The Odd Couple (TV Series 1970–1975) - IMDb IMDb 7 January 2017 5:00 AM, UTC NEWS There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error Two men, a neat freak and a slob separated from their wives, have to live together despite their differences. Creators: Oscar and Felix appear together on Password and Felix is sure that they can win. 8.7 Oscar, on the advice from girlfriend Nancy, tries being nicer to Felix. In trying too hard to be so, it causes him to sleepwalk and hit Felix on the head with a rolled up newspaper every night. 8.7 Felix and Oscar appear on Let's Make a Deal to get a new bed for Felix after Oscar set his on fire. 8.6 2017 Golden Globes Nominees Back After 20 Years Golden Globes are feeling nostalgic! Find out which Golden Globe winners from more than 20 years ago snagged nominations yet again for their performances this past year.

Don't miss our live coverage of the Golden Globes beginning at 4 p.m. PST on Jan. 8 in our Golden Globes section. a list of 23 titles created 14 Jun 2011 a list of 49 titles created 10 Jul 2011 a list of 27 titles created 09 Mar 2013 a list of 33 titles created 09 Mar 2015 a list of 25 titles created 9 months ago Title: The Odd Couple (1970–1975) 8/10 Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Won 1 Golden Globe. Another 5 wins & 14 nominations. See more awards » Photos The professional and personal misadventures of a psychologist and his family, patients, friends and colleagues. Stars: Bob Newhart, Suzanne Pleshette, Bill Daily A compassionate teacher returns to his inner city high school of his youth to teach a new generation of trouble making kids.

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See full summary » Stars: Linda Lavin, Beth Howland, Vic Tayback An eccentric fun-loving judge presides over an urban night court and all the silliness going on there. Stars: Harry Anderson, John Larroquette, Richard Moll The misadventures of a cantankerous junk dealer and his frustrated son. Stars: Redd Foxx, Demond Wilson, LaWanda Page A nouveau riche, African-American family who move into a luxury apartment building develop close, if occasionally fractious, relationships with other tenants. Stars: Isabel Sanford, Sherman Hemsley, Marla Gibbs A working class bigot constantly squabbles with his family over the important issues of the day. Stars: Carroll O'Connor, Jean Stapleton, Rob Reiner Edit Storyline Felix and Oscar are an extremely odd couple: Felix is anal-retentive, neurotic, precise, and fastidiously clean. Oscar, on the other hand, is the exact opposite: sloppy and casual. They are sharing an apartment together, and their differing lifestyles inevitably lead to some conflicts and laughs.

Written by Murray Chapman <muzzle@cs.uq.oz.au> 24 September 1970 (USA) See more » Also Known As: La extraña pareja See more » Filming Locations: Did You Know? Trivia The original Broadway production of "The Odd Couple" by Neil Simon opened at the Plymouth Theater on March 10, 1965, ran for 966 performances and was nominated for the 1965 Tony Award as Best Play. See more » Goofs In the opening credits for the entire series, the type of luggage Felix is carrying changes. When he is indoors (leaving his apartment or arriving at Oscar's) he is carrying a white suitcase. But when he is walking outside he is not carrying the white suitcase. See more » Quotes (Claremont,USA) – See all my reviews Great comedic concept from Neil Simonthe slob and the neat freak, two divorced men living together in a small Manhattan apartment. But it's really Klugman and Randall that make the premise work so welltheir chemistry is simply superb. Klugman seems a natural for Oscar the slob, with his sour expression and grouchy manner.

Then there's Randall as Felix, with his no-fat body and absurdly picky manner. You just know he never played with mud pies or put on dirty socks. It's amazing the writers get so many hilarious variations on the same themeFelix carrying on with his finicky obsessions to an annoying degree. He just can't seem to help himself. At the same time, we can't help sympathizing with poor Oscar who retaliates by turning his bedroom into a city dump. Actually actor Randall pulls off a really difficult trick: he manages to make Felix annoying without being dislikable. Any hint of the latter and the show would have fallen flat. And who can forget the superb supporting cast, especially hawk-nosed Al Molinaro as Murray, the New York City policeMAN. He fits amiably right in with whatever the shenanigans might be, maybe too amiably for a cop. Then there're the rest of the poker playing characters, plus the girls led by Klugman's real life wife Brett and Father Knows Best's Elinor Donahue.

Since nearly all the hijinks occur in the small apartment, the writers have their work cut out for them, and rise to the occasion they do, with only an occasional misfire. My favorite parts are when some poor put-upon old lady gets enough of Felix's extremes and swats him with her pursehe always looks so surprised, like he can't figure out why. Anyway, it's one of the best character-based comedies of the 70's or any TV decade. 2 of 2 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes Thomas Lennon is Felix to Matthew Perry’s Oscar in CBS’ ‘Odd Couple’ Pilot | Variety Thomas Lennon is Felix to Matthew Perry’s Oscar in CBS’ ‘Odd Couple’ Pilot Jeff Vespa/WireImage March 13, 2014 | 03:30PM PT Thomas Lennon will play fussy Felix Unger to Matthew Perry ’s Oscar Madison in the CBS remake of “ The Odd Couple ,” Variety has learned.

