The Bonnie Hunt Show

This week in LATE SHOW NEWS #83 (October 17, 1995):

SEE HUNT

I'm happy to report that after an unsteady debut, the Worldwide Pants-produced Bonnie Hunt Show, starring quirky comedienne Hunt and three of her friends from Chicago improv days -- costars Tom Virtue, Don Lake and Holly Wortell, all of whom were aboard her last vehicle, 1993's The Building -- is starting to click. In fact, the episodes so far have felt like they gestated from improv sessions. I note in particular the gentle undulations of plot and dialogue, as compared with most sitcoms, in which these two elements march relentlessly toward high-impact payoffs. I enjoyed a very funny, low-impact exchange involving Bonnie, a coworker, and her neighbor who aspires to folksinging; so what if the punchline ("The Lord be with you/And also with you") didn't make sense to anyone who'd never attended a guitar mass?
Not everything about this show is unconventional. Two of Bonnie's co-workers at Channel 12 have revived the art of trading insults. But one component that was expected to be among the show's strengths has not stood out -- Bonnie's weekly "feature story," shot only days before the program's airing. Perhaps this is because it's so plainly derivative of similar taped features David Letterman does on his show; my sense is the steam went out when Letterman writer Rob Burnett left Bonnie's show just before the season premiere. No matter: it's a distinctive staple to her show and maybe, given time, she'll begin to recast her "stories" in her own image.
A more serious problem for the show is that, at least for this occasional-at-best sitcom watcher, Bonnie Hunt is still nowhere near as entertaining as Bonnie Bonnie Hunt guest appearing with Letterman or Tom Snyder. That doesn't bode well for CBS if it was hoping to attract Letterman watchers to Fridays at 8:30. It's not just the unfortunate time slot on people's night out: surveys have shown that a substantial number of late-night viewers are simply not big television watchers. Some t.v. critics, like AP's Frazier Moore, say Hunt's show stands out from the crop of cookie-cutter sitcoms. But this could actually undermine her long-term prospects. Bonnie needs prime-time regulars to tune her in, and it's not clear whether a quiet, almost theatrical vehicle will attract enough of those viewers.
In hindsight, CBS might have been better advised to pass on Bonnie Hunt for Bonnie's sake, freeing her to shop her show to HBO, which was willing to bite on Letterman's other produced sitcom, Emmett & Earl. Both programs can trace their ancestry back to the 1950s -- in Bonnie's case, to the simple plotlines and easygoing banter of Ozzie and Harriet -- and would have complemented each other nicely. On the other hand, Bonnie Kelly, the reporter Hunt plays in her show, chose the hustle and high visibility of Chicago over family and security back in Wisconsin. There's a parable there.