Short-Lived Shows: Flying Blind
Adam's post about Herman's Head (which was one of my favorite shows during my college years, by the way) got me thinking of the FOX Sunday lineup in those heady days when The Simpsons was still considered subversive and FOX was as small as The CW. Ironically, between Bart and Co., Married... With Children, and Herman's Head, the lineup was probably a lot stronger then than it is now, even though FOX is now a bigger network with more resources to create quality programming.Part of that early-nineties Sunday lineup was Flying Blind (1992-93), which starred (a very red-headed and very hot) Téa Leoni and Corey Parker as a mismatched couple making their way through the early days of their relationship. Leoni played the firery ingenue Alicia, full of life and adventurous as hell. Parker was nebbishy Neil, who seemed to fumble and stumble over every sentence but was devoted to Alicia. I mean, who wouldn't? She was just about perfect. So perfect, in fact, that I always wondered why she was ever with Neil to begin with.
Besides that wonderation, what I remember about the show were these multi-line soliloquies that went in all sorts of neurotic directions to get to the joke. While that got a bit tiresome after a while, at the time of the show's premiere, that was the aspect of the show that stood out to me.
Besides Téa, that is. She was a revelation in this role, with her wild red hair and revealing clothing. She seemed to bring an enthusiasm to Alicia that not even Jenna Elfman, who played the free-spirit role in the similar Dharma & Greg, came close to displaying. She was a goddess in this role, and almost all of the dressed-down roles she's played since have paled in comparison to Alicia. I'm not sure why the show only lasted one year, given the talent both in front of and behind the camera (James Burrows directed some episodes, and Linwood Boomer of Malcolm in the Middle was one of the writers). But when it was on the air, it was mostly an enjoyable show to watch. I have some episodes on videotape somewhere; I should dig them up and watch.

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