Kate says I completely and totally love this show!
Dharma & Greg is pre-Bones which means that until Dharma & Greg came along, I hadn't seen that many shows with fun, working relationships. It seemed like most shows on television were either of the Moonlighting variety (season after season of the gal and guy harassing and mocking each other; honestly, I don't get it) or sitcoms of husbands and wives arguing incessantly about how much the other person doesn't understand them.
Dharma & Greg was such a breath of fresh air!
The writing is so smart, it never ceases to amaze me. For instance, even though the show is supposedly about two opposites getting married, Dharma and Greg are better described as complementary. Dharma, for all her parents' freewheeling ways, wants the kind of stability that Greg offers. She is also far more like Greg's mother, in terms of ambition and chutzpah, than anyone will ever admit.
And Greg needs a truly independent person who supports but doesn't stereotype him; he's a country-club guy who needs the option of a non-country-club life. The episode when his ex-girlfriend comes back illustrates this point; she is a perfectly lovely person, but, as Greg points out to Dharma, "It doesn't matter if there's someone out there on paper who is perfect for you because I love you." At the end of the episode, after meeting a pro-yoga guy with hippy parents, Dharma can say back to Greg, "I met the perfect person, but I'm going home with the man I love." Biographical similarities do not necessarily translate into psychological and spiritual compatibility.
The show not only has good writing, it has a phenomenal cast. Alan Rachins, Susan Sullivan, and Mimi Kennedy are talented, versatile actors. Thomas Gibson has demonstrated an extraordinary ability to move between drama and comedy (his character on Criminal Minds is a button-down, humorless version of Greg, but if I'd seen Criminal Minds before Dharma & Greg, I never would have believed it was the same guy). Jenna Elfman is more of a single-genre gal. I can't imagine her doing drama. But as a comedienne, she is first-rate--top of the line.
It still surprises me that this show was produced by Chuck Lorre. Chuck Lorre produced Dharma & Greg, Big Bang Theory, and Two and 1/2 Men. Two shows I adore out of three is pretty impressive!
Mike says that when your shakras are misaligned, your chi goes all "Blarrrghhh!"
Dharma & Greg is a cute, fun show. When it was originally on the air, I didn't care for it much. Even now, while I find it genuinely funny, I can"t help but fear that the pair were kinda thrown together with absolutely no real reason to be together. But, what Kate says above is true: the two DO compliment one another.
This show is a great example of a formula that works so well, it works almost too well; after a while the audience gets bored with the pair being so happy, and DRAMA enters the fray. Unfortunately, I think it was at this point the show was canceled, leaving many fans unhappy.
I found the dialogue and the humor extremely effective in the show, and more so than I remember. The characters are also really fun and well acted, but Dharma is so off the wall she's hard to really get close too; she's so unpredictable I sometimes wonder if on a whim she'll leave Greg for a random street musician.
Overall this is a really fun show, and it's got some good laughs. I think the only thing I really kinda wish is that we understood or saw more of why the two love each other so much--while love at first sight it fantastic and wonderful and romantic, it doesn't do a whole lot for character development.
Monday, January 24, 2011
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Ah, Mike, I think this is one place where I have to (sort of) disagree. I think the psychology behind Dharma & Greg is totally logical/reasonable, and their characters are quite well-developed.
Granted, this could be because I was invested in the show from day 1, and I may have read into the episodes what was lacking. Still, I think Dharma is clearly NOT looking for a random kind of life. She needs the stability that Greg has to offer. In a later "What if?" episode, Dharma re-enacts the scene she describes to Greg in the pilot: being in the lodge with her ex-boyfriend, Gunther. The ex-boyfriend is clearly one of those weed-smoking "yeah, dude, whatever" types of people, and Dharma nearly goes berserk. She is EXTREMELY ambitious, as ambitious as Kitty, and she would never in a million years be satisfied with someone like her father, no matter how much she loves him. She ends up with exactly the right type of guy. (Although Greg occasionally experiments with joblessness, it clearly isn't his cup of tea.)
On the other hand, Greg does need "stop and smell the roses" reminders. One of the funniest episodes is when Greg decides to take Dharma for a romantic weekend; he has PLANNED IT OUT, so even though Dharma would like to stop and check out fruit stands and occasional landmarks on the way, he absolutely won't. "We have to get there by 5:35." Okay, maybe this is only funny to someone who grew up with my dad, but it is extremely funny to that person.
The show did start heading into BIG PROBLEM TERRITORY towards the end, but in both cases (Dharma has a non-sexual relationship with her college professor; Greg gets into a car accident where Dharma is hurt), the problems are dealt with intelligently. I will agree, however, that there really wasn't anywhere else for the show to go. The logical next step was for Dharma & Greg to have a child—which is what they decide to do at the very end—but the show really wasn't a child show. I thought it ended when it needed to end. Hey, shows don't HAVE to last 10 seasons long (granted, I may be one of the few D&G fans who thinks that).
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