Murphy Brown

One of the more complicated end-of-the-television-season rituals is saying goodbye to one-time hit series that have overstayed their welcome.In recent years, that list has included "Murphy Brown" and "Roseanne." Tonight, in that category comes "Mad About You" with Helen Hunt and Paul Reiser in a one-hour finale titled "The Final Frontier."The episode opens with Paul (Reiser) and Jamie (Hunt) Buchman in bed introducing a clip reel of some of their "favorite moments from the last seven years."

Murphy Brown," the CBS sitcom starring Candice Bergen as a Washington anchorwoman, will end its 10-year run tomorrow night with a one-hour episode. It would be nice to say it was a glorious run and America is going to miss "Murphy Brown," but that would be two lies.The once-great sitcom overstayed its welcome, and, in recent years, became preachy, predictable, smug and flat. Ultimately, it is guilty of one of the worst sins a television show can commit: It betrayed the trust of its fans.Even Bergen acknowledges "two dismal seasons," referring to 1995-1996 and 1996-1997, saying she "wasn't as aware as the viewing public that the show had disintegrated to the point that it had."

Faith Ford plays a small-town girl who returns to her roots after the bust-up of her big-city marriage in the new CBS sitcom "Maggie Winters."Ford is a nice supporting player, as anyone knows who watched her Corky Sherwood character over the years on "Murphy Brown." But this leading role may be too much for her to handle. Ford's two or three Corky moves start wearing thin by the first commercial break.But just because she's not much of a leading actress and the sitcom is not all that entertaining, it doesn't mean "Maggie Winters" is dead meat.

THERE is something absolutely annoying about the way some culture gurus take for granted that, come tomorrow night, we will all sit glued to our televisions watching the last episode of "Seinfeld."To do otherwise is to be uncivilized, un-American, someone unworthy of calling herself a New Yorker.Well, excuse me. I have been a New Yorker for 22 years. But I am not a "Seinfeld" fan. And, from what I have gathered from various folks I've talked to in recent days, I am not alone.I am not one of those snobs who insist that they never watch television.

Thanks to a mix-up by the folks at UPN, the episode description given for last night's episode of "Sparks" was actually the episode description for last night's episode of "Goode Behavior."Hang on. Sweeps month (along with the season) is almost over."Cosby" (8 p.m.-8: 30 p.m., WJZ, Channel 13) -- The Social Security Administration decides Hilton (Bill Cosby) is dead, which means he could have trouble starting his new job (they don't hire corpses, apparently). And, grieving widow Ruth (Phylicia Rashad)

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- Outside the Quilted Bear, a popular breakfast spot, sits the sporty Jeep that Marilyn gave him last month on his 50th birthday. Inside, the former vice president sits at the corner table where he regularly talks with politically interested people passing through Phoenix.Ralph Reed, head of the Christian Coalition, was here recently. There will be others. Dan Quayle, formerly of Indianapolis, spent much of his youth here -- he went to high school just down the road and ''knew more about the saguaro cactus than about the oak tree'' -- but he is not settling down here.

Never leave home without your temporal shield.Voyager has one. And it needs it to survive some manipulative time-space shenanigans when the crew confronts the new bad boys on the block, the Krenim, in tonight's overwrought episode of "Star Trek: Voyager" (8 p.m.-9 p.m., WNUV, Channel 54).The Krenim and their ruthlessly focused leader, Annorax (Kurtwood Smith), are using time-tinkering to try to return themselves to a period when they were the dominant race in their space neighborhood. Bad news for them: Voyager shows up and unwittingly throws a wrench into their well-calculated plans.

Come on, you didn't really think the new job at the White House that Murphy Brown (Candice Bergen) accepted at the end of last season was going to work out, did you?Of course not. But who would have thought she'd last less than an hour with the Clintons and have to come crawling back to "FYI" and executive producer Kay Carter-Shepley (Lily Tomlin)?"So what happened, Murph? Was it something you stole, something you spilled or something you said?" Frank (Joe Regalbuto) asks her gleefully."Wow, the trifecta," he shouts in response to Murphy's uncharacteristic silence.

Prefer your skit comedy with a distinctly 1970s flavor? Then check out the Family Channel tonight, as it brings back a pair of vintage variety/talk shows."

"Ink," the new sitcom starring Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen, finally steams into its prime-time port tonight (8: 30, WJZ Channel 13), five weeks and $5 million over-budget and with an army of critics ready to paint the words "CBS Disaster" across its troubled bow.Hold the paint, boys and girls. It ain't a great series by a long shot, but sitcom doctor Diane English has managed to craft a vessel that at least can float. In fact, it might even sail if Danson can further loosen up and let himself go with the persona English seems to be trying to create for him, sort of a cross between Sam Malone and Murphy Brown.

