sawznhamrs-1 Review of Too Close for Comfort

Too Close for Comfort (1980–1987)

Local network DFW has nerve to air this again!

[2/10 · 24 April 2014]

I am not certain what sort of executive decision-making led to airing the poorly written, poorly acted, and poorly directed "comedy", Too Close for Comfort again in the DFW market in April of 2014. Obviously, it is the same sort of decision process that led them to include the equally bad, Three's Company to the lineup, but that is an entirely separate review. When I looked it up on this site, I found, in near disbelief, that it ran for about six seasons! To begin with, the premise of the show is weak. The "crisis" of two daughters moving away from home by renting the upstairs of the family home does not serve the show well. The two daughters, Jackie and Sarah Rush, played by Deborah Van Valkenburgh and Lydia Cornell, were apparently such weak characters on the show, they brought in a third girl in an attempt to liven up the girls lives. Their cousin, April, was played by Deena Freeman. Her character, with a high pitched whiny voice, added little to the interest of the program, although she added a bit of contrast to the blandness of her two girl cousins. But her attempts at overacting just add to the list of criticisms I have for the show. It seems the three girls were in training to be actors trying to get by on good looks! It was Ted Knight's departure from his previous roles, but it is uncomfortable watching him strain to refrain from falling into the Ted Baxter character in the Mary Tyler Moore show. I do think his effort to keep working is admirable considering he suffered for many years from cancer, from which eventually he died. His wife in the show, Muriel Rush was played by Nancy Dussault. I suppose her character was the stabilizing feature of this comedy gone wrong, in that she provided the voice of reason amid all the hysteria provided by the other characters. Monroe, played by the handsome Jim J Bullock, was a sort of "comic" relief character...on this purported comedy! He was a relief in that he distracted from the other shortcomings of Too Close For Comfort. Perhaps in the early 1980s, producers, directors and executives were straining to find new territory for the situation comedy, after the hugely successful years of the 1970s, with all of Norman Lear's comedies. This cast may have been mere "victims" of this search for new direction and new blood, so to speak. This viewer finds the entire series a miserable failure.