Is the birth of Baby Buchman going to be the death of a once great sitcom?
That is the question that can no longer be avoided after the recent "Mad About You" episode that took place entirely outside the door of Mabel Buchman's room as her guilt-ridden parents let their infant daughter cry herself to sleep for the first time.
Helen Hunt, the best actress working in sitcoms, was again terrific. Paul Reiser wasn't bad either. But 22 minutes of an infant wailing was way too much Baby Buchman for me and perfectly illustrated how goo-goo, ga-ga, baby-obsessed this once savvy, sexy sitcom has become.
For his part, Reiser insists the baby has not overtaken the sitcom, about a young couple in the big city, and says "Mad About You" has never been better.
"We've been talking about a baby for three or four years, and I was the president of the let's-not-do-a-show-just-about-a-baby club, because I wouldn't want to watch that kind of show," he said.
"And I'm really proud of our work. I think we've done some of our best shows ever this season, and our batting average is higher than it's ever been."
But that's not what the audience seems to think. Ratings are down for "Mad About You" in this, its sixth season. It's no longer a regular in the Nielsen Top 20, despite some of its weakest competition ever.
In fact, it has barely been able to beat the military drama "JAG" on CBS, while ABC took the 8 p.m. Tuesday time period during key sweeps weeks in November by counter-programming with extra episodes of "Home Improvement."
Furthermore, once a darling of the critics, "Mad About You" is starting to take some hits, like a recent jeer in TV Guide about Paul (Reiser) and Jamie (Hunt) suddenly seeming strangely out of character in their cluelessness with the baby.
In its decidedly thumbs-down review of the cry-baby episode on "Mad About You," USA Today called Mabel Buchman the "most ill-conceived television baby since Murphy Brown's controversial Avery."
Reiser says he had not been aware of any criticism of the series. As for charges that the baby is changing the show for the worse, he points to a history going back to "I Love Lucy" of sitcoms with babies doing just fine.
Indeed, sitcoms and babies do seem to go together like, well, love and marriage, especially during May sweeps, when everyone is looking for a ratings bump--like the one "Mad About You" got last spring.
