Roger's Tracey Takes On Review Of The Week

"TRACEY TAKES ON...": SEX (January 18, 1997)

by Roger Reini (rreini@wwnet.com)

The moment we've been waiting for has arrived (at least for those of us in America): the season premiere of "Tracey Takes On..." This week, the topic was sex. Was the wait worth it? Absolutely, positively ... yes!

What's new? The opening and closing sequences are new, as is the theme (which isn't really new at all). There will also be a new character -- Birdie Godsen, right-wing, God-fearing suburbanite.

What's not new? The quality of the writing, the realization of the characters, the willingness to take on anything and everything -- in short, everything that made the first season so good. And the new items just make it better.

We get a taste of that right away as the episode opens. We see Tracey *as herself* telling us, the audience, that she's not going to be telling us about her sex life. According to the episode guide on the TTO website, she'll be introducing every episode in a similar manner. To this I say "hurray!" I like seeing all of her different characters, but I also like to see her as herself. This is a very welcome development.

Last year's theme (which was a nice little number, even if I couldn't understand all of the words) has been replaced by Tracey's 1984 hit, "They Don't Know". We see her lipsyncing to it as herself and as her various characters (the ones who'll be appearing in the episode, to be specific). It's a cute sequence -- actually, it's two sequences, because there's another sequence in the closing theme. Interesting note from the closing sequence: when we see Ruby Romaine, she's pushing a cart at the grocery store. You may recall that the original video for "They Don't Know" included a scene with Tracey pushing a cart at the grocery store. Coincidence, or a nod to the past?

There is still a mixture of short bits and longer sketches. In the short bits, we see Sydney Kross, intense attorney, telling us that she does have a love life; college student Hope fantasizing about her future sex life; Kay telling us about her non-existent sex life; and paranoid housewife Birdie expressing concern about sex education for her children (and taking steps to insure they don't engage in self-education). In the longer sketches, we see omniholic Linda Granger (you name it, she either has been, is, or will be addicted to it) about to lose her status as a recovering sex-aholic at the hands of the cable guy; Fern and Jobie (Julie Kavner) discussing marital relations (or lack thereof) with their husbands; Ruby doing makeup on the set of a hardcore porn flick (including one very inventive application of makeup); and Chic remembering the day he became a man at the hands of the "casaba woman."

Jokes? There were plenty, though most of them are a bit off-color (well, what do you expect with an episode dedicated to sex airing on a pay-cable channel?). One of the best, and one of the most insightful, came in the middle of Ruby's sketch: She asks one of the crew, an old friend of hers (Bruce Kirby), what a "fluffer" is. He explains that it's a woman who gets the male star "ready" for filming (I've paraphrased this significantly <g>). Ruby replies "We had those in the old days; we called them starlets." And it was very amusing to see the young Chic, all boy and somewhat timid, before his first time -- and then to see him afterwards, as the self-described love god we all know.

Finally, at the end of the episode, we get our last treat of the evening: the return of "Go Home!" A nice way to cap off a wonderful episode.

I give it 3 1/2 stars. I would give it 4, but I have to leave some room for improvement.

NEXT WEEK: FANTASY -------------------------------------------------------