by Adam Ferenz
This seminal sitcom, set in a fictional newsroom at a tv magazine show, FYI, tells the story of the recovering alcoholic Murphy Brown-the great Candice Bergen-and how she negotiates her way through a life she seems incapable of appreciating. The series may have gone on several seasons past its best by date, but when it was at its best, few comedies of the era could match it. That is an important distinction, because unlike other classic comedies of its era, such as Cheers, Wonder Years or, later in its run, the prime years of Seinfeld, Murphy Brown was a series rooted in the topics of the day. Being a political series, there was little way around it, since the show was centered on a news magazine.
Yes, the series lost much of its steam once the Bush/Quayle administration was no longer around to mock, but while it was, the series was about the sharpest, most insightful comedy on air, taking aim at left and right-but mostly right-leaning politics. The birth of Murphy’s child, Avery, named after Murphy’s mother, who had been played by the magnificent Colleen Dewhurst until her passing, created a firestorm in the media about “family values” and brought the series increased visibility.
For the series early run, the first four or five years, in which creator Diane English was in charge of the proceedings, this was one of the smarter, more astute sitcoms on the air. While it never approached the level of pop culture sophistication of a WRKP in Cincinnati, or the workplace realism of a Barney Miller, the series nevertheless carved out its own niche. Never as elegant as Cheers or Frasier, as outright funny as Seinfeld, as comforting as Golden Girls or as convention defying as the late, great Frank’s Place, instead Murphy Brown was like its central character.
This was a show that had problems, but persevered, through good times and bad, and always tried its best. When Murphy was down, or when she was feeling up but nostalgic, she would often sing along to the Motown tunes of her bygone days. She would listen to the advice of her friend and employ, the painter, Eldon, who came to apply “one coat to the living room” but returned every week to dole out advice, fix up her plumbing, a loose railing, or to convince her to allow him to create his own “Sistine Chapel” in some corner of her home. This was a woman who had been to Betty Ford, who had loved and lost. When she had her child, she did not ask the father to be there with her, and he was not particularly eager, all too easily stepping to the side. The series, in the end, was about endurance and love.
The series will return to CBS this fall, along with much of the cast and some of the crew.
I agree that the series lost some of the luster it built after the lampooning of Quayle and company was no longer feasible. Still, I am sadly not well enough versed to provide intricate commentary as one who only occasionally tuned it. Thanks for this fascinating essay!
I has an addictive stretch with this show. I’d love to engage with some re-runs. Nice write-up!
This is a good show, but one that probably needed a pay movie channel or at least cable lens to run its satire through. Instead its on mainstream network American TV so it softens many of his otherwise hard punches on impact. The BBC ‘Drop the Dead Donkey’ or the Canadian ‘Newsroom’ (not to be confused with Aaron Sorkin’s condescending version of a few years ago) both played in roundabout the same era and are much more savage takes on comedic newsroom settings. Oh well, Murphy Brown still deserves its important footnote.
The bit in the opening about Seinfeld not touching on contemporary issues is flat out wrong though. Its jokes were often riffs on current events or pop culture minutia of the times.
You misunderstand the point about Seinfeld. That series was in large part a distillation of social norms. That’s quite different than “contemporary issues” by which was meant the pointed, specific satire and commentary of events that Murphy Brown indulged in.
No I gotcha. Sure Seinfeld’s modus operandi wasn’t open contemplation on current events (neither was Murphy Brown’s ultimately, but I digress), but how Seinfeld referred to OJ Simpson case/trial on several occasions across a few seasons, the societal phenomenon of Oliver Stone’s JFK, Schindler’s List, to McDonald’s hot coffee scalding someone and several overt references to mid 90’s Good Samaritan law/Duty to rescue’s laws that were contemporaneously being debated at the time show a show with a lot more on its mind that most believe. And this isn’t even touching on the overtly political ones—abortion in Poppy’s, Worker’s Rights, Saddam Hussain in a bodega—all weaved themselves in and out of plot-lines, sometimes becoming the thrust of the main stories themselves. The trick of Seinfeld is fooling casual observers that it’s about minutia or ‘nothing’, and that it’s all a lark outside the real world. It’s not, in fact it’s engaged on a level that few shows can match (Murphy Brown certainly doesn’t).
Jamie, I would love to read a longer piece (not just a comment) on your take. I just finished watching the series again last week – it’s one of my favorites of all time – and while I see your point, that they touched on cultural topics, both the ephemeral and the weighty, my personal takeaway is that virtually all of these topics functioned almost solely as springboards for solid joke-telling (like Seinfeld’s standup itself) as opposed to some gateway to intentional social commentary. It was far from a show about nothing – that was easy critical bait that the just ran with.It could better be described as a show about everything…but my feeling is that it was “everything is fodder for our joke machine.” All that said, I’m genuinely interested in your take and would love a longer treatise with examples…the examples you give above are not fleshed out enough to convince me they were anything more than “in the air” and that the Seinfeld writers leveraged their topicality for plots and jokes. On another level, it’s one thing to say (as I’m just making up here) that the final dialogue in the jail cell being the same dialogue from the opening scenes of the first episode is an example of Nietzsche’s theory of eternal recurrence – and it could be! – but it doesn’t reflect the *nature* of the show, so doesn’t ring true, even if the writers were thinking it when they (re)wrote those lines. I’m willing to cede, though, that the show must have struck such a cord with millions for reasons other than mere jokes. Thus my interest in your longer thoughts.
Sure. It’s my favorite show of all time, so I wrote a series of 25 episodes (plus in Introduction) on each of my favorite 25 episodes. Many go into these sort of ideas, but the one most telling on these specific concerns is my piece on ‘The Race’ where it seems as merely a collection of hot-button ideas as a springboard but while that commotion is going on, the SAME EXACT of subversive politics IS being articulated, and being articulated in a very radical way. Here;
https://attractivevariance.wordpress.com/2014/12/28/3-the-race-season-6-episode-96/
The rest are collected here;
https://attractivevariance.wordpress.com/category/seinfeld/
Excellent! Thank you, Jamie. I look forward to diving into this.