Reviews
Find your "Significant Other"
By Zachary Campillo | Staff writer
Published Monday, April 5, 2004
Bravo has hit the nail right on the head with its newest sitcom, Significant Others. Creator Robert Roy Thomas has embarked on a television experiment that has lasted five episodes to date and has helped change the rules of television production.
The key phrase in the show is "improv." There is no script on the set of Significant Others, only actors that produce one cohesive result — a sitcom on modern-day marriages that is as funny as it is realistic.
According to the Bravo Web site, Thomas got the idea for the show while shooting commercials.
"The cameras would stop and the actors would be goofing around, saying things in character and it would be funny and everyone would leap on it," he said. "I would then say, why is that an accident? Why don't we do that on purpose?"
The daily lives of the now four couples are shown as well as marriage counseling sessions where the audience takes the supposed role of the doctor.
A camera sits stationary filming each couple on a couch as fast-paced jazz music peppers the background. The foreground contains the couples bickering and arguing about problems they are experiencing outside of the scheduled conferences. And problems are neither few nor far between.
So far in the first five episodes the most captivating storyline has been that of Ethan and his wife, Eleanor, played by Herschel Bleefeld (Six Feet Under) and Faith Salie (Sex and the City).
Eleanor is pregnant with the young couple's first child and her hormones are raging. Ethan's response to his wife climbing on his lap is not what most would expect.
"It just makes me uncomfortable to be somewhere where someone else is," Ethan says about his pregnant wife.
The oldest couple on the show is secretly dealing with infidelity. Bill and Connie are played by Fred Goss (South Park) and Jane Edith Wilson (Curb Your Enthusiasm). Their relationship has had a stick thrown in the spokes not only by the recently kindled love affair between Bill and Connie's sister Ginny (Mary Pat Downy) but also due to the fact that Connie's mother is deathly ill.
Connie, who is in the dark about her husband and his respective sister-in-law, has high spirits that the misery of her mother's passing might bring the two once estranged sisters closer together.
But it seems that even death can't help the relationship between the sisters — or as what Bill refers to them, the witches from Macbeth.
Brian Palermo (Daddy Day Care) plays the unaffectionate and rigid businessman James. By his side is his bossy wife Chelsea played by Andrea Savage (The West Wing).
Last week's episode brought a new couple, this one consisting of Devon and Alex — Chris Spencer (Vibe) and Nicole Randall Johnson (Miss Match). This couple was an interesting addition to the show because not only are Devon and Alex the only couple who have a child, they are also the only minority cast members.
Their part in the last episode was held primarily at their 9-year-old child's grade school's parent night and it ended with Devon losing a fight to another father in his son's class. The kicker was that Devon, a black man, was discriminating against this father because he was a gay man.
This was a strong and deliberate move by Thomas where he has created a social statement saying that even minorities can be prejudiced. It seems that Significant Others is hammering down on all aspects of American social life.
All and all, Significant Others is an amazing accomplishment for the actors and a treat to watch for the audience. So instead of watching the fools at ABC reading scripts telling them what to say about their daughter-in-law's gay parents on It's All Relative, tune in to Bravo for a look at real acting.
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