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Viewers Mourn Ritter's "Rules" Dad
There was no laugh track. There was no John Ritter. Just lots of viewers.
ABC says 20.5 million watched 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter bury its lead character Tuesday night, and, in a way, its beloved star.
Ritter took ill on the sitcom's set September 11 and died later that night at a nearby hospital of a ruptured aorta. 8 Simple Rules writers were less specific about the demise of Ritter's character, newspaper columnist Paul Hennessy, noting only that the TV father collapsed at the supermarket during a milk run.
Leading TV critics, though still skeptical about the show's continued viability, praised the hourlong episode, which dispensed the hugs, tears and occasional oneliners sans the usual canned laughter.
"This transitional episode of 8 Simple Rules made only a few mistakes, and triumphed in several instances over rather imposing obstacles," David Bianculli wrote in the New York Daily News.
Associated Press critic Frazier Moore called Tuesday's episode "lovely." "It rose to the sad, unsought occasion," he wrote.
On the Internet, reaction from viewers was largely positive, with several noting the episode moved them to real tears.
The installment, titled "Goodbye," was the first new 8 Simple Rules since the comedy went into reruns after October 7, the air date of the final Ritter episode. In all, Ritter completed three second-season episodes. He was at work on a fourth when he died.
The week of his funeral, ABC announced that, with the blessing of Ritter's widow, ex-Wings star Amy Yasbeck, 8 Simple Rules would continue despite the loss of its signature star and main character.
During its downtime, producers drafted old prime-time hands James Garner and Suzanne Pleshette to portray the estranged parents of Katey Sagal's grieving wife and mother. Both appeared in Tuesday's episode. Garner will stay around for a while, moving into the Hennessys TV household as the cantankerous granddad.
For the season to date, the sitcom, a modest performer in its debut season, is averaging 15 million viewers, making it TV's 12th-most-watched show, according to Nielsen Media Research.
On Tuesday, it was TV's most-watched show.
Up against a cow-brain-eating episode of Fear Factor on NBC, 8 Simple Rules easily led ABC to a key nightly victory in the November sweeps. Airing in the 8 p.m. hour, the episode also topped CBS' freshman hit, Navy NCIS, and a repeat of the season opener of 24 on Fox.
Where 8 Simple Rules goes from here seems not a simple matter at all. In the New York Times, writer Alessandra Stanley opined that the show, its characters and creators still struggling with grief, "may [come to] seem like a strange hybrid--neither a sitcom nor a drama, but some awkward compromise in between. "
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