Building a Cast of Characters
How "Newhart" may have paved Springfield
Welcome to the first of my “deep dives”. Some of these will be fairly involved, some not. But in general I plan on taking something I’ve watched apart to look at all the parts. I will always try to give any warnings or caveats in the first paragraph, as well as a suggestion as to whether you should see what I’m discussing first. When I can, I will try and prepare you for the following article, like a book club. Sometimes, like right now, I’ll sideline a few pieces I’m working on for an immediate dissertation that just jumped out. I’m going to be discussing the first season of the TV show “Newhart” [shows in quotes, I will call the star “Bob” and his character “Dick” sans quotes hereto forward] and the problems it had with sorting out character balance and tone. You don’t need to see it for this discussion, and I’m writing assuming you haven’t. Afterwards, there’s some great stuff but the show really starts clicking in season 3 if you want to skip ahead.
Speaking of skip ahead, I shall. By season 6, “Newhart” reaches an insanity that I believe serves as the template for “The Simpsons”. While veterans such as James L. Brooks and Sam Simon of “Cheers” and “Taxi” had set up Evergreen Terrace, David Mirkin was the showrunner for season 5, which is arguably the definitive season in the show’s definition and quality. He also was the showrunner for season 6 of “Newhart,” a show that once past this first season recognized the value in developing the entire city around a sitcom. The rich characters are all comedic and developed and reliable even as they are developed. Everyone can have an episode, grow in a real way, and never have it affect the function of the character. Mirkin came up in this writer’s room as they were fixing the series, and most of their solutions I believe years later he used to help turn Evergreen Terrace into Springfield. But he wasn’t around in the first season, where the problems to solve really stand out.
Bob Newhart was already a star, the first comedian to hold the top spot on the Billboard album charts. Then he released a follow up album and dominated the top two spots on the album chart for nearly half a year. Think about that. For almost 30 weeks, the top two albums were one guy dryly giving just the straight man halves of Vaudeville inspired routines. A new show, produced like his previous hit by mega producer Mary Tyler Moore, was a no-brainer. “Newhart” was an immediate hit, and thankfully maintained strong enough ratings to be renewed twice while the creators struggled with the tone and characters.
The premise was simple. Bob was now Dick Louden, a writer who purchased the Stratford Inn with his wife Joanna. A huge factor of the success of “The Bob Newhart Show” was the recurring cast of patients for Bob, a therapist. Great character bits could be injected into weaker or more serious episodes for balance. Running an inn, wacky guests could serve as comedic foils episode to episode without worry of continuity. You could end on a big punchline and burn the character, or at least not be obligated to the change. These were the days of syndication or reruns being the only chance to catch a missed episode. Changes to the overall continuity were left for season premiers, finales, and sweeps week events. Comedy had been speeding up, attention span had been dropping, so a lot of shows were developed to be joke farms. The A plot can get buried under big ideas as the B, C, and D antics go off. A cavalcade of customers and special guests, “Love Boat” but funny! This structure worked wonderfully for “Night Court”.
Since the premise, on paper, is a parade of wacky guest stars, your core cast has to be more straight in delivery. They have to serve as reality and continuity posts against the antics. Dick is the standard Bob Newhart analytical and politely disbelieving foil who will curiously pull at an escalating chaos until he quietly says “Okay.”
Joanna (Mary Frann) is the wife and business partner who knows Dick well enough to call him out on being pompous. While this served as her role for the run of the show, she was one of the first characters to get uncharacteristically open dialogue in a sitcom, at least to my memory. That could be another article. I don’t mean issues driven, because Norman Lear had been kicking down walls for over a decade on that front. These were simple discussions about feelings and intent and misunderstandings that most shows would turn into a bit. Here it would be a bit as well, but new territory, because the moment something came out wrong they would openly discuss “by which of course I mean…” and kill the obvious joke for the sake of banter and chemistry that non-television couples share. The late season 1 episode where she explores work outside the inn really sets her character and dynamic. In meaning he’s thankful to have her at home doing things he can’t keep up with, it comes off as sounding like he thinks she is lazy and does nothing. He clumsily tries to apologize and find the right words, but also openly supports her needs to do other things. They have a fight, but it’s all done with listening, respect, openness, and honesty instead of spite and subterfuge like most shows.
