Never watched the show in its original run. Antenna TV has been showing them since early September and I enjoyed it for a while....now it's just so-so entertainment. The premise of the mysterious, misfit brother coming back into town was interesting at first. Now it's boring. And Antonio? No thanks. Even Lowell gets annoying after a while. Seems like he's constipated or something. Roy Biggins is the hero of this show. He's always funny!
shareKeep watching for more Roy, they too realized he was a great character and he does get some more time. Faye too. Until they go into more relationship episodes.
Ephemeron.
Stick with it. In my opinion, seasons 4 and 5 are great and the show really hits its stride then.
shareYes you have to stick with it & get familiar with the characters. You will find season 3 interesting.
shareHope you stick with it. It does get alot better. I didn't really care for antonio at first either, but now I think he was a great addition to the cast. And if nothing else Roy is hilarious
shareLove this show.
shareWe watched the show on its network run, but hadn't seen it since, and finally got the DVD set. We *really* enjoyed the brief first season. A while into season 2, we noticed that the episodes were getting kinda pointless. But the episode that introduced Antonio was good (and not *just* for Tony Shalhoub's performance, though that was terrific). Judging by some earlier comments on this thread, things will improve overall, so we'll keep watching.
I think this show is an example of the difference between each episode having a point to make, versus just having a beginning, middle, and end. We prefer the former type, but a number of season 2 episodes are of the latter type. Some of them start out as though they were going somewhere but then fall back on cliches for the ending (e.g., the UFO episode), while the "plot" of others is primarily a framework to hang gags on (e.g., the one where the plane goes missing).
We're now a few episodes into season 3. For a while there it was, heaven help us, a soap opera (the traditional refuge of a sitcom that's run out of ideas), but now they seem to be over that, at least for the time being. Some of the episodes have been pretty good.
We're nearly done with season 3 now. Tonight we watched "This Old House" and (other than one laugh) found it pretty pointless. So we figured the next one's gotta be better, it's even got Frasier Crane in it -- but it was just a bunch of silly gags. So we watched "Das Plane" to take the taste out of our mouths, but it was really bleh as well. It's eventually gonna get better again, right?
Also, what happened to the opening theme music? I loved that; it was just about my favorite part. For the first couple of season 3 episodes I figured they omitted it in order to make room for the two-parter plot, but it's still not back. Does this have something to do with Tony Shalhoub joining the cast? [Reference to Monk's theme music being changed after the first season.]
We're now watching the final season, and the really good episodes are still few and far between.
So I got to wondering, did the creators write the first bunch of episodes, then hand it over to others, who tended to drop the torch a good bit of the time? So I checked to see who wrote the six episodes of season 1 versus the 22 episodes of season 2, expecting to see that switch -- but no. All 28 episodes of the first two seasons were written by David Angell, Peter Casey, and David Lee -- the three creators of the series.
So I'm now trying to decide between two theories:
1. The three creators fussed over those first six episodes, taking the time needed to turn out finely crafted scripts, but then had to go into hurry-up mode to come up with 22 episodes for the second season.
2. I greatly enjoyed the first few episodes because they felt fresh to me (not having seen them since the network run), but then tired of subsequent episodes because they kept relying on the same kinds of stuff as the first six.
Or maybe some of each.
We are now, mercifully, done with the entire series. having watched the finale tonight. It wasn't bad, and it did wrap things up, and -- hooray! -- they used the original opening theme.
Well, you got through it and I commend you for that. Usually after four or five episodes if I don't like something I give up on it. But I think it's just a matter of taste and Wings isn't for everybody. I always enjoyed the small-town life and easygoing nature of the show even though it wasn't a total gut-buster like the shows that it was associated with, Cheers and Frasier. I think a bigger obstacle was that a lot of the writers, having come from Cheers, were dividing their time between both and may have been burning themselves out.
And the answer to your million-dollar question that might have you saying “Ohhh okay,” was that after season 4 the creators and writing staff left to start Frasier. Because that was a more high-profile project spinning off a major character, they sent over their best people. But oddly enough for me it was around this time, season 4, that the show hit its stride and really started to be consistently funny. I still enjoyed the last few years even though the final season they were kind of going through the motions. And in a highly unusual set up back in those days, in the last few seasons the writing staff was predominantly women. Ellen Byron, Lisa Kapstrom, Joyce Gittlin, Lori Kirkland, and Shelley Landau.
And you could've fooled me because for a show that had mostly male characters they wrote everybody perfectly well. The only thing I ever disagreed with was the jeep through the office and the burning down of the house. Completely misplaced for a sitcom and bordering on psychotic with Helen becoming violent (with no repercussions), and then especially destroying somebody's house and their possessions is a pretty traumatic turn.
... after season 4 the creators and writing staff left to start Frasier. Because that was a more high-profile project spinning off a major character, they sent over their best people.
Cool to hear that because it's still one of my favorite comfort shows, essentially because of the setting and the small town life atmosphere.
shareI am thinking about starting this soon (never saw it before) and your comments are giving me hope. Although having to wait until season 4 for it to really get good is worrying.
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