{"id":662500,"date":"2026-10-22T22:06:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-22T22:06:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/662500\/"},"modified":"2026-10-22T22:06:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-22T22:06:13","slug":"newlyweds-review-nbcs-sitcom-is-still-seeking-its-honeymoon-phase","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/662500\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Newlyweds’ review: NBC’s sitcom is still seeking its honeymoon phase"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When last we saw T\u00e9a Leoni on television, she had become the first female president of the United States after six seasons of the CBS drama \u201cMadam Secretary\u201d<\/a>; seven years later, she\u2019s teaching middle school science on an NBC sitcom, \u201cNewlyweds,\u201d in both cases married to Tim Daly, who is incidentally her real-life spouse<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not usually interested in the history of \u201ctroubled\u201d TV series, since the trouble might ultimately produce good results, but it seems worth mentioning that Gail Lerner, who co-created the show with Jamie Lee Curtis \u2014 who not incidentally co-stars \u2014 was fired over \u201ccreative differences\u201d after completing six episodes; she\u2019s been replaced by Bruce Helford, whose credits run back to \u201cThe Drew Carey Show,\u201d<\/a> which he co-created, and forward to \u201cThe Conners.\u201d Three of those six episodes have been made available for review. I wouldn\u2019t call the decision surprising. (But NBC would like you to know that they\u2019re \u201cstill really, really invested and committed to it.\u201d)<\/p>\n

The series is a September-September romance between Jeanie (Leoni), a \u201cbutterfly,\u201d and James (Daly), a \u201cgopher,\u201d a semi-stolid philosophy professor whose profession is indicated solely by occasionally dropping a name cribbed off an old syllabus. He\u2019s divorced (from Curtis\u2019 Claudia, who will not go away); she\u2019s a widow with two kids at home who seem old enough to live on their own \u2014 \u201cGen Z, pandemic messed them up\u201d \u2014 but obviously she likes having them around. They accidentally meet while avoiding the blind date arranged by mutual friend Dan (Al Madrigal, underused to the point of not being a character); once they get a load of each other, it\u2019s all over\u2014 these are good-looking people. Three and half minutes into the pilot, they\u2019ve already slept together. By the end of the episode, they\u2019re engaged.<\/p>\n

Much of the matter in these early episodes is assigned to establishing the potato-potahto dichotomy of their hastily entered relationship. \u201cWe love each other,\u201d says James. \u201cWe have hot sex. We can figure out the rest in real time.\u201d (Hot sex is a subject to which the show will return.) She\u2019s open to new experiences; \u201cat 60\u201d \u2014 your only clue to the age of the characters, which is not necessarily to say the actors \u2014 he made a list of things he didn\u2019t want to do. She likes the beach, he\u2019s a pool guy, but actually he\u2019d rather be in a bookstore. He likes quiet, she needs noise. They don\u2019t agree on whether young or old Elvis should marry them in Las Vegas \u2014 they did agree on Las Vegas, at least \u2014 so they go for both. She watches reality TV with her kids; joining them, he offers, \u201cI did my thesis on reality. Is this show about Platonic or Aristotelian ideas?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

Jamie Lee Curtis, right, plays Claudia, James\u2019 ex-wife, who is often seen around the newlywed couple. <\/p>\n

(Nicole Weingart \/ NBC)<\/p>\n

James spends a portion of the pilot episode \u201con a month-long scholarship at the University of Oslo,\u201d seemingly doing nothing but calling Jeanie. He does have a teaching assistant, Arvid (Bill O\u2019Neill, in a bizarre impression of a Norwegian person, taking fashion cues from Pee-wee Herman), who will follow James home like a lost puppy to Los Angeles. (\u201cI hear you have sunshine \u2014 what\u2019s it like?\u201d he says, apparently forgetting that for much of the year Norway is nothing but sun.) As strange foreign men go, he lacks the lovability of Latka on \u201cTaxi\u201d or Balki on \u201cPerfect Strangers.\u201d (That his nickname is \u201cMilky\u201d for his smooth pale skin is a perhaps unintentional rhyme). I found the character hard going much of the time \u2014 he takes up a lot of air \u2014 but Jeanie, who is a more-the-merrier sort of person, likes him well enough, and it\u2019s her world. O\u2019Neill is a gifted physical comedian, in any case, and the pratfalls begin right early. (He\u2019s a decent mime, too \u2014 there\u2019s mime.)<\/p>\n

Though the hard-working laugh track explodes with applause when Claudia appears \u2014 the canned reaction is for Curtis, really, not the character \u2014 the fact that she\u2019s meant to be annoying does not make her any less actually annoying. It\u2019s a caricature of a certain sort of pretentious, blingy rich person, as if the actor wanted to get as far as possible from Donna Berzatto on \u201cThe Bear.\u201d Where Jeanie\u2019s place is cozy and livable \u2014 the set decorators have had a good time filling every inch of it with plants, pictures, appliances and bric-a-brac \u2014 James\u2019 house, which he got in the divorce, is big, anonymous and charmless. It is evidently Claudia\u2019s work (and money, unless philosophy professors are doing really well these days); she\u2019s said to be an interior decorator, because it\u2019s necessary we think of adults as having jobs, even if we never see them working. One wonders why they were ever married; here again, the sex was apparently good, but as the old saying almost goes, the road to hell is paved with good sex.<\/p>\n

As to the youngsters, Emma Meisel plays Poppy, who is sometimes so emotional she can only speak gibberish (James\u2019 learning to understand her is a sign of his growth, as is his appearing at Jeanie\u2019s door in lederhosen, which made me sad). As Lolo, a foster child and star student Jeanie adopted out of her classroom, Ignacio Diaz-Silverio profits from his character\u2019s relative normality; he just seems real.<\/p>\n

Daly, of the Acting Dalys (sister Tyne<\/a>, father James), has overcome his crippling handsomeness to serve his craft well over many years, including eight seasons on \u201cWings\u201d and six on \u201cPrivate Practice.\u201d But he\u2019s bottled here in a role that requires him to be unexciting. (Still, room for growth!) And as a member in good standing of the T\u00e9a Leoni fan club since \u201cThe Naked Truth,\u201d<\/a> back in the 20th century, I am happy to see her returning to television, even in \u201cNewlyweds,\u201d in which she is typically alive and original \u2014 she doesn\u2019t look or sound like any other actor \u2014 despite a show that for the moment, at least, has the quality of an emu attempting to fly.<\/p>\n

Check back later is my advice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When last we saw T\u00e9a Leoni on television, she had become the first female president of the United…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":662501,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[280607,280609,21651,280606,93,44279,61,60,5622,280605,5399,9057,280608,280610,80739,563,8166,147738,282],"class_list":["post-662500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-beloved-actor","tag-bill-oneill","tag-character","tag-claudia","tag-entertainment","tag-episode","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-james","tag-jeanie","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-nbc","tag-newlywed","tag-norwegian-person","tag-pilot","tag-review","tag-show","tag-tim-daly","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=662500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662500\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/662501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=662500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=662500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=662500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}