Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • Page 76

Tempo 8 Section 5 Chicago Tribune, Friday, August 21. 1998 'Johnson Their hangout is Eric's basement, where he and next-door neighbor and long-time best friend Donna (Laura Prepon, a sort of Claire Danes-Lisa Kudrow cross) are slowly, charmingly discovering a physical attraction. There's a hunky dim bulb (Ashton Kutcher) and a shaggy-haired conspiracy theorist (Danny Master-son), as well as a foreign exchange student whose malaprops are played, predictably, for laughs, but with gentleness rather than hostility. The Turners were smart to ground their show in sweetness; whatever trouble these kids get into, it is the respectful sort, marijuana rather than heroin, sneaking the car off to Milwaukee rather than stealing one. And the creators play some clever, appropriately loopy, tricks on the sitcom format In one scene from next week's episode, Kelso, the dim bulb, imagines Eric's cute older sister was coming on to him, a flight of fancy conveyed by the producers splicing her conversation with him together to place an unintended emphasis on such terms as "hot" and "want you." A clever recurring bit sees Eric one week and his mom the next imagining the conversation the parents and teens are having at that moment This is depicted on screen with the actual characters mouthing the words while the imaginer's voice comes out "I say we torture them with plenty of pointless rules and advice," Eric has his dad say.

His mother, meanwhile, imagines Eric's birthday party as a festival of beverages set down without coasters devolving into the foreign student, enraged over a lack of potato cling continuing to shrink, people are already nostalgic for the '80s. But this idea waiting to happen finds an imperfect but winning execution appropriately trippy, yet gentle enough to give it a nostalgic glow in the free-ranging imaginations of Turner and Turner (who also wrote "Wayne's World" and "The Brady Bunch and partner Mark Brazil! "That 70s Show" premieres at 7:30 p.m. Sunday (WFLD-Ch. 32), the time slot; "King of the Hill" moves to Tuesdays. It might as well be called "That Pot-Smokin' Show," so effective has one mild little stoner scene been at drawing controversy and attention.

Parents, rest relatively easy. That scene which includes Inappropriate giggling from the show's sweet central corps of high schoolers and the wall swaying in front of the main character as his parents talk to him is necessary for verisimilitude, is well-crafted and, as these things go, tasteful Those old enough to know will recognize the references to a marijuana high, made without showing any actual drug usage, while younger viewers will likely think it just another weird camera trick from a program that does disorienting things in other contexts as well. Elsewhere in the first two episodes, for instance, the famous Farrah Fawcett poster mouths some Robert Plant-style vocal riffs, a clever image that is about symbols, not drugs. 'That 70s Show works But all the buzz wouldn't amount to a hill of bean dip and tortilla chips, consumed voraciously, if the show didn't work. And "That 70s Show," which orig- chips, shooting the Littlest Hobo figurine.

It is a gentler humor than even the high camp of "3rd Rock," and it helps create and sustain the mood. My chief reservation is in the casting, where only the parents really stand out In the early going. Kelso especially ought to be hilarious, but seems to be making less of the material than is there. If "That 70s Show" works for its engaging idea and clever execution, but is held back by its casting, "Holding the Baby" (6:30 p.m. Sundays, WFLD) has merit for almost the opposite reasons.

Good cast, mediocre script This trite idea might be called "Two Men, a Nanny and a Baby," as Gordon, a young corporate go-getter father, finds himself abandoned with his newborn and his live-in studmuffin brother. He dragoons a female graduate student who shows up at his office seeking temp work into serving as the nanny. This is all familiar stuff, it is played in standard sitcom style, and most of the jokes you would expect are on display in Sunday's debut. But the writers give babies' bodily functions and daddies not even knowing the name of their infant's pediatrician enough of a twist to make the material worth seeing again. And the actors are uniformly first-rate in a pilot episode that bristles with energy and cracker-jack timing.

Jon Patrick Walker as the abandoned dad conveys intelligence and flustered vulnerability, Jennifer Westfeldt as the reluctant nanny is a delight, like Diane Chambers with a sense of irony, and Ron Leibman personifies the unforgiving demands of corporate life in the relatively Continued raoM Page 1 jumpers, and both show enough muscle In the early going to make them worth keeping an eye on. "That 70s Show," the controversial new concoction from Terry and Bonnie Turner of "3rd Rock from the presents a puzzler Can you have nostalgia for a decade you don't really remember? It certainly worked for "Happy Days," evoking the '50s during the as that program proved just 'as popular with kids as with the -parents whose poodle skirts and 'penny loafers were up in the attic. But a series trying to get warm "and fuzzy about the Decade of Me "faces another problem. The iconic item many parents are likely to hidden away has a liquid -cooling chamber, an odor reminiscent of a particularly fetid swamp and an association with at least 6hort-term memory loss. Perhaps Fox and the Turners 'fire banking on long-term memory taking over, with this show that evokes embarrassing parental disco parties and eight-track tape players, has a suicidal smiley face as its logo, and uses, with a hip-ness few of us had in the actual 1970s, a Big Star song the as its theme.

