THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, April 24, 1996 TAG: 9604230051
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Larry Bonko
LENGTH: Medium: 98 lines
WHILE I WAS disappointed to see ``Cheers'' close down on NBC, and felt that ``Northern Exposure'' had a couple of good years left when CBS canceled that series, I have no regrets about watching ``Picket Fences'' reach its grand finale on CBS tonight at 9 with back-to-back episodes.
It's time.
Like ``L.A. Law'' before it, ``Picket Fences'' is a drama that stayed on the air long after the life had gone out of the series. Both shows collapsed because one man stopped caring - the man who ironically was a creative force behind both ``L.A. Law'' and ``Picket Fences.''
``L.A. Law'' five years ago hit the skids when Kelley left to create ``Picket Fences,'' and when he gave up day-to-day control of ``Picket Fences'' 18 months ago to work on ``Chicago Hope,'' that series suffered likewise.
I remember hearing Kelley in Hollywood almost five years ago say that he intended ``Picket Fences'' to be strictly offbeat entertainment without any messages attached to it. ``I'm not going to use this show as a soapbox or an arena to make the world a better place,'' said Kelley.
But that is precisely what has taken place of late on ``Picket Fences.'' It's the reason I quit watching.
The show turned preachy.
It stopped being quirky and loopy.
Gone were the days when Kelley's scripts killed off the Tin Man in a local production of the ``Wizard of Oz,'' introduced us to a woman who flattened her husband with a steamroller, gave us the man who broke into homes to take baths and let us spend some time with the fat woman who sat on the heads of people she did not like.
Lately, we've had causes.
There have been stories about gun control, sexual abuse, religious differences, daughters having unprotected sex before they marry.
Where are the elephants marching into town? The oversexed midgets? The nun who sang ``Killing Me Softly'' as she practiced euthanasia? Where are the murder victims stuffed inside the kitchen dishwasher? I guess the last off-center character to make an impression was the Robin Hood (played by Marlee Matlin) who came to Rome, Wis., to rob banks and ended up the mayor.
Remember when she made Sheriff Jimmy Brock (Tom Skerritt) and his deputies wear goofy hats? The last time I looked in, the Matlin character was involved in a soap opera-ish plot about keeping the identity of her son's father a secret. She drops the news tonight, by the way.
And another twist in tonight's two-hour send-off is the end of the Brocks' marriage. I've seen that coming for months, because Skerritt, as Brock, is attracted to almost every female who crosses his path, and plenty do.
How long can the man resist?
The marriage of Jimmy and Jill was never a rock-solid one, because she's a doctor who's smarter than her husband. She is not impressed with what he does. And Jill always hated his saxophone playing.
Even so, Skerritt and Kathy Baker were excellent as the mismatched pair, and they were awarded with Emmys for their work. If Baker had not signed on to play his wife's character, Skerritt said he would not be working in series TV today.
``With Kathy aboard, I thought this was something I might damn well enjoy doing, and I have,'' said Skerritt. Except for a few appearances on ``Cheers,'' Skerritt avoided weekly TV until Kelley called. ``I had a fine career in films and did not want the very restrictive, 12-hour days, five-days-a-week life of series television,'' he said.
For a while there, Skerritt was allergic to TV. Really.
``Whenever I did guest shots in television, I'd have a tremendous allergy attack,'' he said. ``Maybe it was psychosomatic. Maybe it was because I worked against my principles of doing television dialogue, which is merely something in between the commercial breaks. There were commercial breaks on `Picket Fences,' but the writing was intelligent.''
Perhaps that is why Skerritt hasn't sneezed at work since 1992.
CBS will have four more new episodes of ``Picket Fences'' on the shelf after playing off three hours this week. When, if ever, will we see the final four? ``We'll let you know,'' said a CBS spokesman in Hollywood.
Perhaps the four unseen episodes will show up on the fX cable channel that runs ``Picket Fences'' on Saturday and Sunday at 7 p.m. Not long ago, fX ran the episode in which a high school student tied his teacher to a Christmas tree because he thought she was an angel.
It was the good old days of ``Picket Fences.''
(Also concluding life as long-running prime time series in the next few weeks are ``Murder, She Wrote,'' ``Sisters'' and ``The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.'') by CNB