The half-hour multi-camera comedy pilot based on the famous Neil Simon characters comes via CBS Television Studios and is exec produced by Perry, who penned the pilot with “Frasier’s” Joe Keenan, with Eric Tannenbaum and Kim Tannenbaum and Carl Beverly and Sarah Timberman. Lennon, who appeared in “Sean Saves the World” and “Reno 911!,” is also known for his work behind the scenes. He’s an exec producer, with writing partner R. Ben Garant, of Chris Hardwick’s Comedy Central show “@midnight.” He also appeared with Perry on “Friends” and in the 2009 New Line film “17 Again.” Lennon is represented by CAA, Peter Principato at Principato-Young and Karl Austen at JTWAMM. “The Odd Couple” originated as a theater production and was adapted into the 1968 Jack Lemmon-Walter Matthau feature film before seeing two runs on ABC, the first of which starred Tony Randall and Jack Klugman. The second, titled “The New Odd Couple,” went after a minority audience and starred Ron Glass and Demond Wilson.

A femme-focused version of the play opened on Broadway in 1985 and starred Sally Struthers and Rita Moreno. The Odd Couple added depth to a classic “roommates clash” premise · TV Club 10 · The A.V. Club Share Tweet With so many new series popping up on streaming services and DVD every day, it gets harder and harder to keep up with new shows, much less the all-time classics. With TV Club 10 , we point you toward the 10 episodes that best represent a TV series, classic or modern. If you watch these 10, you’ll have a better idea of what that series was about, without having to watch the whole thing. These are not meant to be the 10 best episodes, but rather the 10 most representative episodes. It’s one of the simplest premises in television history: Felix Unger is fussy and obsessively clean, and roommate Oscar Madison is a quick-tempered slob. The Odd Couple, like so much TV, is about people learning to coexist. A more far-fetched series, Gilligan’s Island , examined the theme by stranding seven character types somewhere in the South Pacific.

From 1970 to 1975, The Odd Couple succeeded in adding some depth to the conceit, having two middle-aged men live at 1049 Park Avenue in New York—a real building seen in the opening credits, which ended in early seasons with a narrator asking, “Can two divorced men share an apartment without driving each other crazy?” The series remains one of the rare TV classics that was an adaptation of a successful film (which had, in turn, been adapted from a 1965 Neil Simon play). Co-produced by Garry Marshall (who later created Happy Days and directed Pretty Woman), its writing is sometimes only adequate, and its guest-star gimmicks haven’t all aged well, but the series is a classic because of the joyful chemistry between Tony Randall ’s Felix and Jack Klugman ’s Oscar. The series finale is bittersweet not because The Odd Couple ended too soon, but because the two actors have come to the end of their 114-episode collaboration.

But even cancellation couldn’t keep them apart for long: For decades afterward, they performed together in commercials, in theatrical productions of The Odd Couple, in another Neil Simon play (The Sunshine Boys), and in a 1993 TV-movie sequel, The Odd Couple: Together Again. While it’s unclear how these two characters would have fared as roommates for 25 years, as colleagues, the actors’ differences made for a perfect relationship. The character of Oscar remained pretty much intact from Broadway to television. Walter Matthau originated the role and reprised it in the 1968 film; the grouchy but slightly more teddy-bearish Klugman was Matthau’s first replacement on stage and a logical choice for the TV version. Art Carney was the first Felix, and Jack Lemmon played him in the movie with his usual gift for pathos, but Randall was not such an obvious fit for a character who—at least in the play and the movie—reacts to his divorce by attempting suicide.

At that point, he was mostly known for playing a relentlessly cheerful teacher on one of TV’s earliest sitcoms (Mister Peepers, with Wally Cox) and appearing in several mildly sexual comedies, such as the Rock Hudson–Doris Day vehicle Pillow Talk . The most Tony Randall-like thing Felix ever does on The Odd Couple may be writing a song called “ Happy And Peppy And Bursting With Love ” (in “Felix The Songwriter”). But the casting works. Randall adds the “manic” to Felix’s depression, and the character crashes hard whenever his enthusiasm leads him astray. (“You always go too far,” Oscar says near the end of several episodes.) Felix can be described as a prototype for the ’90s metrosexual—he must have been a pioneering consumer of moisturizers for men—but his character is even more predictive of how chatty society would become about anxieties and neuroses. In his less hyperactive moments, Felix is candid about his hang-ups (to use a word from his era), a trait that bewilders Oscar but would be considered normal today.

Randall was also unusually fit and athletic, another way he was a surprising choice to play a hypochondriac with sinus problems and a bad back. But he integrates his real-life and fictional qualities to come off as a forerunner to Parks And Recreation’s Chris Traeger. Nothing exemplifies Felix’s physical and emotional states as well as Chris’ description of himself in “ The Flu ”: “My body is finely tuned like a microchip, and the flu is like a grain of salt. It could literally shut down the entire system.” The difference between the characters is that Felix encounters something comparable to the flu in almost every episode—plus he doesn’t have access to the antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication that just may be keeping Chris afloat. While Oscar is also an indelible character and Klugman is perfect as a foil, Felix is indisputably the protagonist of the series. He has objectives: to improve himself, to “fix” Oscar, and, above all, to reconcile with his ex-wife, Gloria.

