Duet (TV)

It was a romantic comedy where Ben Coleman (Matthew Laurence) was in love with Laura Kelly (Mary Page Keller). Their best friends were yuppies Richard (Chris Lemmon***) and Linda Phelps (Alison La Placa), and Laura had a younger sister Jane (Jodi Thelen) who was just a little bit ditzy.

The show was hardly groundbreaking, but survived by good writing. The plots were pretty standard, but there were plenty of funny line, and the worked like all good comedy – by being unexpected.

In addition, the cast was very appealing. The two breakout characters were Linda and Jane. Alison La Placa was wonderful – self centered, controlling, and very very funny. Jodi Thelen was even better, as the ditzy comic relief. As a matter of fact, the leads of the show took a back seat to the other characters as time went by.

In the second season, Linda became pregnant. The final episode had her giving birth. Then the show did something unusual: the third season took place three years later. The baby had grown and Ben and Laura had married – unusual for a romantic sitcom in that it was not shown. Toward the end, Linda took a job in a real estate agency.

The show was cancelled, but that job was the basis for a spinoff: Open House. Alison La Placa was the star, with Lemmon and Keller (her character now divorced) joining her. Added to the new cast was a up and coming comedian named Ellen DeGeneris.****

The show didn’t catch on, but La Placa did. Or tried to. She starred in three sitcoms in the next three years, and all failed. None of the other actors fared much better, though all have worked relatively regularly since.

But the show did what it needed to do: be an entertainment that was strong enough to keep Fox afloat.

***Yes, Jack’s son.

****Who was the equivalent to Jodi Thelen in the new show, but not as good.

Ben is a struggling mystery novelist, while his girlfriend Laura is a caterer with her younger sister Jane (Jodi Thelen). Richard and Linda were a high-powered yuppie couple. He was in the family patio-furniture business and she was a studio executive. Linda's boss at World Wide Studios was Cooper Hayden (Larry Poindexter), who eventually became infatuated with Jane. Richard later quit his job to become a professional pianist. Geneva (Arleen Sorkin) was the Phillips' wisecracking, sexy maid who sometimes fraternized with the sisters.

In the 1987-88 season finale, Linda gave birth to a daughter, Amanda, who grew into a three-year-old (Ginger Orsi) capable of speech by the start of the series' third and final season. When the 1988-89 season began, Ben and Laura had married, and Linda had lost her job at World Wide Studios. Linda then sought a partnership in Laura's catering business. Just prior to the end of that season, Linda met real estate mogul Ted Nichols, played by guest star and LaPlaca's then-boyfriend, Philip Charles MacKenzie. Ted schmoozed her into joining his realty firm, selling upscale properties to snobs just like herself. Shortly after, Fox announced its cancellation of Duet, and with LaPlaca as its breakout star, both she and MacKenzie shared the lead in its spin-off, Open House.

Alison LaPlaca, I've always thought, is very funny.

She had a line on the hone to her TV husband who was late coming home or whatever: "Shut up, Richard. Bring me a gift."

Great delivery; the insecure neediness was somehow loveable.

I liked Open House better than Duet. Shocked that Ellen DeGeneres and Danny Gans were the ones from the shows to have successful careers at least in front of the camera.

Philip Charles Mackenzie took to directing and Mary Page Keller and her husband Thomas Ian Griffith write for NBC's GRIMM.

It was a standard story of young people starting out, but the difference between this 80s show and hows that came after was that in Duet and shows like it, starting out was no big thing whereas by the 90s, getting a job and an apartment was a very big thing, and whole episodes revolved around acquiring these, as if they were lottery prizes.

My mother loved this show.

Tracey Ullman hated this show. She blamed it in part for her show's demise. She didn't like feel that it fit the lineup or something. Fox started toying around with the schedule. They had it good with Married and Tracey back-to-back. Tracey actually pulled the plug on her own show back in 1990. A lot of people incorrectly assume that Fox cancelled it. I've heard that"Duet" was actually overhauled halfway though. I never watched it. I do remember the promos though.

Chris Lemmon got some work, but not much

I hated how Laura became an Insta-"Alcoholic".

I hate dramedies.

[quote]I hated how Laura became an Insta-"Alcoholic".

It presaged all the Insta-Gay characters that happened 10 years later.

Danny was an OD