m concerned, the spouse who brings a parent into the marital home puts everything in hock to the other spouse, and must spend a lifetime paying for it.