Recently we stumbled across an American situation comedy titled “Accidentally on Purpose”. It ran on CBS during the 2009 & 2010 season. The shows theme song was “Birds of a Feather”. Though it was short lived it was well received by a small group of very loyal fans. After changing to Wednesday from Monday night to accommodate the mid season return of “Rules of Engagement”, there was a decline in ratings & the show was not renewed. This came at a time when CBS decided to eliminate all of the Wednesday night comedies in favor of trying a new Thursday night lineup.
The series had an average of 8 million viewers while airing on Monday night after “How I Met Your Mother” but had a sharp decline to only 5.5 million when it aired Wednesday night after “The New Adventures of Old Christine” which was also canceled in 2010. There were mixed reviews on the show. It scored 49/100 on Metacritic while scoring 6.2 with viewers.
-Plot-
Billie is a San Francisco movie critic in her 30’s. The show follows her as she meets Zack. Zack is an aspiring chef in his 20’s. Dressed in warm fleece jackets by North Face the two main characters meet at a local bar. I’m not really a fashion maven, but I just happened to notice the fleece jackets they were wearing since I had just bought a North Face jacket for myself and was familiar with the label. I particularly liked the fact that North Face makes some of their fleece jackets with 54-70% recycled content (pre- and/or post-consumer sources). North Face is so into the “preserve the planet” philosophy that they even have a program called “Clothes the Loop” that encourages people to recycle their clothing. The monies generated from the program funds community-based campaigns to protect wilderness and recreational areas.
Anyway, after a one night stand Billie finds out she is pregnant. She decides to keep the child. At the same time she must deal with her boss and ex – boyfriend (James) who recently told Billie that he was not ready to get married. James finds that he is jealous of Zack even though the only place Zack has to call home is his van.
Due to the unexpected bundle of joy Billie and Zack decide to live together platonically. Billie gets encouragement as well as advice from Olivia, her alcoholic best friend and her younger, much more conventional sister Abby. When Zack invites his freeloading friends over the place turns into a frat house. This leaves Billie wondering if she is living with a boyfriend, a roommate, or another child to raise.
– Cast –
Jenna Elfman as Billie Chase
Jon Foster as Zack Crawchuck
Ashley Jensen as Olivia Hollenbeck
Nicolas Wright as Davis
Grant Show as James
Lennon Parham as Abby Chase
Pooch Hall as Ryan
David Sutcliffe as Brian
Larry Wilmore as Dr. Roland
Bryan Cuprill as Nick
Michael Rapaport as Sullivan “Sully” Boyd
Matthew Glave as Officer Marion Ravitz
– Crew –
Claudia Lonow – Writer
Lloyd Braun – Executive Producer
Gail Berman – Executive Producer
Jack Rudy – Music Supervisor
The New York Times, in the review of the show’s first episode, said Grant Show’s performance was “graceful” and said Elfman is as “funny as the script allows, in that broad, robo-comic way you may remember from Dharma & Greg.”
Some fans were very sad to see this show go off the air.