The ‘Friends’ star plays Joe Quincy, a Republican lawyer in a Democratic White House.
Maybe it’s time Matthew Perry stopped playing for laughs.
It’s not that Chandler Bing’s alter ego isn’t a funny guy. But as he and his five co-stars contemplate Life After “Friends,” I’m hoping he and the producers at NBC’s “The West Wing” are putting their heads together about turning his recurring role into a regular one.
Not only is Perry’s Joe Quincy, a Republican working as a lawyer in a Democratic White House, filling the political gap left when Emily Procter, who played Ainsley Hayes, decamped for “CSI: Miami,” but he’s an intriguing character on his own. Last week’s episode, in which he apparently helped to broker the resignation of the chief justice of the United States, was probably the best show so far of the post-Aaron Sorkin era, and Quincy was a key player.
(Of course, since his last, Emmy-nominated appearance on the show had him showing the vice president the door, more Quincy appearances might not be such good news for fictional Washington types.)
Like Bob Newhart, whose gripping three-episode arc on NBC’s “ER” ended last week with a bang (sorry), Perry is proof that some comedic actors have more range than dramatic ones. He has a light touch with heavy issues, a welcome contrast to, say, the departed Rob Lowe, whose tendency to work himself into a lather over monologues he considered Emmy bait could suck the air out of anyone’s living room.
In fact, if NBC’s “The Lyon’s Den,” set to return after sweeps, doesn’t survive, a sitcom might be just the ticket for breaking Lowe of the habit of talking like “Wing’s” Sam Seaborn.
And if Perry were eventually to settle into Sam’s old office, he, at least, might avoid the kind of awkward next career move that plagued the survivors of “Seinfeld.”
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The Parents Television Council is urging CBS affiliates to pre-empt Wednesday’s “Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show.”
“The program was categorically indecent last year and every indication suggests that it will be indecent again this year,” council President Brett Bozell writes.
“When will CBS learn that this broadcast is altogether a sleazy exhibition that is best relegated to the local strip joint, and not a network television broadcast?”
When indeed?
And how soon before CBS starts quoting Bozell in its promos?
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