TVLand's premiere of Hot in Cleveland last night felt like a quick call with old friends I'd been meaning to phone for years: Old neighbor Valerie Bertinelli? She's doing well! Trusty Frasier star Jane Leeves? She's still salty! Fave Just Shoot Me alum Wendie Malick? She's still playing vain characters, wouldn't you know! But just when the addictive nostalgia started to overcome me, Hot in Cleveland made some moves I wish it didn't, proving there are probably some TV formats that are better left for dead in 1998.
Hot in Cleveland concerns three Los Angeles women trying to fly to Paris for a vacation only to have their plane make an emergency landing in Cleveland. After the trio scopes out the mysterious city enough, Melanie (Bertinelli) meets a man desirable enough to make her rent a condo for a month. Her aging actress friend Victoria (Malick) and businesslike sneerer Joy (Leeves) think she's crazy until they realize that rent in Cleveland costs as much as a night in Paris and Cleveland dudes are kinda generous. Hell, they'll all stay awhile! Look, here's legend-du-jour Betty White to play Melanie's sassy old groundskeeper. So ridiculous, partially campy, and maybe likable.
You can barely count up Hot in Cleveland's old-fashioned conceits on one hand: the multi-cam format, the Family Matters-conjuring house sets, the one-liners about aging, the smattering of sitcom veterans, or the pre-show announcement, "Hot in Cleveland is taped before a studio audience." It's meant to be retro, and there are plenty of perks associated with that. Hot in Cleveland is pretension-free and willing to make jokes about vanity, attractiveness, and age that would also work -- without alteration -- on Frasier.
The thing that isn't so charmingly retro: the archetypal characters. Bertinelli, Leeves, and Malick compensate by lending these women plucky delivery and ebullience even if they're retreads of their roles from 10-30 years ago. But come on: Wendie Malick preening in a compact mirror and grouching about her audition to play Megan Fox's grandmother? Valerie Bertinelli shrugging and monologuing about the perfect man? Betty White referencing sex and marijuana because she's old and kicking? It's just so obvious. You sometimes feel like your subconscious accidentally wrote Hot in Cleveland years ago and half-jokingly submitted a script to teensy cable networks.
But maybe stock characters are more lovable the more you spend time knowing them. I'll stick around for week two, especially since this casts apply old-school mutli-cam chops to this geriatric thing. However, the minute Hot in Cleveland breaks free from its comfortable fun and becomes only a time capsule nugget, I'm hitching a ride back to the actually retro fun of Just Shoot Me and One Day at a Time.