This article contains spoilers for Newlyweds Season 1 Episodes 1-3.
Aside from the Friday night death slot, a multi-cam sitcom starring Téa Leoni and Tim Daly as later-in-life lovebirds has all the ingredients to mark a return to form for NBC. St. Denis Medical, The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins, and Happy’s Place have proved popular for the network, but its comedy lineup is nowhere near the juggernaut it was in the 1990s and early to mid-2010s, when the likes of Seinfeld, Friends, and 30 Rock dominated television. Newlyweds is therefore NBC’s latest attempt to return to the glory days of the “Must See TV” era, which ended with the final season of Parks and Recreation in 2015. However, with co-creator and writer Gail Lerner fired over creative differences after helming the first six episodes, audiences have good reason to be wary going into the October 23 premiere.
Newlyweds centres on free-spirited middle school science teacher Jeanie (Leoni) and buttoned-up philosophy professor James (Daly), who their mutual friend, Dan (Al Madrigal), sets up on a blind date. Despite Jeanie’s initial reservations about blind dates and her plans to ditch the evening altogether, the pair hit it off after an awkward introduction. James’s upcoming trip to Norway for a month-long fellowship at the University of Oslo means the pair spend much of the pilot getting to know each other over the phone. Despite frequent interruptions from James’s teaching assistant, Arvid (Bill O’Neill), the two can’t help but fall for each other.
After a whirlwind courtship, James and Jeanie are smitten, but their different lifestyles soon cause conflict, particularly when James realises that loving Jeanie means embracing her wider family. James is quiet and accustomed to living alone with his manuscript, while Jeanie’s life revolves around her family. The pilot introduces the show’s ensemble, including Jeanie’s two children, Poppy (Emma Meisel) and Lolo (Ignacio Diaz-Silverio). They’re her world, both sweet but annoying in the way all young Gen Z adults on television tend to be, written by older generations who don’t understand how people their age actually speak or behave. “Gen Z. Pandemic messed them up” is one example of where the scripts fall short, made worse by the synthetic-sounding laughter telling you when to do so much as chuckle, even though Newlyweds films in front of a live studio audience.
That’s not to say the series lacks humorous moments, as it has plenty. When it works, the multi-cam format makes for an old-school comedy, which NBC is clearly aiming for. But the laughter becomes distracting when the jokes aren’t funny, making it seem like each episode must hit a certain level of audience reaction to be deemed airable. The third episode, ‘We’ll Never Have Paris,’ is the strongest of the three critics were given. In it, Jeanie and James decide to enjoy an at-home mini-moon because their jobs mean they cannot up sticks and leave the country. Daly, in particular, flexes his comedic chops as James bonds with his stepchildren when a break-up disaster strikes, while Meisel proves a worthy match for him.
Leoni and Daly are the show’s saving grace. The two met and fell in love on the set of their political drama Madam Secretary, in which Daly played Leoni’s husband for six seasons. Now married in real life, their chemistry still carries over to the screen, creating a romance that’s easy to root for. Daly is especially swoon-worthy, delivering lines such as “Jeanie, I think it’s you. You’re my entire list,” with enough sincerity to make their whirlwind romance believable. Leoni brings quick wit, and together they make the sitcom watchable even when the material lets them down. Another standout is O’Neill as the eccentric Arvid, who follows James from Norway to LA in the hopes of becoming his permanent teaching assistant. His physical comedy is brilliant, and his rather unsettling habit of popping up when you least expect it provides plenty of laughs.
Like many sitcoms in their first season, Newlyweds hasn’t quite found its feet yet. There’s potential, but for now the show has no clear identity, seemingly hoping that over-the-top line deliveries and forced appearances from co-creator Jamie Lee Curtis will be enough to guarantee a renewal. Curtis plays Claudia, James’s ex-wife, who spends more time in his home than anyone would like. While the third episode establishes that Claudia will cross any boundary, it’s baffling that James and Jeanie seem so comfortable letting her into their personal space.
Curtis is clearly having a ball on set, dancing around the cameras with an ease that makes it surprising she hasn’t starred in a sitcom since Anything but Love in the late 1980s to early 1990s. However, Claudia feels almost unnecessary, as though NBC hopes Curtis’s name and popularity alone will boost viewership. Her larger-than-life presence might be entertaining at first, but for a character billed as a recurring guest star, she appears far too often, turning what could be a funny character in small doses into a boisterous distraction that makes you forget what you came for.
While Newlyweds is nowhere near the quality or spark of NBC’s best comedies, past or present, it still has plenty of potential. Whether it can fulfil that promise remains to be seen, particularly as the behind-the-scenes shake-up will see Bruce Helford (The Conners) take over as showrunner from the seventh episode. For now, Leoni and Daly give audiences a reason to tune in, even if the rest of the sitcom hasn’t quite caught up with them.
