RKMBs Forums .::Robegories::. Media John Ritter's "8 Simple Rules" to premiere on ABC.

ABC has decided to share its last memories of late TV icon John Ritter with the world.

The network will premiere "8 Simple Rules For Dating My Teenage Daughter," the comedy 54 year-old Ritter was working on when he died on September 11 due to an an aortic dissection. Though the show will continue without Ritter, his role as the father will not be replaced. The show will instead be revamped to show the family dealing with Ritter's unexpected death.

Katey Segal (best known for her role as Peggy Bundy on the sit-com Married...With Children) will introduce "8 Simple Rules For Dating My Teenage Daughter," which premieres tonight on ABC at 8 p.m. Eastern Standard time.

Milk it for all its worth ABC!

An additionally sad note to go with this is that the show itself is not very good....

Jim

I'd probably agree. I never watched the show before but saw last night's show and thought it wasn't very good (except for the daughters).

Well, the 1st episode without John Ritter is on.

It's hard to watch...for me. My dad left one day, to go skiing at one of the local hills, and then was killed in a car accident on the way home. I was 17.

Gonna go get some kleenex now.

So how was it?

This show needed John Ritter. End it now.

I cried off and on throughout the entire show . . . it was stretched to an hour (I think).

It was done pretty well . . . and some of the things that were trying to be funny (like you'd see someone trying to cheer someone up and it not working) were a little akward, but that just made it seem a little more real.

But as I said before, this kind of thing hits home for me so it was kinda nice to see something dealing with this and not make it all nicey-nice or totally shitty.

The show was very difficult to get through, though I thought the addition (for tonight's episode) of fellow 1970s TV legends James Garner and Suzanne Pleshette to be very nice touches.

My dad died when I was 15. I know what those "TV kids" are feeling, and to some extent, the real-life actors are feeling as well. I thought the show handled all of the emotion very well.

But that said, this show should end. Its concept was, IMHO, weak to begin with (I found the two daughters almost intolerable, though I appreciated the final idea, expressed last night in the fictional "last column" written by Ritter's character, that it's good for kids to not fear their parents)...during most of the series' run, the attitudes expressed by the daughters pissed me off a lot, to the point I often found myself telling my own daughters not to behave like the characters did.

It was, IMHO, misguided with Ritter. It can't be anything but awful without him. Last night's episode was a fitting tribute for the fallen actor. It let us all feel that we'll miss him.

Jim

I kinda found the Three's Company box set commercials (two in one break) to be a pathetic attempt at capitalizing on the death of a beloved celebrity... 'speciallt two of 'em within a minute and a half.

the final sign that media people are worse rats and vultures than even lawyers...

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=597&ncid=763&e=6&u=/nm/20031106/tv_nm/leisure_rules_dc


ABC's First Post-Ritter 'Rules' Draws Big Audience
Thu Nov 6, 5:09 PM ET

By Steve Gorman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Tears flowed, the laugh track was turned off and a record number of viewers tuned in as ABC comedy "8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter" returned to prime time with the death of its star, John Ritter (news), written into the story line.





The question now is: Where will the show go from here?


The first episode without Ritter, who died suddenly on Sept. 11 as the sitcom entered its second season, drew nearly 21 million viewers, an all-time high for the series that made the one-hour special the most watched show on TV Tuesday night.


The big tune-in also gave ABC a welcome November "sweeps" boost to two other marquee sitcoms -- third-year series "According to Jim" and sophomore show "Less Than Perfect." Both scored their highest viewership to date, according to Nielsen Media Research.


It remains unclear, however, whether the Walt Disney Co.-owned network can still count on "8 Simple Rules" as a cornerstone of efforts to rebuild its prime-time schedule this season.


With veteran TV performers James Garner (news) and Suzanne Pleshette (news) stepping in to co-star as bickering but supportive grandparents, the fictional Hennessy family will have to keep viewers engaged while walking a fine line between humor and poignancy as they struggle to get on with their lives.


Some critics say that's a tall order for any show to fill, especially in the half-hour format of the traditional sitcom.


Daily Variety critic Brian Lowry predicted in a review on Thursday that having satisfied viewers' immediate curiosity, "one suspects the show will pretty quickly fade."


Alessandra Stanley of the New York Times wrote that the show's family dynamics -- parents coping with the antics of three adolescent kids -- may seem less funny in the aftermath of Ritter's death and that "'8 Simple Rules' may seem like a strange hybrid -- neither a sitcom nor a drama, but some awkward compromise in between."


SOMBER DEPARTURE


Indeed, the show's first post-Ritter episode was a somber departure from its light-hearted former self.


The special opened with Ritter's character, stay-at-home dad Paul Hennessy, having gone out for milk one morning when his wife, Cate, played by Katey Sagal (news), gets a phone call learning that he has collapsed at the grocery store.


As the emotional story unfolds, tears are shed, hugs are exchanged and bittersweet humor is proffered while family members deal with their father's death. The episode was taped without a laugh track.


In strictly commercial terms, the show was a huge success, easily surpassing the robust ratings of the last three Ritter episodes, which aired after his death at the start of the fall season.


The loss of a parent is rare territory for prime-time sitcoms, although widowhood has been an underlying premise for a number of well-known examples of the genre, among them "The Andy Griffith (news) Show," "My Three Sons," "The Partridge Family" and "The Courtship of Eddie's Father."


In the 1960s series "Family Affair," three orphans move in their wealthy bachelor uncle and his butler.


But "8 Simple Rules" must transform itself mid-stride from a sitcom about the give and take between a harried father and his precocious teenage daughters to a series focused on a widowed mother and her family trying to put their lives back together.




Can the series make the transition? As Sagal told TV Guide in a recent interview: ""There's no road map. ... It's really flying without a net. So much about life is flying without a net."

The latest ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY (that yours truly is in...go check...read carefully) did not give the "first show back" high marks, though Katie Segal and James Garner got nice nods. The critic found the jokes forced and also agrees, if memory serves, that the show should fade into memory.

Jim