It is a small wonder that it has i 1 (KIT 1 4A J- 41 lonn laneu i su lung iu uu uic ius I nostalgia thing. "Happy Days" iowed in 1974, after all, when the soil was still loose on the grave of the '50s. And elsewhere in the cul-; ture fashion, movies, music the decade has been in revival for ai leasi a ueuaue, uiuecu, wiui uic lime between an era and its recy i fi The cast of Fox's "That '70s Can you have nostalgia for a decade you don't really remember? rather than the Milwaukee of "Happy Days." The lead teen, Eric (Topher Grace), is pretty much a straight arrow, a la Richie Cunningham. And his parents (the very funny Kurtwood Smith and Debra Jo Rupp) have personalities similar to Marion Ross and Tom Bosley as the tolerant and loving Mr. and Mrs.

C. inally bore the slightly less mediocre title "Feelin Alright," does so, in a low-key way. The premise obviously owes a lot to "Happy Days" (and a little to "Wayne's World," "Scooby-Doo," Richard Linklater's '70s ode "Dazed and Confused" and even the very '90s "Dawson's It is set in Wisconsin, albeit rural in the Chicago Tribune: (Chicago tTribunelHagazine mm TM 8 to shop more than men do. A Shopping Gene? An exploration of why women like Supermodels of the Barnyard Tapping into fond childhood memories of attending poultry shows with her uncle, a photographer turns chickens into models with the barnyard as the runway. mi i i mm tf-J.

Ar 'i i 'J'h nil Italy on Your Own If you'd rather avoid tour groups, Robert Cross shows how to create your own itinerary in northern Italy. But I minor role of Gordon boss. The fear is that this show won't be able to sustain such energy. A pilot, after all, gets the attention to detail of a fine-toothed comb, while subsequent episodes are often just finger combed. Sinatra and Surrogacy: Pay-cable subscribers are in for two original movie treats this weekend.

HBO's "The Rat Pack" (8 p.m. Saturday) takes some evident historical liberties, suggesting, for instance, that a member of Sinatra's staff was responsible for JFK's civil rights policies. But the chronicle of Frank (Ray Liotta), Dean (Joe Mantegna) and Sammy (Don Cheadle) helping Kennedy get elected is a thoroughly engaging period piece, even if the singing ain't much and only Mantegna even tries an impersonation. It plays out as the story of Sinatra seizing on Kennedy as his means to acceptance by polite society, and Liotta makes his eventual disappointment intensely poignant. This depiction of the Rat Pack, in their misogynistic, racist, mob-friendly fullness, feels rounded and human in a way that some of the most dewy-eyed remembrances of Sinatra, at the time of his death, were not.

And on Showtime Sunday (8 p.m.), "The Baby Dance" is an affecting, nuanced portrait of a childless Los Angeles Yuppie couple (Peter Riegert and Stockard Channing) meeting the Louisiana trailer-park residents (Laura Dern and Richard Lineback) whose, baby they have contracted to adopt. A perfect accompaniment to the material is songwriting legend Terry Allen's soundtrack. Decoding hype from TV execs By Lyle V. Harris Cox News Service It's almost fall, which means the over-boiled hyperbole for the new TV season is in full bloom. After consulting with a team of crack linguists, We Who Surf have begun deciphering the bizarre doublespeak of the men and women who spend gazillions of dollars every year developing new television shows only to cancel most of them 13 weeks later.

We've compiled a handy primer to help you figure out what the programming execs say, and what they really mean: "This show has plenty of attitude." Translation: "This show has plenty of cursing." "The show is a result of corporate synergy." Translation: "Our parent company is forcing us to use Scott Baio in the lead because he's got two years left on his contract." "It has an organic feel." Translation: "We hired a slew of writers at the last minute to punch up the pilot." "We had to punch up the pilot." Translation: "After hiring a slew of new writers, the show still doesn't work." "This show is an example of our programming for the mille-nium." Translation: "We have no idea what the show is about" "This show is an example of our new family programming." Translation: "Grandma will be asleep before the first commercial break." he cautions that the path can 1.1 'mmmmm i as li 1 fir IsfCOCtlllt De Dumpy. up Citizens ti Perseverance pays off Chicago's small theater companies show a remarkable ability to survive slow cash flow. Stand Four Chicago-trained improv players take their brand of chaos to Comedy Central. entertainment FIHD IT HERE. chicagotribune.com 1.