By contrast, Oscar is happy to be rid of his ex-wife, Blanche (played by his real-life spouse, Brett Somers), and has no greater goals than staying out of debt, testing the limits of his gastrointestinal system, and getting laid every once in a while. Matthew Perry should have considered this before taking the Oscar role in CBS’ upcoming reboot of The Odd Couple , but maybe he has some plan to prevent Thomas Lennon’s Felix from upstaging him. Will the new Oscar have bedbugs? Gonorrhea? These two characters have become a template for roommate pairings in countless sitcoms, though regular-guy Oscar might be surprised to learn that he has fewer doppelgängers. Most of the successful roommate sitcoms have pitted someone with Felix’s control-freak characteristics against someone with normal hygiene—see Sheldon and Leonard on The Big Bang Theory, Mark and Jeremy on Peep Show, and Monica and Rachel on Friends. But there have been few attempts to replicate Oscar’s shambles of a bedroom. (Felix, in the first episode: “You ever look under your bed? There’s stuff growing under there!” Oscar: “Will you stop exaggerating?

That’s a little dust.” Felix: “Lawrence Of Arabia couldn’t make it through such dust!”) Charlie and Frank’s disgusting apartment on It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia may be the closest thing, but even Oscar would be appalled by the behavior in episodes such as “ Who Pooped The Bed? ” Remakes of The Odd Couple—ABC and Marshall tried it in 1982 with Ron Glass (Firefly) as Felix and Demond Wilson (Sanford And Son) as Oscar—seemed unlikely when the show first aired. It got marginal ratings during its first year, when it was a single-camera show with a laugh track, which was the norm for ’60s sitcoms, but few of them were pitched at an adult audience. During the same season, The Mary Tyler Moore Show and All In The Family revived the practice of taping shows before a live audience, so The Odd Couple switched to the practice in the fall of 1971. The change energized the performances.

Randall got to indulge in all kinds of stage business (in one episode, he carries on a conversation while chopping the head off and pulling the guts from a fish), and Klugman played irritation with more physical notes (for example, responding to Felix’s head-shaking disapproval by grabbing his skull and forcing him to nod instead). Even with this change, the series never made the primetime top 30. Maybe it was too New York centric, and maybe people weren’t yet ready to find the humor in divorce. Another possibility: The Odd Couple didn’t have a strong supporting cast, which put it against the trend toward ensemble sitcoms in the ’70s. Al Molinaro’s doofus cop Murray is the only other character that appears in even half the episodes, though Garry Marshall’s sister Penny is memorable in a couple dozen outings as Myrna, Oscar’s schlumpy secretary. The simplest explanation is that third-place ABC never came up with a good companion series, so The Odd Couple spent most of its run on Friday nights with shows such as The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family. ABC finally canceled The Odd Couple after it figured out how to get big ratings with teen-oriented shows such as Happy Days.

In the series finale, Felix begs Oscar to “help me un-finick myself,” and he remarries Gloria. A few months later, the show went into syndicated reruns and became a classic, proving that a simple premise and strong characters can be more appealing in the long run than the controversial topics of a once-hot show like Maude. Co-dependent relationships never go out of style. Here are 10 episodes in which Felix and Oscar stop just short of driving each other crazy. “Blackout” (season one, episode 13): As in the play and the movie, Felix and Oscar’s poker-playing buddies get a lot of screen time in the show’s first season. In “Blackout,” the gang suspects Oscar of theft when a $50 bill goes missing during a brief power failure. Murray, whose large nose inspires one-liners throughout the series, gets a character-defining speech: “Somebody’s gotta enforce the law. If we took crime as a joke, we’d be clowns instead of policemen.” Everyone just stares at him, resisting the temptation to deliver a punchline. The only female role in the episode, that of a Swedish maid, entails looking sexy and acting dumb.

Hey, maybe that’s another reason the show didn’t race up the ratings charts. “Sleepwalker” (season two, episode four): The live-audience version of the show hits its stride. Oscar tries to be nicer to “Mr. Clean” after admitting to his girlfriend, “He lives inside me like a tapeworm, eating away my nerve endings!” Felix’s response to Oscar’s more tolerant attitude: “Instead of working at not being annoyed at me, you should stop being annoying to me.” But Oscar’s repressed anger comes out every night, when he sleepwalks and attacks his roommate with a rolled-up magazine. The pair work things out, but only after one of Felix’s descents into self-pity. (“There is something in me that provokes such terrible hatred… I’m a bad seed, Oscar!”) This episode also firmly establishes that Felix does not like pits in his orange juice. Then again, who does? “Fat Farm” (season two, episode eight): Proving he’s in top shape, Felix stands on his head and jumps onto a desk (earning Randall applause from the audience), while Oscar can barely make it through a couple of push-ups. After some reluctance (“I like my blubber!

