This show wants us to know that fortysomething single moms are smart and sexy, too. Of course, Julia Louis-Dreyfus has been here before, wisecracking, tear-jerking, and neurotic, as a yuppie stockbroker named Eileen in a sitcom called Day by Day, where she stole all her scenes; as Elaine on Seinfeld; and as Ellie in Watching Ellie, which nobody did. If she seems to score too easily against the female competition here—private-school mothers, her ex-husband’s new squeeze—why shouldn’t she? Only on a network sitcom would fortysomething be considered over any hill. And forget that Seinfeld curse. The fact is that Jerry’s gang stood up and shuffled about as a co-dependency of wounded slackers. Split them up and, without a writer, they fell on their faces. Julia’s Christine has a writer, Kari Lizer from Will & Grace, in her gym bag, which may be why she’s sounding better every week.

CBS, Mondays, 9:30 p.m.

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• Archive: “Television”
• Articles by John Leonard
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