Monday, February 9, 2009

I love Shelley Long

An unavoidable delay in the Grammy review. It will be posted soon.

It still kills me that Shelley lost the Emmy one year to Jackee. How is that even possible?

Recently, I caught a first year episode of CHEERS and was reminded all over again of just how brilliant Shelley Long was. Diane Chambers was a role fraught with danger. Without just the perfect actress you could reeeeally hate that character. But Shelley managed to make her likeable and vulnerable and hysterically funny while still keeping the edge and condescension that “Diane” required. Not easy to do. Kinda like walking a tightrope in a typhoon.

It’s been 25 years, there have been a lot of shows since, many with really gifted comediennes, but I’ve never seen anyone better.

Here’s an example. One of my favorite scenes. From the episode “Diane’s Perfect Date” written by David Lloyd and directed by James Burrows. Sam and Diane agree to set each other up with dates, but Sam thinks that’s just a ruse and that Diane is going to set him up with herself. So he makes no effort to find her a date. Come the night in question, Diane arrives with a woman for Sam. Now he has to scramble. He grabs the first guy he can find. Here's what happens:

No comments:

Post a Comment