It keeps me warm, it keeps me company, it keeps my pants up!”), Oscar comes along for Felix’s annual two-week stay at a health camp that serves imaginary desserts and bans food from the bedrooms. Soon Oscar discovers a delicatessen just down the road and undertakes a smuggling operation. Will Felix rat him out? “Password” (season three, episode 11): In the show’s most famous (if not necessarily funniest) episode, Felix and Oscar appear on the ABC daytime game show Password. Password is a pretty simple game for the intellectual Felix, but he complicates things by giving Oscar the clue “Aristophanes” for “birds.” Oscar is understandably frustrated: “If Charlie Chan had these clues, he’d be running a laundry!” Despite this fiasco, several other episodes feature the pair on television shows—including another ABC game show, Let’s Make A Deal—with Oscar always being mortified by his too-intense roommate.

“My Strife In Court” (season three, episode 19): This is the one in which amateur defense attorney Felix, representing himself and Oscar in a ticket-scalping case, yells at a witness, “When you assume, you make an ass of you and me!” Even the crusty old judge is impressed, but for no reason other than the love of his own voice, Felix keeps going and publicly ridicules his roommate. Oscar gets revenge by putting Felix on the stand and providing viewers with some backstory. Oscar: “What did your school yearbook say about you?” Felix, reluctantly: “I was voted the boy most likely to interrupt.” We also learn that Felix is responsible for a legal precedent: Gloria was the first woman in New York to be granted a divorce on the grounds of her spouse’s “pestiness.” “Take My Furniture, Please” (season three, episode 22): Felix redecorates the apartment with modern furniture, including chairs shaped like giant hands, a needlessly complicated clock, and a stylish but non-functional desk. Oscar replaces it all with décor that suggests a fraternity house for guys in their 80s. “Ratso Rizzo had a cuter apartment,” Felix complains to Oscar.

“You’ve tried many ways to get me out of here. You’ve tried tricks. You’ve tried anger. You’ve even tried physical expulsion. You finally succeeded with the old standby: bad taste.” Also of note: The Mary Tyler Moore Show used the same plot the season before (“The Square-Shaped Room”), with Rhoda redecorating Lou’s house in a modern style. He didn’t like it, either. “Gloria Moves In” (season four, episode one): One of the darkest episodes of the series has Gloria staying at Felix and Oscar’s apartment for a few days while her house is being painted. Felix naturally thinks this is a chance to win her back, but he immediately alienates her by criticizing her cooking (runny eggs and more pits in the orange juice!). Just as in the play that started it all, she throws him out of his own home. Though Oscar makes a subtle reference to Felix’s previous suicide attempt, this time his roommate merely gets stupendously drunk and ruins Oscar’s “reunion” poker game with their pals from the first season.

It’s a pretty humorous delivery when Felix deals cards and says, “Here comes the card train, choo-choo-choo,” but his character is never more pathetic than at the end of “Gloria Moves In.” “Last Tango In Newark” (season four, episode two): The Odd Couple featured a lot of ABC personalities and sports figures (including Howard Cosell, Alex Karras, Bobby Riggs, and Billie Jean King), so it was only fair that Randall occasionally got to interact with guest stars from opera and ballet. “Last Tango” has New York City Ballet principal dancer Edward Villella improbably letting Felix co-teach a group of children in rehearsal for Swan Lake. Felix seizes the lead male role when Villella is late for a performance, with Randall doing a slightly hammy turn while reminding viewers that his first big break was a dance duet in a 1953 Broadway musical called Oh, Captain! Felix also gets Oscar to attend a ballet class and stumble through the role of “the hunter” onstage. (Felix: “Why won’t you go to ballet appreciation class? Because there’s a stigma attached?

I go.” Oscar: “That’s the stigma.”) “The Flying Felix” (season four, episode 16): Fear of flying was a socially acceptable neurosis long before everyone started sharing stories about anxiety attacks. Leave it to Felix to take his phobia to the limit, freaking out on a jet that hasn’t left the runway. This episode is a good illustration of the big difference between Felix and another famous control freak, Sheldon Cooper of The Big Bang Theory . Sheldon, who also shows signs of Asperger’s syndrome, is oblivious to social cues, but Felix has the opposite problem, overreacting to anything that he perceives as a slight. When the flight attendant (remember it’s The Odd Couple, so it’s a ditzy stewardess) gets a bit impatient with him, he complains to Oscar: “Sarcasm. That certainly inspires confidence.” Oscar’s reasonable response: “You inspire sarcasm.” After Felix bolts from the plane, he and Oscar end up on a chartered flight, leading to one of the show’s most memorable sight gags. Also: Teri Garr has a bit part selling insurance to Felix, Oscar, and a priest.

“New York’s Oddest” (season four, episode 21): In the last two seasons, Felix’s ambitions go far beyond his spotless kitchen. He tries to get New Yorkers to be more compassionate when he and Oscar are trapped on a stuck train in “The Subway Story,” he pushes Oscar into running for the city council in “The Odd Candidate,” and he organizes fellow tenants in the show’s most epic installment, “The Rent Strike.” In “New York’s Oddest,” he organizes a civilian crime patrol for his building and immediately turns into The Andy Griffith Show’s Barney Fife, boasting, “I can smell a crime from a mile away.” Inevitably, his neighbors get so sick of Felix’s antics they side with a burglar over the whistle-blowing pest. But in all of the “Felix goes big” episodes, Oscar comes to his defense when everyone else turns against him.