Leslie is the maid with dreams and aspirations of being a skier, something a sitcom budget would likely not see through. She rarely had a solid punchline to deliver, less yet a reason for one. I don’t fault Jennifer Holmes, who was working as hard as she could. She just wasn’t given stories, identity. By the end of the first season her major arc was almost entirely settled by guest star Ruth Gordon in two “cut the crap” conversations where Leslie mostly nodded and agreed. She was replaced in season 2 by Julia Duffy, as Stephanie, her cousin from a stand out guest appearance. Stephanie had the additional angle of being a rich girl forced to be a maid, plus Julia Duffy. Those extra elements escalated the maid role in hysterical and sometimes truly bizarre ways. I would never believe Leslie to have a fiance that becomes a mime before a four episode stint in a sanitarium (Peter Scolari).
The two supporting male characters were both in premise comedic, though their utility had to be sorted out. George, played by Tom Poston of “The Bob Newhart Show,” was the simple, kindly, relaxed handyman. Sometimes he was used for dumb jokes. Sometimes he was there for homespun folksy nonsense. Sometimes he would plainly point out the absurdity of the other characters in a non-insulting way. As the show progressed, he would be fine tuned into the moral compass of the town through a Gomer Pyle / Gilligan / Ralph Wiggum filter. Towards the end of season 1 is an episode where George sees a UFO. He never claims aliens or anything, just that there were mysterious lights, but the town gets cruel. It’s the first real glimpse of the town as a pitchforks and angry mob place (though not literally for a few seasons, then surprisingly Springfieldian). More importantly it’s the first real view of the two people who aren’t a part of the mob - George and Dick, side by side. Their friendship off camera of course goes back for years, but on camera in this series, it was this episode that established the temperamental frustration and simple sweetness of it.
Then there’s Kirk. Rhymes with jerk. He’s established as a pathological liar, something of a scammer and the unrepentant admirer of Leslie. It’s a sitcom staple to have a snarky guy willing to say what nobody else will. In this case he quickly became an unlikely sleaze. The characters don’t like him or want him around, so why should the audience? In the last batch of episodes in Season 1, several are specifically addressing and trying to fix his character. His lying costs him his life’s savings and the good will of everyone he knows, and he barely learns the lesson. His grandmother tells him point blank to stop chasing Leslie, if she was interested it would have happened. Oh, yeah, her aforementioned major arc was as the object of affection. They tried retooling him in the second season, but ultimately wrote him out.
The cafe Kirk owned was taken over by recurring characters Larry, Darryl, and Darryl in Season 3. The small town grew as Dick and Joanna acclimated to living there and taking part in events. They would get caught up in politics and scandals. Dick hosted a local talk show for a stretch. There becomes a full roster of regular guests that can come and go as needed. Because they figured out what really worked for Bob Newhart.
His bits are polite frustrations, odd suggestions, and dry resignations on the surface and in cadence. Underneath, they are about diplomacy. He wants to resolve your issues as fast and effectively as possible because he really doesn’t want to be bothered. Nick Charles or Frank Doyle with Joanna as Nora or Sadie respectively. All he wants is peace and quiet, so he bought a quiet inn in a quiet town. But in an almost Stephen King or David Lynch way, by slowly exposing just how strange, dark, and completely unhinged the town is, we place him firmly in a hell he believes he can smooth over. Instead of a cast of reactors, it’s now over reactors surrounding one man who accidentally set off another strange spiral.
While the Simpsons has a different core dynamic, it has definitely benefit from a deep cast and mythology. Other shows like South Park and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia are named for their city. I’m sure not for the reasons I’m discussing here, though ultimately both also invested in world building. Ideally one builds at least until you can have an angry mob. At that point, you’ll want to get that mob in as often as possible.
If you constantly expand your world, then each individual character isn’t pressured into a change or event every week. Lives can take time to breathe. The premise at the core can hold longer. Once “Cheers” filled out as a full ensemble post Sam & Diane, how much did anything ever really change? Norm’s employment was a running joke more than a storyline, as was Rebecca’s love life. Frasier had the most eventful life, before moving to Seattle and barely changing in eleven years. The “Cheers” creators knew of David Mirkin. They had tried developing stuff together, before years later bringing him in on “The Simpsons.” In a way, I wonder if “Cheers” and “Newhart” were akin to the Beatles and The Beach Boys, taking cues from each other, challenging each other, lifting from each other. The difference is those bands didn’t hook up and send Homer to space.