Watching Ellie (partially lost NBC sitcom; 2002-2003)

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Ellie.jpg

Promotional image for the series.

Status: Partially Lost

Watching Ellie was an American sitcom TV series created by Brad Hall that was broadcast on NBC from February 26th, 2002 to May 20th, 2003. The series starred Hall's wife, former Seinfeld star Julia Louis-Dreyfus, with its failure being cited by many as another example of the "Seinfeld curse", a phenomenon in which numerous Seinfeld actors have attempted to launch their own sitcoms to subsequent critical panning and extremely short runs on television.[1]

Premise

The series starred Louis-Dreyfus as Ellie Riggs, a cabaret singer attempting to find her big break while navigating single life in Los Angeles and the struggles that come with it, with each episode being presented as a real-time 22 minute snapshot of her life (with the series originally being titled 22 Minutes for this reason). Other recurring characters throughout the series include Ellie's neighbors Ingvar (Peter Stormare) and Dr. Zimmerman (Don Lake), her sister Susan (Lauren Bowles, Louis-Dreyfus' real-life half sister), her boyfriend Ben (Darren Boyd), and her ex-boyfriend Edgar (Steve Carell in an early role).

Production

The first season of Watching Ellie was notably different from many other sitcoms of the time in terms of its aesthetics, abandoning the traditional multi-camera format adopted by most series in favour of an innovative single camera setup previously used in sitcoms such as The Larry Sanders Show, The Bernie Mac Show, and Malcolm in the Middle (with Ken Kwapis, who had previously directed episodes of all three series, being hired to direct the first three episodes of Watching Ellie because of this). This was done to enhance the sense of realism present within the series, something further emphasized by the subversion of other traditional sitcom tropes such as the lack of a laugh track, the frequent use of smaller scale, “real” storylines within the episodes, and the increased focus on lapses in the action and quieter moments within the series where comparatively little actually happens.[2]

One other unique feature present within the first seven episodes of Watching Ellie was the addition of a ticking clock in the bottom left corner of the screen, which would silently count down from twenty-two minutes at the beginning of the episode until it reached zero at the episode's conclusion. This idea, which had reportedly been the brainchild of then-president of NBC Entertainment Jeff Zucker, had previously been utilised in popular action series such as 24, but Watching Ellie marked its only notable usage within a comedy series, with it being used to further give the impression that the events of the series were taking place in real-time.[3]

However, the unique format of the series only served to alienate many viewers, with Watching Ellie's first season being considered a ratings disappointment by NBC executives. As such, when the second season of Watching Ellie premiered in 2003, the series had been drastically redesigned to appeal to a far broader audience. All of the real-time elements of the series had been abandoned, with the series now being re-envisioned as a standard multi-camera sitcom complete with a laugh track, with the more low-key plotlines of the first season being replaced with more outlandish, standard sitcom plots, such as Ellie pretending to be a busker, or Ellie appearing as a contestant on an episode of Family Feud. However, this would ultimately fail to attract more viewers, with the second season doing even worse than the first in terms of its ratings, with the show ultimately being cancelled as a result.[4]

Availability

As a result of negative critical reception[5] and the aforementioned rapidly dwindling ratings of the series following the premiere,[6] Watching Ellie was abruptly placed on indefinite hiatus by NBC midway through the first season's broadcast to allow for significant retooling, resulting in the second season being as drastically different as it was, and leaving 3 of the first season's 13 episodes unaired.

To date, the series has never received a streaming or home media release, and while all the episodes that were broadcast have subsequently been recorded and uploaded online, the 3 episodes that went unaired have never been released, and thus remain unavailable for public consumption.

List of Episodes

Season 1

# Episode Title Air Date Status
1 Pilot February 26th, 2002 Found
2 Wedding March 5th, 2002 Found
3 Dinner Party March 12th, 2002 Found
4 Aftershocks March 19th, 2002 Found
5 Cheetos March 26th, 2002 Found
6 Tango April 2nd, 2002 Found
7 Gift April 2nd, 2002 Found
8 Medicated April 9th, 2002 Found
9 Weekend April 16th, 2002 Found
10 Zimmerman April 23rd, 2002 Found
11 Dream Unaired Lost
12 Junk Unaired Lost
13 Drive Unaired Lost

Season 2

# Episode Title Air Date Status
1 Shrink April 15th, 2003 Found
2 TV April 22nd, 2003 Found
3 Date April 29th, 2003 Found
4 Buskers May 6th, 2003 Found
5 Fruit Shots May 13th, 2003 Found
6 Feud May 20th, 2003 Found

See Also

External Links

References