As Randall and Klugman explain on the album The Odd Couple Sings , “When other friendships have been forgot, ours will still be hot.” And if you like those, here are 10 more: “The Laundry Orgy” (season one, episode one); “The Jury Story” (season one, episode four); “The Breakup” (season one, episode five); “Being Divorced Is Never Having To Say I Do” (season two, episode 11); “The Pen Is Mightier Than The Pencil” (season three, episode four); “The Odd Monks” (season three, episode five); “The Odd Couples” (season three, episode seven); “The New Car” (season four, episode six); “The Rent Strike” (season five, episode 17); “Felix Remarries” (season five, episode 22). Availability: The complete series is available on DVD, and many full episodes are on YouTube. Next time: They made a Twilight Zone in the ‘80s? Yeah! And it wasn’t half-bad either! Phil Dyess-Nugent tells you which episodes to check out from it.

Willa Paskin Willa Paskin is Slate’s television critic. CBS presumably selected The Odd Couple as its Two and a Half Men heir apparent because it seems reliable. It’s a straightforward concept with a proven track record. (Forgetting the 1980s reboot of the series, in which Oscar and Felix were played by black actors , which only lasted one season.) Get two capable actors involved—in this case, Matthew Perry as Oscar and Thomas Lennon as Felix—and, wham bam, that seems like the ideal CBS sitcom: a multicamera workhorse. But despite plundering Simon’s original language and bits and pieces from each of the previous adaptations, the new The Odd Couple has no rhythm, mostly for fear of showing two men dancing together too well. The Odd Couple has always had a complicated relationship with both masculinity and homosexuality—subjects that are, respectively, the text and subtext of much of its humor. The central provocation of the show, right there in its title, is the unexpected closeness of two men. Oscar and Felix, heterosexual divorcés with diametrically opposed foibles and comportments, both confound and complement each other.

They couldn’t make it work with their wives but, somehow, seem to be making it work with one another. As homosexuality has become less stigmatized, one might imagine that The Odd Couple would get funnier, having more material to play with and more freedom to do so. Instead, it has only gotten more retro. To judge from the new series, in the 50 years since The Odd Couple debuted, the “right way” to be a straight man has seriously narrowed. Advertisement Homosexuality is not explicitly mentioned in the movie , which nonetheless milks much of its humor from Felix’s effete mannerisms. Felix, despondent and suicidal because his wife has left him, goes to live in his pal Oscar’s palatial, filthy Upper West Side apartment, where he promptly creates order and starts cranking out home-cooked meals. In one sequence, Oscar comes home late for a dinner Felix has been slaving over, a comedic set piece that revolves around Felix playing the part of the nagging wife and Oscar the part of the irresponsible husband—even as it stays safely in bounds because the meal Felix is preparing is for the guys’ two hot-to-trot female neighbors. Get Slate in your inbox.

But even as the movie wrings laughs from Felix’s “girly” hang-ups, the movie permits that Felix really is straight, overly concerned about the state of the meatloaf as he may be. Felix may play the part of the wife, but that’s only until later in the night, when he plays the part of the spoiler—cock-blocking Oscar like only someone with a cock can block. (Jack Lemmon made a specialty of playing unconventional heterosexuals, well-meaning and surprisingly pervy men other guys underestimated at their own expense.) The original The Odd Couple may assume heterosexuality is the default status of all men, but at least its understanding of masculinity is vast enough that Felix Unger can fit comfortably inside. The ’70s TV version , which took place after Stonewall, mentions homosexuality in its first scene. Klugman’s Oscar comes racing home to tell Randall’s Felix that he’s scored them a date with their neighbors. Felix thinks Oscar has been overly pushy about it. “Pushy is the way it’s done!” Oscar retorts. “It’s custom all over the world.

Man pursue woman, except on a few Polynesian islands and a couple bars in Greenwich Village.” If Klugman’s Oscar is overly eager to communicate to the audience that these two co-habiting bachelors are no more than that, at least Randall’s Felix—obsessed with vacuuming and placing one’s underwear on hangers—is also more sexual and smoother than in he is in film. (The show also took place after the sexual revolution.) Felix may not be as predatory as Oscar, but he’s got a way with women: He wins the neighbors over with shared interests that include laundry. By the early ’70s, being in touch with one’s feminine side might just get one laid. Sure, he says he’s emotionally distraught, but did you see how many TVs he has? In the new version of the show , Felix and Oscar are old college friends who haven’t seen much of each other lately. A newly dumped Felix shows up sobbing on Oscar’s dirty doorstep, where Oscar was just recently taping his sports radio show in his boxers and scamming on the hot downstairs neighbor (Leslie Bibb).

