ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, September 17, 1996 TAG: 9609170130
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES
TYPE: TELEVISION REVIEW
SOURCE: DENNIS ANDERSON ASSOCIATED PRESS
The new sitcom ``Something So Right'' finds its way to laughter quickly, a real-life comedy springing from a situation that millions of families face: divorce, remarriage and the blending of new families.
The NBC show is no ``Brady Bunch'' for the '90s. It's too authentic and too contemporary to be boxed that way.
What ``Something So Right'' does offer is a Neil Simon-style fast frenzy of comic set-ups and pratfalls that occur in a household filled with new love, new kids and old ex-spouses who show up clanking chains louder than Jacob Marley's.
The show is the creation of writers Judd Pillot and John Peaslee, who worked on ``Coach.'' The idea bulb flashed for each of them as they both entered second marriages with the customary dread over trying to get it right.
``We were always interested in how hard it is to keep a relationship going, then how hard it would be ... if you also brought the enormous baggage of children,'' Pillot said.
Norman Rockwell would throw up his palette and brushes and run out of the studio screaming before trying to paint the Thanksgiving scene from ``Something So Right.''
``There's a lot of people out there who have been through this,'' Peaslee said. ``It was out there to be done, and we felt incredibly lucky when we tripped on it.''
Actor Jere Burns, who once played the slithery swinger Kirk on the singles support sitcom ``Dear John,'' gets a more family-friendly role as a sweetly sane high school teacher. His character, Tom Farrell, just married Carly Davis, a twice-divorced, frenetic corporate party planner played by Mel Harris.
Harris is wonderfully jittery as a ``functioning dysfunctional,'' a character about as far away as could be from the lush and tranquil character of Hope that she played on ``thirtysomething'' in another century called the '80s.
The English teacher's ``baggage'' is a teen-age daughter, Nicole. From her two previous marriages, Harris' caterer has a smart 11-year-old little girl and a teen-age son who's hitting the hormone highway, and has a major crush on his new stepsister.
The 10-year-old doesn't want to share her room with Nicole. Maybe her teen-age brother and her new teen-age stepsister could room together? Being as they are so close in age, the munchkin offers hopefully.
``Will's not going to share a potato chip with Nicole!'' the new dad decrees.
On this, the wise 11-year-old agrees. She admonishes her brother, ``She's your sister, Will, not your girlfriend. You big sicko!''
Other complications arise, inevitably.
The new dad proposes a ``traditional family dinner,'' but all the kids are weekending with the ex-spouses where those new, improved couples are sponsoring ``traditional family dinners'' of their own.
How do we have traditional family dinners in a world where half the couples in America are divorced and everybody needs a day-planner to decode which set of parents and kids are under the same roof at the same time?
``We don't parody the idea of blended families,'' Burns said. ``We show how the idea works.... I've not had a blended family, but I have three children, and that's when you're outnumbered.''
The kids are played with a fresh naturalness by Marne Patterson as 16-year-old Nicole, Billy Sullivan as 14-year-old Will and Emily Ann Lloyd as the brainy 11-year-old Sarah.
Pillot and Peaslee have written together for 17 years, and are about ``as blended as you get,'' Peaslee noted.
Their new show debuts on Tuesday nights at 8:30 in the dream time-slot after ``Mad About You'' and before ``Frasier.''
Burns said the three shows share the common thread of family and work.
``It's hard work and it's fun. It's a lot of work to come up with 211/2 minutes of good, funny comedy, but I'm having a blast.''
LENGTH: Medium: 77 linesby CNB