A short-running NBC sitcom, created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman (Friends) and executive produced by Norman Lear, which follows a clueless US Senator (John Forsythe) and his family (Holland Taylor, Valerie Mahaffey, David Hyde Pierce) as they navigate their way through Washington.
The show also features Eve Gordon, Peter MacNicol, Elizabeth Berridge, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Robin Bartlett.
It aired from March 7, 1992 to January 2, 1993.
Tropes for this series:
- Accidental Marriage: In the two-parter "Grammargate", Bradley Grist gets married to a general named Gurdy Walker, who is older than him, and an old friend to his mother during a drunken trip in Maryland.
- Character Title:
- "Bill Gets Shot"
- "Kiss Me Caitlyn"
- "Bill's Dead... Not"
- "Sophie's Big Decision"
- "Oh, Mack"
- "St. Caitlyn of Shears"
- "Bradley Gets Fired"
- One-Word Title:
- "Charlerella"
- "Grammargate"
- The Mistress: Jordan Miller is this to Bill Powers as well as his chief of staff.
- Pun-Based Title: The show centers around Senator Bill Powers and his family.
- Social Climber: Powers' wife Margaret.
- Suicide as Comedy: The suicidal Representative Theodore Van Horne, had one memorably darkly funny bit of him reading Final Exit (a book detailing various methods of suicide) with commentary ("tried it, tried that twice, like that's going to work,..."). He also once tried to hang himself from a window, but when he jumped off the chair, all it did was open the drapes.