In short order, Felix insinuates himself into Oscar’s life, cleaning and cooking and ruining Oscar’s attempts to have casual sex. Ultimately, the two realize that they need each other: Felix needs to loosen up; Oscar needs to open up. Advertisement But the new The Odd Couple doesn’t really think Felix and Oscar are equally flawed. Oscar may be filthy, but he is living the platonic ideal of bachelordom—at least as that ideal is presented in beer commercials and certain sitcoms. (Not so long ago, CBS aired How to Be a Gentleman , a show that was essentially The Odd Couple, if Felix were in boot camp to be Oscar.) Oscar lives in a nice, characterless apartment that he keeps as messy as he likes, except for the one pristine corner full of televisions. In this man cave he drinks beer, plays poker, has meaningless sex, and watches sports all day. Sure, he says he’s emotionally distraught, but did you see how many TVs he has?

(As a poker buddy observes, longing in his voice: You either get the televisions, or you get the wife.) As a counterpoint, there is Felix, who, fine, is in touch with his feelings, but is also a mess of annoying tics and quirks, unable to hit on women or get over his allergies. For poker night, he decides to cook up gazpacho and vegan chicken tenders. Who cooks fake meat for real men? “He seems kind of gay,” one of Oscar’s friends observes. “He seems extremely gay,” Oscar counters. “But he’s not.” Top Comment New 'Odd Couple' comes to CBS in sitcom reboot - Celebrities - NorthJersey.com © 2016 North Jersey Media Group February 19, 2015 Last updated: Thursday, February 19, 2015, 9:22 AM New 'Odd Couple' comes to CBS in sitcom reboot By JIM BECKERMAN The Record THE ODD COUPLE: 8:30 tonight, CBS Thomas Lennon, left, and Matthew Perry are the newest reincarnations of Felix Unger and Oscar Madison. You don't own the role of Felix Unger, Thomas Lennon discovered.

You just keep it clean for the next guy. Lennon, at first, was dubious about taking on the role of the neat freak played to perfection by Tony Randall in the original 1970s "Odd Couple" sitcom, based on Neil Simon's play and movie. But Lennon, who plays the new Felix to Matthew Perry's new Oscar Madison in the new CBS reboot of "The Odd Couple," premiering at 8:30 tonight, has come to take the long view. "My first thought was, 'You cannot play Felix Unger; that can't be done,' " says Lennon, who created his own iconic character, Lt. Jim Dangle, in the long-running "Reno 911!" series on Comedy Central.

"Tony Randall locked that up a long time ago." But then he began to think about the history of the character — who, after all, had been played pre-Randall by Art Carney (Broadway, 1965) and Jack Lemmon (the 1968 movie), and was played post-Randall by Frank Nelson (voice talent in the 1975 cartoon series "The Oddball Couple"), Ron Glass (in the 1982 reboot "The New Odd Couple") and Sally Struthers (in Simon's distaff version, "The Female Odd Couple," which opened on Broadway in 1985). "So I'm seventh," Lennon says. "Well, that's good. Lucky number seven.

But I thought, you know what, maybe there is actually something new that I could bring if I don't get it in my head where I'm just trying to re-create what Tony Randall did." Related: Neil Simon's brother, roomie inspired a 50-year phenomenon The familiarity of the original show is both a blessing and a curse to the team who have created this redo, complete with a funky update of the original Neal Hefti theme music by New Orleans musician Trombone Shorty, and supporting roles for Wendell Pierce ("Treme"), Lindsay Sloane ("Sabrina, the Teenage Witch") and Yvette Nicole Brown ("Community"). On the one hand, the premise is pre-sold: everyone knows that "The Odd Couple" is about two divorced men, fussy Felix and sloppy Oscar, who drive each other crazy when they share an apartment. On the other hand, viewers have very specific expectations about these characters, played definitively for most people by the late actors Randall and Jack Klugman, respectively. "It's either gonna grab you right away, or it's gonna be a divider, based on your passion for Tony Randall," Lennon says. "But you should know that my passion for Tony Randall is probably unrivaled in the world.

There's no bigger 'Odd Couple' fan than me." What Lennon brings to the part of Felix is — bluntly — himself. He's the first to say that the overlap is frightening. "The Venn diagram between me and Felix Unger looks a lot like a circle," he says. "The two circles would combine to be one ball. It's the OCD thing." Beyond all this, "The Odd Couple" depends on the chemistry between the two leads for its success. Again, Lennon says, they have realism on their side. His relationship with Matthew Perry ("Friends"), who spearheaded this reboot, has a natural Felix-and-Oscar component. "We are good friends," says Lennon, who worked with Perry before in the film "17 Again." "But there's also — and he will positively deny this, but it's true — I know that the Felix-isms in my natural life bug him a little bit." The true Odd Couple relationship in Lennon's life is with his writing partner of more than 20 years, Robert Ben Garant, co-creator of "Reno 911!" (he also played Travis Junior in the series).

