Mad about us

Lori and I started dating in 1993, and that first fall and winter, I usually had Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights off. Although we weren't planted in front of the television during all our free time, naturally, we watched some TV. Amid "Seinfeld" and "Frasier" episodes, we gravitated toward "Mad About You." I had watched episodes off and on during the show's first season, and I thought it was OK. As a single person, it didn't quite resonate yet.

That changed when we started watching NBC Thursday nights together. I must admit, Lori brought me around to appreciating and enjoying "Mad About You." She saw something I had yet to realize: Paul and Jamie Buchman felt a little like us, in that they were a young couple navigating a new relationship, albeit a few years ahead of us. 

The episode that really struck a chord with Lori told the story of how Paul and Jamie may have encountered each other as grade schoolers. It reconfirmed for her that we also met by fate.

Over the next few years, "Mad About You" remained must-watch television, and the second and third seasons were the best. Some of it was standard sitcom narrative, but there were those moments in which the scripts and the acting seemed to be speaking to Lori and me, as if the show had figured us out.

Granted, many couples during the mid-'90s drew parallels from Paul and Jamie to their own relationships. "Mad About You" became a couples show -- even "Seinfeld" made fun of that on an episode in which Susan calls George to bed so they could watch it (which was a bit meta, because "Seinfeld," "Mad About You," and "Friends" exist in the same TV universe). We wanted to send a wedding invitation to Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt, and I'm sure we wouldn't be the only ones who at least considered that. For the record, we didn't, but the "Mad About You" theme sung by Anita Baker was our first dance at our reception.

As the seasons progressed, "Mad About You" became less interesting. There would be a few good episodes here and there, but the show lost the magic of the first three seasons. I'm not sure if the writers ran out of ideas or if they were pressured to turn "Mad About You" into every NBC sitcom that mimicked "Seinfeld" and "Friends" -- with multiple story arcs among all the characters jammed into a half-hour. The show became less about Paul and Jamie, and even when it was about them, the magic was gone. 

At the end of the fifth season, Paul and Jamie had a baby, which should have opened a trove of great story lines and more "Hey, that's us!" from their fans. The opportunity was wasted. By season 7, we pretty much stopped watching. Even the finale was disappointing at times -- foreshadowing the couple's breakup and eventual reconciliation during the 2020s. "Mad About You" concluded as the most startling example of a great TV show that jumped the shark.

A couple decades later, "Mad About You" returned amid the trend of 1990s shows being rebooted. It didn't quite get the press that "Murphy Brown" or "Roseanne" did -- possibly because it ended with such a whimper 20 years ago. Moreover, the return was limited to the Spectrum cable service, which isn't available to much of the country. Finally, last month, Amazon Prime picked up "Mad About You" -- the original seasons and the rebooted series. Watching the 12 new episodes required just a quick binge: I knocked it out in a few days, and Lori zipped through it, too, on her own.

The magic from the early seasons of "Mad About You" felt like it had returned -- the episodes were enjoyable to watch, and I was happy to welcome familiar characters back into my brain. A few plots were contrived, and I didn't quite believe the twist in the final episode (no spoilers, I promise), but for the most part, these 12 episode were better than most of what we were subjected to the last few seasons of the original show.

What really resonated with both Lori and I was how the reboot effectively advanced the story 20 years ahead (with a little fudging on the timeline -- Mabel Buchman should have been about 22, not 18) to a different phase of Paul and Jamie's lives and relationship. And, in a familiar way, their story is a couple years ahead of us, just like it was when we connected with the show in the 1990s. Paul and Jamie deal with being empty-nesters and navigating their careers in their 50s ... the way Lori and I are experiencing or anticipating. 

The show's theme was amended for the reboot: Instead of jumping into the final frontier, the lyric flies into the final frontier. The change is perfect -- the "final frontier" really isn't final, and ready or not, you need to come at it full steam.

Of course, life isn't a sitcom. But "Mad About You" (the original and the reboot) reminds Lori and me that our relationship, coming up on 28 years, sometimes feels like the stuff of Hollywood -- that somebody wrote our lives just for us. Nominate us for an Emmy!