Television: A Show About Something: Marriage

BACK when he was single Jerry Seinfeld helped create a pretty successful comedy series. And now that he’s been married for 10 years, he thinks he may have found an idea for a worthy successor.

“All marriages are based on a sitcom premise,” he stated recently: “What if you and I tried to stay together for the rest of our lives?”

Mr. Seinfeld was talking from a conference room in an office on the West Side of Manhattan, where he and the production team for his new NBC series, “The Marriage Ref” (which will be shown for the first time on Sunday), were watching film of a married couple who seemed determined to prove his point.

In the two-and-a-half-minute clip, the couple, Luis and Dalia Rios, were arguing about whether their dining-room table should be used only for Thanksgiving dinners (her position) or whether it could also accommodate the occasional poker game (his position, naturally).

Mr. Seinfeld and his colleagues had watched the scene dozens of times already, but they still laughed as if they were seeing it fresh. The group was particularly tickled when, in a moment of supreme frustration, Mr. Rios stuttered out the words “There is no reason why to have more use.” (“You have to be pretty angry to get to a place where you can construct that sentence,” stated Jeff Cesario, one of the “Marriage Ref” writers.) And like midnight moviegoers at a screening of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” they spoke along with Ms. Rios as she chastised her husband: “That is not even right. That is so wrong.”

Before “The Marriage Ref” has brought out its first couple, it has more immediately evoked another union: the one between Mr. Seinfeld, one of the most popular performers associated with NBC, and the network itself, whose fortunes have declined precipitously since he ended his sitcom and which would pay nearly any price to have him back.

To get Mr. Seinfeld back on its prime-time lineup and, it hopes, regain some of that lost glory, NBC has signed up a show that does not necessarily ring of his familiar comedy brand. It is not a scripted series about neurotic single people, but a hybrid reality-comedy-variety-celebrity-panel show about marriage.

Perhaps nobody appreciates the paradox better than Mr. Seinfeld himself. “I love the chessboard at this particular moment,” he stated later, when the screening was over and he was alone in the conference room with a reporter. “I think it would be a hilariously ironic moment to suddenly have a hit on NBC.”

He added: “Everything’s so wrong. That’s what I love about it.”

It has been 12 years since “Seinfeld” ended its original run, and during that time he has had no particular urge or desire to get a new series on the air, until he got into an argument with his wife, Jessica, when a friend of hers happened to be present.

Mr. Seinfeld stated he could not remember what the disagreement was about, but when the friend became uncomfortable and excused herself to leave, he recalled: “I said: ‘No, no, no, I don’t want you to go. I need a ref. I don’t want to speak about this for the next three hours.’ “

Mr. Seinfeld and his wife deputized the friend to judge the fight for them. “And we each gave our side of the issue,” he said, “and I lost, but it was great. It was over in five minutes.”

Afterward, Mr. Seinfeld said, his wife turned to him and said, “That’s a TV show.”

Mr. Seinfeld spent several more months batting around the idea of a show that would render judgment on couples’ longstanding marital disputes. He first talked it over with the actor Marc Consuelos, a friend who is married to Kelly Ripa and who frequently compares notes on marriage with Mr. Seinfeld over morning coffee.

Mr. Seinfeld then discussed the idea with Ellen Rakieten, a former executive producer of “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” who concurred it had potential.

“It really is pro-marriage,” stated Ms. Rakieten, who admitted that she and her husband sometimes squabble over his intense interest in his Amazon Kindle. “We all fight about silly things, but you’re in it. Nobody’s walking out of the marriage over the Kindle. We’re going to solve it.”

In February of last year Mr. Seinfeld and Ms. Rakieten pitched the idea to NBC and within minutes were given a green light to produce the series.

NBC made no secret of wanting to be back in business with Mr. Seinfeld under any arrangement.

“Jerry has a talismanic quality at NBC,” stated Paul Telegdy, the network’s executive vice president for alternative programming. Mr. Telegdy added that he would “frankly respect” Mr. Seinfeld’s wishes if he wanted to make the show “as a musical in 12 acts, or if he wanted to do it in the North Pole.”

source : feeds.nytimes.com

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Submited at Saturday, February 27th, 2010 at 3:00 pm on Television by Brinkster
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