The two have been, so to speak, one of the power couples of Hollywood: among their other credits are the shows "The State" and "Viva Variety," and their screenplays for the "Night at the Museum" films. "That relationship is between two Felixes," says Lennon, 44, originally from Oak Park, Ill. "That's what's called the Double-Felix. He and I are absolutely Type A, OCD guys … We're both absolutely compulsive writers. Literally we write anytime we're sitting down." Even so, some of the most brilliant stuff in "Reno 911!," the inspired sendup of the "Cops" reality show featuring a team of spectacularly inept police officers, was made up on the spot. On this show, unlike "The Odd Couple," improv was king. "There's one weird one people quote to me a lot," he recalls. "I was wearing these brand-new white ostrich cowboy boots, and I started doing this weird little dance in the parking lot, and I said, 'I'm just goofin'. I'm just new-boot goofin' .' It was the most offhanded thing.

And now people say 'new-boot goofin' ' to me like some sort of mantra. I got this email from Ben Stiller and the whole subject of the email was, 'New-boot goofin.' ' Haha." Partly, that line was funny because of the character: Lt. Dangle, the nearly-unstereotypical gay cop (the short-shorts, now a popular Halloween costume, are the giveaway). Which brings us back to "The Odd Couple," whose premise of two guys sharing an apartment has always raised eyebrows. "Homosexuals will enjoy it — for obvious reasons," wrote The New York Times in its 1965 review of the play. In the new version, the subject is for the first time mentioned directly. "He seems a little gay," Pierce's Teddy says of Lennon's Felix. "No, he seems incredibly gay," Perry's Oscar corrects him. At the end of the day, the two guys in the 2015 "Odd Couple" redux are still straight. But between Felix and Lt. Dangle, Lennon (he's married to actress Jenny Robertson; they have one child) has built himself some serious gay cred. "I'm sort of an accidental gay icon," he says.

"Certainly on Halloween." Email: beckerman@northjersey.com The Odd Couple - Classic TV Database The Odd Couple Added to the database on September 17, 2008 Rate Cast & Characters | Broadcast History | Theme Song | DVDs | Watch Episodes | Photos | Trivia | Comments The Odd Couple is a sitcom that aired on ABC from 1970 until 1975 that starred Tony Randall as Felix Unger and Jack Klugman as Oscar Madison, based upon the play of the same name, which was written by Neil Simon. Felix and Oscar are two divorced men. Felix is a neat freak while Oscar is sloppy and casual. They share a Manhattan apartment, and their different lifestyles inevitably lead to conflicts and laughs. Jack Klugman and Tony Randall give an advanced course in chemistry in the auspicious first season of The Odd Couple, which would only get better as the veteran character actors made themselves at home in their signature roles and the series switched from a laugh track to a live audience.

In these first episodes, The Odd Couple hews pretty much to the voice and spirit of Neil Simon's play about mismatched roommates, sloppy sportswriter Oscar Madison and "miserable, picky, irritating" photographer Felix Unger ("That was the point," defends series executive producer and writer Garry Marshall, who provides lively audio introductions for each episode and commentary for the pilot). Playing pivotal roles this first season are Felix and Oscar's poker playing buddies, Murray the cop (Al Molinaro), Vinnie, Roy, and Speed, the fabulous Pigeon sisters (Monica Evans and Carole Shelley reprising their Broadway and film roles), and, of course, Neil Hefti's jaunty, jazzy theme, which was introduced in the 1968 film. As with M*A*S*H, the series would establish its own identity and supplant previous incarnations in the public's consciousness. The Odd Couple was never a ratings smash before it became a syndication staple.

Cast and aharacters Tony Randell as Felix Unger Jack Klugman as Oscar Madison Al Molinaro as Murray Greshner Garry Walberg as Speed (1970-1974) Larry Gelman as Vinnie Archie Hahn as Roger (1973-1974) Brett Somers as Blanche Madison Ryan McDonald as Roy (1970-1971) Joan Hotchkis as Dr.

Nancy Cunningham (1970-1972) Janis Hansen as Gloris Ulger (1971-1975) First Telecast: September 24, 1970 Last Telecast: Mar 7, 1975 Original Network: September 1970- January 1971, ABC, Thursday 9:30-10:00pm Janruary 1971- June 1973, ABC, Friday 9:30-10:00pm June 1973- January 1974, ABC, Friday 8:30-9:00pm January 1974- September 1974, ABC, Friday 9:30-10:00pm September 1974- January 1975, ABC, Thursday 8:00-8:30pm January 1975- March 1975, ABC, Friday 9:30-10:00pm Listen to theme song: {mp3}TheOddCouple{/mp3} Purchase theme

 song from Amazon.com: Purchase theme on The Odd Couple Trivia The Odd Couple TV show was based upon a hit Broadway play written by Neil Simon.

There was also an Odd Couple theatrical movie in 1968 which starred Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon. In the first season the Odd Couple was produced in the same apartment that was used in the movie. It was shot with just one camera and incorporated a laugh track. That all changed in season two when the filming moved to a studio with the standard three cameras and a live audience providing the laughs. For the first few episodes, the series title was "Neil Simon's The Odd Couple". Neil was upset about that because it erroneously gave the impression that he was the script writer for the TV series. The title was shortened to "The Odd Couple" but Neil continued to receive credit as the writer of the play. After a couple of seasons, Neil came to like the TV version and even appeared as himself on one episode! Monty Hall who is perhaps best known as the host of the hit game show, "Let's Make A Deal", appeared on the Odd Couple. While he played himself, his appearance was explained by the writers having him be the old college roommate of Oscar Madison. Felix's father was an optometrist and one of his patients was Oscar's father. Felix's kids on the show were neame Edna and Leonard.

