
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, April 28, 1990                   TAG: 9004280460
SECTION: SPECTATOR                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO  
SOURCE: The Baltimore Evening Sun
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

CURTAINS FOR SITCOM CHARACTERS?

"Bring out yer dead! Bring out yer dead!" That's the refrain of an old skit about the plague years on "Monty Python's Flying Circus." But it may also apply to the final shows this spring of a pair of popular series.

Recent reports have said that both CBS' "Newhart" and Showtime's "The Garry Shandling Show" on cable may end their successful runs with episodes in which their main characters - Bob Newhart's innkeeper Dick Louden and Shandling's on-screen self - shuffle off this mortal coil altogether.

As series-enders go, that's pretty extreme. But it is difficult to know how to bring a popular series to an end gracefully. And over the years some series that have had the luxury of producing goodbye episodes took different approaches. (Relatively few shows, of course, get the opportunity, merely disappearing under the cruel ax of cancellation.)

"Family Ties" did it most recently with a super schmaltzy last season in which father Steven Keaton (Michael Gross) nearly died, finishing with a lengthy episode in which Alex (Michael J. Fox) finally left home - and then cast members took a bow before a studio audience.

"St. Elsewhere" did it with a show suggesting the whole series was a fantasy in the mind of a brain-damaged youngster.

"M*A*S*H" also did it with a much-promoted lengthy final show that sent characters on their way after service in Korea that lasted three times longer than the real Korean War.

And "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" had that memorable final episode when all the characters engaged in a hug-fest in the WJM-TV newsroom.

But the best swan song remains that of "The Dick Van Dyke Show," whose producers decided to fold their show in 1966 at the end of five seasons, rather than try to string out original material any longer. Do you remember?

Instead of trying to somehow dissolve the show's on-screen relationships, the writers simply had a wild old time on a Wild West theme. Rob (Van Dyke) fell asleep in neighbor Jerry's (director Jerry Paris) dentist chair and dreamed about gunfighter Big Bad Brady (Carl Reiner) demanding that all the characters put on a saloon show. A spoof of "High Noon" and every other Western, it was a hoot and a fitting finale.

As for principal characters dying, just remember this is TV, where practically everyone - no doubt Shandling and Newhart, too - ends up in the promised land of syndicated reruns.

by CNB