The 5 Mrs. Buchanans

More than one quality series was cancelled in its first season by the network (here, CBS) because some idiot decided to bury it in a lousy time slot. So it was with 'The Five Mrs. Buchanans', and no one has even had the decency to release the existing episodes as a collectors' DVD. Wonderful writing, and the cast is flawless. It deserves a Collectors' edition.

I can't believe CBS killed "The 5 Mrs. Buchanans!" The cast was superb and the dialogue was hysterical. The situations could be corny at times, but nearly every sitcom drastically improves if given enough time. The sad thing is that this show didn't need much improvement. From the start it had a clever sharp-tongued wit about it that you rarely find in new sitcoms -- very close to the early seasons of "Designing Women." Unfortunately, CBS decided to bury this on Saturday nights with minuscule ratings. I thought perhaps Lifetime Network might end up with it, but alas, 7 years later it's still in the vaults. Quite a shame since it really had all the makings of a hit show!

I miss this show! Set in fictional Mercy, Indiana, this comedy centers around four completely different women who have only two connections to each other: they each are married to a Buchanan boy, and they each cannot stand their mother-in-law. Alex, married to Roy, is a Jewish feminist from New York City. Vivian, married to Ed, is a frumpy Hoosier housewife with two children from hell, twins Lyndon and P.J. Delilah, married to preacher Charles, is a somewhat ditzy former stripper from Corpus Christi, Texas. Bree, newly married to Jesse, is a perky Californian who used to work with her mother. They constantly are trading barbs with the cruel but hilarious Mother Buchanan, who tries as hard as she can to make their lives a living hell through meddling and manipulating, her two specialties.

I remember waiting each week to watch this show. And over the years I have talked about it many times. It was funny, witty, beautifully done, it was written well and the characters where played by perfect people. I have always hoped they would bring it back. I think they could bring this out or one exactly like it, and it would do well today. The issues with mother in laws is timeless. And the old episodes of this show is as funny now as it was all those years ago. I hope and pray they can find a way to bring back this show, even if we have to get new actors, as we could all use a little humor today. This humor was just plain fun. No one will play these characters better than the ones in the original series, but something like this would be great. So much story line here.

I don't know why some shows get canceled. This show related to one of my co-workers when I worked at the supermarket about an overbearing mother-in-law played by the Oscar winner Eileen Heckart. Her daughters-in-law were played by Broadway professional veterans like Judith Ivey and Harriet Sansom Harris as well as soap veteran actress Charlotte Ross and Beth Broderick. The husbands were rarely shown because it was really a show centered around the relationships between the sisters-in-laws and their mother-in-law. The newest in-law was played by Charlotte Ross. Beth Broderick played the more sensual wife while Judith Ivey's character was Jewish and the oldest of all the Buchanan wives. Harriet Sansom Harris was divine as the snobby wife who is always a show stopper in any performance. Of course there was Eileen Heckart who can make a great entrance and say more with a facial expression than a thousand words.