NBC’s dwindling comedy reserves and recent string of high-concept failures has resulted in desperate, late-night experiments deep within its laboratory that seek to combine the two. “Higher concepts! Bigger set-ups!” the network’s not exactly mad, mostly just kinda tired scientists cackle, sewing together hybrids like the upcoming Girlfriend In A Coma, about a woman who awakens from a long coma to discover she has a 17-year-old daughter. Much like The Smiths song that gave the show its title, NBC has to be asking whether it really thinks she’ll pull through, so it’s hedging its bets by casting Christina Ricci as the coma mom—much like it’s chased down Parker Posey to star in its untitled comedy from DJ Nash, which mashes together a family separated by divorce, a mother (Posey) entering a “newfound adolescence,” and a blind father who’s idolized by his son in a bid to have at least three premises, hoping that maybe one of them will pan out this time.
With Pan Am and The Return Of Jezebel James between them, neither Ricci and Posey has had the best luck transitioning to TV stardom so far, of course, but NBC is obviously hoping that grafting familiar faces onto them will convince viewers to at least look at their mutant hybrids. Actually, is it too late to make Ricci and Posey just play conjoined twins? Maybe they could move in with a pair of blonde, not-conjoined twins and you could call it Fourheads.