Anyone watching Citizen Baines?
 

I am really liking this show. It's on CBS, Saturday nights at 9, which is a horrible time slot, but that's what VCRs and PVRs are for. :)

If you haven't seen it, it stars James Cromwell (Babe, ST: First Contact) as a long-time US Senator who suddenly loses re-election and is out of office for the first time in 24 years.

Now he has to re-connect with his three grown daughters who he has largely been too busy for in the past.

The daughters are what really makes this show. Embeth Davidtz is the eldest daughter, a lawyer who is considerng a run for office herself. Jane Adams ("Happiness") plays (what else) the middle daughter who is struggling with marital problems and a surprise pregnancy. The youngest daughter is Jacinda Barrett (MTV "The Real World- London") a spoiled wild child who has both rebuked the concept of being a senator's daughter and has also exploited it whenever she can.

This is just a really good drama, and I find all the characters are very well-written and acted. It's a great premise for a series and I hope it doesn't die in its time slot.

If you haven't checked it out, give it a watch.

Anyone else seen it?

I fully intended to watch both this show and 'The Education of Max Bickford', but CBS on the weekends is too difficult. They jostle the timeslots all over the place for football, and I can never keep up with what's going on. I bent over backwards to watch the first three episodes of 'Bickford' but ultimately gave up. Unfortunately, I also gave up on 'Baines'. It's hard enough to bring myself to watch CBS to begin with, but the weekends are doubly difficult. Glad to hear it's a good show. Luckily, you can survive in the Saturday CBS slots with a .8 share ... what else are they going to show?

das

I watched the first episode and liked it, but it didn't really give any indication of where the show was going. Sounded like it was just going to be about a long-time senator trying to adjust to normal life again now that he was voted out. Unfortunately, that whole premise sounded less than interesting and haven't watched it since that first episode, even though the first one was good.

The first episode was sort of the spring-board for the show, setting up the premise that he is this guy who has been a Washington big-shot his whole life.

Now the rest of the series is more about the daughters and their lives and how he interacts with them. It isn't very politically oriented. If you like well-written intertwined family dramas like "Once & Again" you'd definitely like this.

I find the daughters especially interesting as they were all raised into this very unusual upbringing and they have all handled it so differently and have grown up into such different people. The eldest daughter is trying to follow in her dad's footsteps but seems scared she will only be overshadowed by him. The middle daughter seems to just want a middle-class housewife lifestyle. And the youngest daughter is accustomed to all the perks she has enjoyed being a senator's daughter and now they will start to end as he isn't as important anymore.

They also seem very close as sisters; you can tell they had to rely a lot on each other since their dad was always away.

Re: Anyone watching Citizen Baines?
 

I want to see this because Cromwell won an Emmy for ahs asylum.