I miss Murphy Brown. Not so much the sitcom of old, although I did watch it regularly and loved Candice Bergen's sass and style (great white shirts, cool accessories) as TV reporter Murphy Brown. But what I really miss is a time when campaign discourse about unwed pregnancy centered on a grown-up, albeit fictional, woman rather than a 17-year-old, and very real, girl. Back then - 1992, to be exact - it was slightly comical when Vice President Dan Quayle triggered a dispute by holding up Murphy Brown as a symbol of the breakdown in family values because the fictional character had a fictional baby out of fictional wedlock.

Great TV comedy can be mined from the experience of having a baby. Proof of that can be found in every decade of prime-time programming: Think I Love Lucy in the 1950s (at the height of the real-life baby boom), or Murphy Brown in the '80s and Mad About You in the '90s. On TV Notes from the Underbelly premieres at 10 tonight on WMAR (Channel 2).

CBS has a long and rich history of comedic leading ladies. Lucille Ball, Carol Burnett and Mary Tyler Moore are TV Hall of Famers on the strength of shows bearing their names. Bea Arthur (Maude) and Candice Bergen (Murphy Brown) had long-running CBS hits driven by their title characters. Lately, though, women have been in the passenger seats on CBS' few remaining sitcoms. King of Queens and Still Standing are built around tubby Dads, How I Met Your Mother is male-centric and the title of Two and a Half Men speaks for itself.

PASADENA, Calif. - Candice Bergen, whose Murphy Brown character was attacked by Dan Quayle during the 1992 election campaign, responded to Quayle's recent remarks in support of the family values he perceived in MTV's The Osbournes. "That Dan," Bergen said, shaking her head and smiling. "You just can't predict him." Bergen is at the summer 2002 Television Critics Association press tour this week talking about her new Oxygen cable series Candice Checks It Out, which launches Aug. 18. A follow-up to her previous Oxygen series, Exhale, this new effort has Bergen spending time with people whom, for one reason or another, she finds compelling.

HUNTINGTON, Ind. - Dan Johns, executive director of the Dan Quayle museum, leaned closer to a display case to check a fact that had eluded him. "Let's see, now," he said, a furrow suddenly creasing his forehead, his voice growing solemn. "Did the potato thing come first, and then it was Murphy Brown, or was it Murphy Brown, and then the potato thing? I know they were very close. Ah, yes. Here it is. Murphy Brown first, then potato." Or p-o-t-a-t-o-e, as Quayle once spelled it in the presence of a group of disbelieving grammar school students.

One of the more complicated end-of-the-television-season rituals is saying goodbye to one-time hit series that have overstayed their welcome.In recent years, that list has included "Murphy Brown" and "Roseanne." Tonight, in that category comes "Mad About You" with Helen Hunt and Paul Reiser in a one-hour finale titled "The Final Frontier."The episode opens with Paul (Reiser) and Jamie (Hunt) Buchman in bed introducing a clip reel of some of their "favorite moments from the last seven years."

Faith Ford plays a small-town girl who returns to her roots after the bust-up of her big-city marriage in the new CBS sitcom "Maggie Winters."Ford is a nice supporting player, as anyone knows who watched her Corky Sherwood character over the years on "Murphy Brown." But this leading role may be too much for her to handle. Ford's two or three Corky moves start wearing thin by the first commercial break.But just because she's not much of a leading actress and the sitcom is not all that entertaining, it doesn't mean "Maggie Winters" is dead meat.

Murphy Brown," the CBS sitcom starring Candice Bergen as a Washington anchorwoman, will end its 10-year run tomorrow night with a one-hour episode. It would be nice to say it was a glorious run and America is going to miss "Murphy Brown," but that would be two lies.The once-great sitcom overstayed its welcome, and, in recent years, became preachy, predictable, smug and flat. Ultimately, it is guilty of one of the worst sins a television show can commit: It betrayed the trust of its fans.Even Bergen acknowledges "two dismal seasons," referring to 1995-1996 and 1996-1997, saying she "wasn't as aware as the viewing public that the show had disintegrated to the point that it had."

THERE is something absolutely annoying about the way some culture gurus take for granted that, come tomorrow night, we will all sit glued to our televisions watching the last episode of "Seinfeld."To do otherwise is to be uncivilized, un-American, someone unworthy of calling herself a New Yorker.Well, excuse me. I have been a New Yorker for 22 years. But I am not a "Seinfeld" fan. And, from what I have gathered from various folks I've talked to in recent days, I am not alone.I am not one of those snobs who insist that they never watch television.

Never leave home without your temporal shield.Voyager has one. And it needs it to survive some manipulative time-space shenanigans when the crew confronts the new bad boys on the block, the Krenim, in tonight's overwrought episode of "Star Trek: Voyager" (8 p.m.-9 p.m., WNUV, Channel 54).The Krenim and their ruthlessly focused leader, Annorax (Kurtwood Smith), are using time-tinkering to try to return themselves to a period when they were the dominant race in their space neighborhood. Bad news for them: Voyager shows up and unwittingly throws a wrench into their well-calculated plans.