Dean's World

Defending the liberal tradition in history, science, and philosophy.

Samantha Who?

This is an extremely funny and clever show.

I really would never have guessed that Christina Applegate had it in her.

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Kevin D (mail) (www):
Christina Applegate had her own sitcom a few years back that, if I recall correctly, went a few seasons.

This isn't anything new for her. She's actually quite talented.
10.31.2007 10:44pm
Dean Esmay:
Well I'm not familiar with that show, but, I know in watching *this* show, it's extremely funny and well-written and sophisticated. It's not at all like the Al Bundy/Married With Children ouevre. This is very smart, very funny, very intellectually astute. I laugh out loud every episode, and I was never a "Married WIth Children" fan.

This is a very clever show: a woman gets total amnesia, and she slowly discovers that she actually hates who she was before the amnesia. This is really a very clever idea, and they're doing it very well.
10.31.2007 10:55pm
Arnold Harris (mail):
Actually, Christina Applegate is both a superb actress and is known to have an unusually graceful attitude about the swirl of life going on around her, considering the stardom she achieved in "Married With Children", her long-running television comedy of the 1980s and 1990s.

The piece below is a comment I wrote for the International Movie Data Base (IMDB), more than seven years ago:
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3 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-

A memorable one-line starring role., 22 April 2000

Author: Arnold Harris from Mount Horeb, Wisconsin USA


Back in 1952, Ray Milland, Martin Gabel and Rita Gam starred in THE THIEF, an exquisite film-noir (it was black &white as well as moody) about a nuclear scientist giving away secrets to a foreign power, whose conscience got to him. The film was notable in that there was not a single line of dialogue, yet the filmplay was totally understandable.

This week, I saw Christina Applegate accomplish more or less the same effect in the lead role in BRUTAL TRUTH (written up earlier in IMDB as THE GIVING TREE). I believe her sole line of dialogue was "I'm Emily", quietly delivered as an offhand reply to "Who are you?" after she arrives late to the high school reunion party she is hosting for eight other former gen-X late 20s folks. She then walks out into the yard of her family's expansive mountaintop home and hangs herself from the left-hand rope of her childhood swing.

This early and totally unexpected demise notwithstanding, her offscreen and now-dead presence -- as well various silent on-screen flashbacks of her as a compelled and terrified witness at a gang rape at an earlier party -- eerily dominates this film as few other performances that I have ever seen on screen. I have read somewhere that Christina Applegate is noted for utterly lacking the usual aura of artificiality and affectation that surrounds so many stars in television and films. I have seen most of her films, including Corman's well-made STREETS, and I think she does equally well in serious drama as well as the comedy that she mastered through 13 years of MARRIED WITH CHILDREN. Only an actor with a truly serene and satisfied ego would take on a one-line leading role, but use it to dominate an entire film. Bravo.

And if my memory of film images serves me, her profile resembles that of young Grace Kelly before that lady become Princess Grace, more so than any other contemporary actress.
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Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
10.31.2007 11:02pm
Sean Golden (mail) (www):
I seem to recall that Christina Applegate has an unusually high IQ as well.

I've always liked her.
11.1.2007 12:58am
La Ventanita (mail) (www):
So when does it air? I liked her in MWC, and also used to like her own sitcom. The only thing I'm watching at ABC is Dirty, Sexy Money.
11.1.2007 11:47am
Phelps (www):
I have a Season Pass for the show, but whoever is writing the show descriptions needs to be gutted. The descriptions are terrible enough to make me dread watching the show. "Ahh, this is where the show will start to suck!" And then I watch it and it is good, and I hate the description writer even more.

This is one of the good shows that I think is going to run out of steam and start sucking any day now, along with Pushing Daisies. (Cavemen, on the other hand, is based on such a loose premise that it can go for-ev-er.)
11.1.2007 12:44pm
Maggie4:
Christina is extremely talented and this show has the potential to be a major hit. WIth such a great ensemble cast and fantastic writing it is refreshing to be able to say that there is a truly funny sitcom back on the air.

I'm already hooked completely and am stoked that the show was picked up for a full season. It's just a shame that it now has the added hurdle of surviving the Writers Strike to succeed.

M - http://www.samanthawho.org/
11.13.2007 1:30am
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