Robert P. Laurence

San Diego Television

TV's fall season kicks off: "Accidentally on Purpose"

Also: "The Good Wife" and "Mercy"
By Robert P. Laurence
Posted on Tue, Sep 22nd, 2009
Last updated Mon, Sep 21st, 2009

What you really want in beer, the commercials tell us (would they lie?), is "drinkability." What that means, nobody explains.

TV sitcoms, however, do need likability. That, we understand. If the audience likes the primary characters and the actors playing them, almost any implausible premise and far-fetched plot device can be forgiven and embraced.

"Accidentally on Purpose," then, is indeed fortunate to have Jenna Elfman as its star. People liked her sprightly energy in "Dharma & Greg," and they may like her again in this new sitcom from CBS. ("Accidentally on Purpose" debuts at 8:30 p.m. Monday, Sept. 21, on KFMB/Channel 8.)

It's one of several new fall network series premiering in the next few weeks. Today I'll also take a look at the CBS legal drama "The Good Wife" and "Mercy," a hospital show from NBC.

Now, for that implausible premise. The comedy of "Accidentally on Purpose," begins with the hilarious consequences of unprotected casual sex. An unplanned, unexpected, out-of-wedlock pregnancy leads to nothing but fun and laughs and celebrations for all concerned. Happens all the time.

Elfman plays Billie Chase, a newspaper movie critic who, in a pilot that's been called a transparent copy of the film "Knocked Up" (which I haven't seen), impulsively leaps into the sack with a sexy younger guy and a few weeks later finds herself pregnant.

It's a fast-moving pilot, like that of "Dharma," when the two main characters met on a train, fell madly in love and were married in the space of 22 minutes. This time around, Billie meets a restaurant cook named Zack (Jon Foster), has sex with him a couple of times, becomes pregnant, and welcomes the much younger, also likeable but quite immature Zack into her apartment as a platonic roommate, all in the same sitcom time-span.

Based fairly closely on a memoir of the same title by Mary F. Pols (yes, a movie critic), "Accidentally" portrays Billie as 37, single and acutely conscious that her odds of achieving motherhood are diminishing. "If I don't do it now, I may never get another chance," she says to best pal Olivia (Ashley Jensen, sorely missed from the cast of "Ugly Betty").

So she decides to have and keep the baby, and she allows Zach to move in because he wants to fulfill his role as dad. And - here comes another unlikely part - he and she agree they'll sleep separately, live platonically. A few weeks ago, they couldn't keep their hands off each other, and now they will. Right!

If it lasts long enough, "Accidentally" will eventually face the problem of what to do about the baby, not to mention Billie’s longer-term relationship with Zack and with his circle of slouchy slacker friends, including the one who just got out of prison, sprawling all over her sofa while they play video games.

Until then, you may like it.

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"The Good Wife" will look familiar to anybody who’s watched the recent parade of disgraced politicians confessing their romantic pecadilloes to the TV cameras and mortifying their unfortunate wives.

Julianna Margulies portrays one of those wives, Alicia Florrick, outraged at the behavior of her Chicago pol husband, Peter (Chris Noth). His offenses are both sexual and legal, it seems, and while he may fight the latter in court, she’s sentencing him to a long stretch in the doghouse over the former. (“The Good Wife” opens its run at 10 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 22, also on Channel 8.)

So, intent on building a life independent of him, she returns to her former career as a lawyer, in a firm where her nemesis is a senior attorney played by the formidable Christine Baranski. Otherwise, sexual lines are drawn quite clearly. The female characters are smart, kind, understanding, sensitive. The males are dolts – pompous, arrogant, mean, thoughtless.

At least through the pilot, Alicia can’t shake the shadow of Peter’s indiscretions. Everybody in the law firm is watching his confession on the office computers. Over and over.

Given the nature of his political offenses, though, I had to wonder. In Chicago, would anybody even notice?

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NBC’s "Mercy" is, like “The Good Wife,” a conventional, by-the-book series of its kind, dressed up with a premise from current events. “Mercy” is a soapy hospital drama, different from other soapy hospital dramas only because it’s about a nurse newly returned from the war in Iraq. (“Mercy” airs its first episode at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 22 on KNSD Cable 7.)

Taylor Schilling plays Veronica Callahan, now at a New York hospital after serving her hitch in the Middle East. While there, she had an affair with Chris Sands (James Tupper, “Men in Trees”), a doctor who magically shows up at her hospital intent on rekindling the flame. But Veronica’s married to Mike (Diego Klattenhoff), a good-hearted working-class lug prone to getting into barroom fights; he does seem to love her, even though he was also fooling around while she was gone.

As you might expect, she’s surrounded by arrogant doctors who would rather let a patient die than admit a mere nurse might have a better idea of what treatment is needed.

In fact, there’s hardly anything in “Mercy” you wouldn’t expect.

About the author: Robert P. Laurence was television critic at the San Diego Union-Tribune for 21 years. He previously wrote about politics, jazz, rock 'n' roll and all manner of news. He graduated in journalism from San Francisco State University, and earned an M.A. in political science at San Jose State. He's lived in San Diego since 1971.
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