Shark Bytes

I absolutely loved CIVIL WARS, another show which, in my opinion, never jumped the shark and never really found an audience. I thought Mariel Hemingway and Peter Onorati (what a hunk)had marvelous onscreen chemistry and Alan Rosenberg was wonderfully offbeat as Eli. And I'll say it, I even liked Debi Mazar as the secretary. As usual when the lead characters "do it", a lot of the sexual tension disappeared between the leads, but the show was still worth watching.

This show was a fine effort from Steven Bochco. Everything about the show was first rate: music, photography, sets, writing, guest-stars, and the series leads. The single best thing about the show was the character of Eli Levinson (played by Alan Rosenberg).The character was beautifully written and played. The other leads, Peter Onorati and Mariel Hemingway, were also superb. Wednesday night used to be my favorite TV night because of "Seinfeld", "Mad About You", and this show. All three shows had ratings problems. The other two shows survived on different nights. I wish this great show had also survived longer.

The show's opening alone was worth the price of admission (montage of happy couple photos with audio of their contrasting divorce testimonies in court). But about one season is all you can get out of this kind of universal misanthropy.

Day One. Mariel Hemmingway later caused "Central Park West" to get chomped into little pieces by the good ol' Shark, and costar Debi Mazur did likewise for "Temporarily Yours" and (no! please no!) the underrated "That's Life" (the Shark is rumored to have shed a tear after dining on that one). One of them by herself is enough to make any show fly over Jaws, having both of them in the same cast caused this one to go the express route into The Shark! (Burp)