A Televisual Feast

As a pilot episode, “Ned and Stacey” is awkward. While it does introduce the characters well, even getting in all the members of the supporting cast, the problem has to do with the show concept. Thomas Haden Church playing a jerky ad exec who marries Debra Messing’s liberal journalist (who’s more than a little materialistic) to get a promotion–great concept. A twenty-two minute episode setting it all up? Very problematic. The episode makes the significant mistake of trying to some reality, instead of just amusing the viewer.

The blind date where Ned and Stacey meet, great; the scene where he proposes the plan to her, good; the wedding scene where he meets her parents, great; the scene where she’s in tears because she’s deceiving everyone, not great… out of place, in fact. The episode takes a real hit during the last scene because it’s presenting this situation as something actual, instead of absurd. It does not work and I can’t figure why it got tacked on there.

Church is hilarious, backing up some of the shoddier one-liners (though there are a number of great ones). Nadia Dajani and Greg Germann pop in for the first scene, establishing their characters immediately–Dajani’s fantastic, Germann’s fantastic. No problems there. Also no problems with Stacey’s parents. But there are some problems with Debra Messing, who’s the straight woman for the whole show. The script’s very stagey, as is the direction (the whole thing’s shot on video, which doesn’t help), and Messing doesn’t do well with it. She’s fine, but Church just runs circles around her, so do Harry Goz and Dori Brenner as her parents.

But, problems aside, it’s a funny kick-off.

2.5