TV is the New Reading

‘Samantha Who’ shows how sitcoms are meant to be done

This summer, the situation comedy writers of America should receive gift baskets from their production teams that include the first season of “Samantha Who?” DVDs.

This sitcom works. It works in ways that other similar sitcoms haven’t, and it’s working better than most of the other star-driven comedies I’ve seen lately.

Part of the genius is Christina Applegate in the title role. Who knew “Married With Children’s” Kelly Bundy could carry a show? She’s still a ditzy blonde, but her comedy has grown up a lot in this series.

Samantha wakes up from a weeklong coma with retrograde amnesia. So she’s unaware that she kicked her new best friend, Dena – the large, goofy woman with the Newfoundland dog fetish – to the curb years ago, when they were in grade school. And she’s hazy on the details but something about her mother – played brilliantly by Jean Smart – trying to get an Extreme Home Makeover out of her extended nap just doesn’t ring true.

Buzzing about like a manipulative gadfly with a cellphone is her actual best friend, Andrea, played note-perfectly by Jennifer Esposito, who is constantly finding new ways to torture Dena – who she sees as having crashed her Sam party – and getting Sam to be the wicked witch she’d been before the accident.

Revelations

This holding pattern kept things going as Sam spent several weeks learning terrible things about herself – that she was a horrible girlfriend who cheated on her boyfriend, Todd, who got tired of the drama and got a new girlfriend just as Sam was recommitting to their relationship. She was mortified to learn that she was a career-driven psycho who terrorized her assistant.

Meanwhile, Andrea kept encouraging her in her self-destruction and her mother just continued to be an opportunistic bad influence, while her own newfound conscience and new outlook on life struggled to assert itself, encouraged along the way by Dena.

The show has kept itself fresh by redefining relationships. In another universe, Dena would’ve retreated from Sam and Andrea when they started being friendly again and Andrea just kept being really mean to her. In this show, Dena starts dating Andrea’s boss and now Andrea’s got to be nicer to her. In another universe, Sam’s parents would be much more sensible people but in fact Sam’s mother is incredibly self-involved. That being said, she’s sufficiently self-aware to keep Sam’s father reasonably happy despite Sam’s father living entirely inside his own little world.

As for Todd, well, Sam – with some reluctant assistance from doorman Frank, played by the delightfully low-key Tim Russ – is still working on that.

Fresh air

The show itself is a breath of fresh air. I love the lack of laughtracks. There’s plenty of funny in this show without them, especially if you’re paying attention. Every episode includes little asides that pay off in three or four different punchlines throughout. They come out of nowhere and it’s hard to recount them out of the context of the show because the comedy arises from the situations, but they’re hilarious.

Free of laughtracks, the actors are allowed to simply interact and create, which given the existential nature of the show really works, because everyone’s involved – not just the amnesiac in the title role. The change in her perspective forces a change in other people too.

The questions of personalities and histories – whether we are doomed to be who we’ve always been, or whether we’re capable of changing – are interesting and worth thinking about, and this show marries the right amount of comedy into these explorations.

The first season finale of “Samantha Who?” airs at 8:30 p.m. Monday on ABC.

Back Back to Shows Back to Main Page Next