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Reader Response

On Media
January 1, 1998 / 3 Tevet, 5758

CBS's George and Leo

In-laws that deserve each other, but not viewers

By Elliot B. Gertel

The new CBS series, George and Leo, reeks of an artifice and craftiness and contrivance such as I've never seen in any television program I've watched or reviewed, and on many levels.

The comedy is about two michantonim, fathers-in-law, who meet just before their children's wedding. George is a low-key, responsible, rather intellectual proprietor of a bookstore in sleepy Martha's Vineyard, Mass., and Leo is a conniving, loud refugee from the Las Vegas mob, who is visiting his daughter on the eve of her wedding, having abandoned her years before. But the real rub or, if you will, the gimmick, here is that George is Catholic(?) And Leo is Jewish.

Producer Stephen C. Grossman must certainly know that, historically, the Bridget Loves Bernie type of interfaith marriage series -- that pits the two sides of the family against each other -- has not made it on TV. So the producers and writers of George and Leo, it seems, have found themselves two crafty ways to bypass controversy. First, they made the lead characters out of the fathers-in-law, in order to capitalize on an Odd Couple format, and chose beloved veteran actors Bob Newhart and Judd Hirsch for the respective title roles. Secondly, in order to avoid any fallout from Jewish organizations, they leave open whether or not Leo's daughter had a Jewish mother, with the suggestion that the mother was probably not Jewish, and that, given Leo's neglect of her, she probably was not raised Jewish, anyway. This leaves the writers able to import a "hip" priest to perform the ceremony (in the second episode, written by Bob Sand), who tells George that priests don't pressure young people into marriage anymore. Does that mean that the writers have no qualms about offending Catholics?

The problem is that there is no possible way to cover for bad taste, especially with bad taste. Hirsch's character remains a negative stereotype of Jews. He is a dishonorable thief even for a Mafioso. He writes bad checks, is pushy in the most obnoxious way, and wastes time engaging in inappropriate bargaining and making silly, explicit jokes.

When the store clerk (who turns out later to be his future in-law) wants to verify his personal check, he immediately and gratuitously shifts into a "Now we have to hassle the Jewish guy after 2,000 years of hate and oppression" rhetoric -- as if Martha's Vineyard does not have a sizeable Jewish population. He storms out with a (by then, expected), "As my people say, 'shalom!'" -- with "Jewish music" in the background. In their heaping bad taste, writers Dan Stanley and Rob Long bring us back to an era in early TV when every Jewish character had to be serenaded by Jewish-sounding musical kitsch. Yet, at the same time, in a totally unbelievable scene in which our "heros" are confronted by a mob assassin (who, in real life, would have not let either of them live under the circumstances), George teaches the Jew, Leo, that life is more important than money.

If the bad taste consisted only in this stereotype, it might at least be explained away as old hat. But George and Leo advances some motifs that, while not exactly new, have been around only for a decade or so in prime-time TV. The notion of the Jewish father as irresponsible or even a criminal has been gaining acceptance due to shows like Thirythsomething, The Commish, and now Chicago Hope, as well as the recent TV movie, Wise Guy. In one episode of George and Leo, writer Betsy Borns actually delights in having Leo bribe a judge in order to help George get out of bribery charges when he capitulated in the first place to Leo's advice.

In its thoroughgoing bad taste, George and Leo doesn't do justice to Gentiles, either, but at least they are usually the duped instead of the con artists. The very first episode tried to get mileage out of George's inability to pronounce Yiddish words like "schmuck." (The most vulgar Yiddish words are chosen by TV writers instead of the nobler nuances and concepts of the language which permeated Jewish life in Eastern Europe far more extensively.) But again, it is odd to assume the Gentiles are not familiar with Yiddish terms, which entered everyday English usage long ago, and which are increasingly found in dictionaries of American English. Besides, by the second episode, writer Bob Sand has George using the word "tuches" to counter Leo's jibes.

In characteristically cunning manner, George and Leo would manipulate Jewish viewers into overlooking the vulgarization and marginalization of the Yiddish language by throwing them a Hebrew term or two. Thus, in the wedding episode by Bob Sand, Leo asks: "Where's the chuppah?" George thinks he is referring to the "shiny yellow bread," or challah. (The writers are consistent in making Gentiles clueless about Judaism.) Leo explains that the chuppah is the "sacred tent under which my people have been getting married for thousands of years" -- and then he must elaborate for Gentile George, who associates that with the Big Top: "Not circus people, but the Jewish People." Needless to say, this entire dialogue is unwarranted, given that Leo probably didn't have a chuppah himself, and that Jewish life has not mattered that much to him, anyway.

By the third episode, George and Leo had just about graduated from "Jewish humor," anyway. The theme was town zoning, and Leo is identified as Jewish long enough to bribe a judge and to make a little inappropriate "Holocaust humor." When the question arises as to whether local zoning ordinances would allow Leo to rent a room above George's bookstore, Leo's first response is an inept allusion to Anne Frank: "Nice little town. There's a Jew in the attic and now they turn him in." The writer, Betsy Borns, who obviously thinks this is funny, has George respond: "I don't think that had anything to do with it. He was just following orders."

Again, the artifice and cunning behind George and Leo. The writers can make jokes about the Holocaust and then come back and tell us that they are really making fun of those who did and justified evil, that the "humor" is really for that purpose. This is something that TV is doing all too much of lately -- using its charm to undermine taste and values, and then claiming to satirize those who mock taste and values. My faith and hope that this can't go on forever comes from the reportedly low rating of George and Leo, despite the gifted cast, which would indicate that the public is not buying its contrivances.

I will say, however, that by the fourth episode, there was not a single reference to the Jew-Gentile issue or mixed marriage themes. This half-hour was about the grandfathers-to-be enrolling in a baby-care course, and was the funniest and most pleasant. The writer, Reid Harrison, was obviously without guile, but he was, unfortunately, too late. The series has already lost all honor and appropriateness -- and viewership.

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Contributing writer Elliot B. Gertel is JWR's resident media maven. He is based at the National Jewish Post and Opinion.

©1998, Jewish World Review