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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mel O&#039;Drama" data-source="post: 413176" data-attributes="member: 23">PhyllisSeason OnePilot /Bess, Is You A Woman Now? / Up For Grabs / Leaving Home / The First Day / Phyllis Takes Piano Lessons / Phyllis’s Garage Sale / The First DateSince I seem to be getting through these quickly - these eight episodes are two evenings’ worth - thought I should jump in with a first impression before I get too used to the series. As mentioned in previous posts, there was a good degree of reservation about watching this series based not only on comments from others but also my personal view of the character of Phyllis who was never really a MTM favourite. It’s the most pleasant of surprises to find the series is working for me so far. I like the tone. The premise is working well enough. The supporting players are all fine. If I look hard, I can see what [USER=5079]@Crimson[/USER] was saying about the series faults on these fronts, but going in with low expectations I don’t find them a bar to my enjoyment. Generic it may be, but so far it’s perfectly watchable. Now I’m thinking I must be very easy to please (which sounds rather unlike me). I was really expecting the change from Barbara Colby to Liz Torres to jar but… nope. I really liked Barbara’s Julie, and I like Liz’s Julie. I’m sure it helped with the transition that the picture quality on some of these episodes is so poor one can barely make out faces (to quote Phyllis herself as she collapsed into hysterical laughter, beggars can’t be choosers). The biggest surprise of all is that I’m finding Phyllis herself watchable and funny. Yes, it’s typically OTT at times, but I find her diva-dom far less off-putting here than I did in MTM.  I can also see the similarities with Maude, so perhaps that’s helping. Just so long as Phyllis isn’t "explained" with a bipolar disorder diagnosis we may be fine.There’s also a physicality to Cloris's performance that I hadn’t really noticed in MTM. There’s been business with leaping into the air or picking up a desk to look at the writing on it or that scene in the opening titles where she jumps onto the cable car and leans backwards (a moment that always gives me sweaty palms given an injury I sustained from a backwards fall a while ago). Incidentally, I’ve noticed a motif that’s recurred a couple of times where one or two characters lean in through a doorway to look into a room whilst lifting one leg. I was wondering what that was about, but it’s just occurred to me that it’s similar to Ted’s early trademark entrance on MTM… except we see it from the room they’re leaning away from rather has the room into which they are leaning (in other words, we see tails rather than heads). I wonder if this is deliberate. The San Francisco setting is nice. Not that we see much of it beyond the opening titles, but still, it sets the scene. It’s a little curious that many of the moments used in the opening credits are lifted from MTM, and were all quite dated by the second episode when Phyllis shifted from longer hair to her shorter Jennifer Hart bouffant (based on this I’m guessing the Pilot was shot quite some time before the rest of the episodes). Quite a few familiar faces so far. Dallas’s Mitch Cooper. Peyton Place’s Elliot Carson (naturally… it feels as though Tim O’Connor has guested in almost every American series I’ve ever watched). Loni Anderson. And one Mary Tyler Moore (seeing Mary Richards was a treat as I had no idea Phyllis featured any such crossovers at all. It also tied in nicely with a S6 MTM episode in which I remember Mary mentioning she’d received a letter from Phyllis). Oh, and I noticed James Burrows appeared as the telephone engineer.</blockquote>

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