On Wednesdays, I take a look at shows that lasted one season or less. Here's a look at Bless This House!
BLESS THIS HOUSE
September 11, 1995 - January 17, 1996
16 episodes
CBS
Starring: Cathy Moriarty, Andrew Clay, Molly Price, Don Stark, Raegan Kotz, Sam Gifaldi
Created by: Bruce Helford
Plot: Burt Clayton (Clay) is a postal worker living in New Jersey with his wife, Alice (Moriarty) and children (Kotz & Gifaldi). Rounding out the main cast is friends of the couple, Phyllis and Lenny (Price & Stark).
I'm not familiar with Andrew Clay as a comic and I know this was a very sanitized version of his schtick but I was pretty put off by it in this pilot. It seemed to want to be a little gruff while being about as formulaic of a sitcom as it can be. The series was incredibly broad and tried to push the envelope in all the wrong ways (the mom referring to her pre-teen daughter's "hooters" or a vampy customer at the post office asking Burt to lick her stamps). The pilot episode did have a solid through line about getting a new house and the series dove right into the plot so the exposition was at a minimum and I appreciate that especially when it doesn't need any real exposition.
Everyone in the cast, except for maybe the kids, was pretty unlikable. Clay and Moriarty don't have any chemistry whatsoever and the writing was more inclined to try to have a war of one-liners than any real relationship. The series seemed to try to have the chemistry of a bickering couple like Ralph and Alice or Archie and Edith but there was no warmth so the yelling didn't work. Don Stark was doing his thing that worked for him (but not for me) for many years on That 70s Show a few years later. I know they were supposed to be living in a dumpy rental but the whole series just looked cheap and undeveloped. I guess that was commonplace for 90s sitcoms but still.
Andrew Dice Clay was a notorious comic in the 1990s thanks to his "The Diceman" persona. Even in the more forgiving 90s, he was blasted often for his blatant sexism and homophonic routines. All the buzz in the Summer of 1995 was that he had felt his on-stage persona had gotten out of hand and he was ready to "settle down" in a family sitcom that would be appropriate for the 8pm hour on network TV. That led to Bless This House, which also starred Cathy Moriarty, who had been nominated for an Academy Award for Raging Bull more than a decade earlier. Bless This House led off a revamped Wednesday night for CBS. It was followed by Dave's World, which had been a modest Monday performer, and then the new dramas Central Park West and Courthouse.
Reviews were mixed. Many of them seemed skeptical of the so-called "reformation" of Clay while others critiqued it for being a generic family sitcom. Some reviewers praised Moriarty. Entertainment Weekly said it was "pretty creepy" that Clay was attaching himself to the blue collar values the sitcom espoused that were all the rage with shows like Roseanne and Grace Under Fire. Variety called the writing "ham-handed" and said there was a lot of "burleycue humor." Bless This House struggled to find an audience in a fall where all of CBS's new shows struggled. By mid-November it switched slots with Dave's World and then it was off the air by mid-January. Clay went back to his more vulgar stage persona and has continued to find work though he's not the big name he was in the 1990s.
Tomorrow: Very Very Pool Hustler!
Next Wednesday: A One Season Wonder look at Brooklyn South!
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