Tony Randall's real-life sister was named Edna and Tony's real first name was Leonard. Blanche Madison was Oscar's ex-wife and was played by Brett Somers who was Jack Klugman's wife in real life! Unfortunately, real life followed fantasy because Jack and Brett broke up during the Odd Couple's time on the air! Oscar was a sports writer for the "New York Herald". There had once been a real newspaper titled the "New York Herald-Tribune" but it went out of business several years before the Odd Couple TV show hit the air. Oscar Madison had a real hate relationship going on with TV sports personality Howard Cosell who played himself on a couple of the Odd Couple episodes. Both Oscar Madison's fictional abrasive personality and Howard Cosell's real-life harsh character made for some very entertaining arguments! Those two episodes substantially increased the show's ratings and Howard Cosell found himself guest-starring on many other TV series! Tony Randall won an Emmy Award for his role as Felix Unger after the Odd Couple had ended. Perhaps he was experiencing being "typecast" as many actors do after a long-run TV series. As he was accepting the Emmy he said that he wished he had a job!

Typecasting certainly didn't seem to hurt Jack Klugman's career! Within nineteen months after the final episode of the Odd Couple aired, Jack appeared in a TV movie as a medical examiner named "Doctor Quincy". After three more TV movies, the "Quincy, M.E." became its own weekly TV series that aired for another 144 episodes! Jack also starred in a two season series titled, "You Again?" just a few years after Quincy, M.E. ended. The Odd Couple writers just couldn't get it straight when trying to explain how Felix and Oscar had met. The opening narration stated that they were friends as kids. Then, on several episodes, it was said that they met in the Army! One of the episodes inferred that they had served on a jury together for a sensationalized murder trial! That was a reference to the 1957 film, "12 Angry Men" where Jack Klugman played the role as a juror. So take your pick as to how they met. At least they did remove the reference to meeting as kids from the opening narrative in the third season. In another goof, on one episode Felix and Oscar's address is mentioned as "74th Street and Central Park West".

Then on another episode, it's stated as "1049 Park Avenue"! There were two actors who made the transition from the 1968 movie to the TV series. Monica Evans and Carole Shelley played the "Pigeon Sisters" in both but only stayed for the first season of the TV show. The Odd Couple's time slot was changed five times during its five season run. It was fortunate in that it didn't find itself competing with any real hit series on the other networks until its final season when CBS aired "The Waltons" in its slot! Tagged under: Wendell Pierce enjoys 'challenge' of sitcom work in CBS' 'The Odd Couple' remake | NOLA.com Wendell Pierce enjoys 'challenge' of sitcom work in CBS' 'The Odd Couple' remake PILOT New Orleans' Troy "Trombone Shorty" Andrews has remade Neal Hefti's beloved theme into slinky, bass-and-trombone-driven funk. New Orleans native Wendell Pierce ("The Wire," " Treme ") plays a key supporting role as Madison's agent and poker pal Teddy.

And a less-obvious connection comes through Lennon, whose family fell in love with New Orleans (residing temporarily in a Pontalba apartment) while he was here shooting the 2013 feature " Hell Baby ." "He looooves New Orleans," said Pierce, during the Winter TV Tour in Hollywood. So, no surprise that the actors have a connection that sometimes leads to on- and off-set hilarity for both. In fact, Lennon said Pierce is the "Odd Couple" cast member who is most likely to crack him up and cause him to break character. Pierce returned the compliment. "He's a very erudite man, loves visual art, loves New Orleans," Pierce said of Lennon. "He makes me crack up. He knows that I'm working, and he knows that I want to get it right and all that, but he gives me a look and we both start cracking up. "There have been a couple of times with me and Thomas that have been like Tim Conway and Harvey Korman on 'The Carole Burnett Show.'" Perry, a "Friends" veteran, can have the same effect, Pierce said. "Matthew cracks me up, too," Pierce said. "Matthew really knows the craft of the camera.

We can do a scene and be off on another part of the set and he'll go (whispering), 'Yeah, I'm sorry I messed up that line.' And I'll go, 'Hey, wait.' And he'll say, 'Oh, they're shooting over there. Nobody's listening to us.' It's that sort of fun, that sort of play." The concept of "play" works a couple of ways for Pierce on this project. The series, like its 1970s ABC ancestor starring Tony Randall and Jack Klugman, is shot in front of a live studio audience, or like a little play with minimal stop-and-start for the three or four cameras capturing the episode. For the NOCCA - and Juilliard-trained actor, it's a departure from the films ("Selma") and single-camera TV series ("Suits," "Ray Donovan") he's been involved with since "Treme." As well, he said, shooting "The Odd Couple" is very much akin to a theater experience.

Pierce, who said he tries to do at least one legit play a year around his film and TV work - he's set to appear in a March production in Brooklyn of Jackie Alexander's New Orleans-set play " Brothers from the Bottom " - called sitcom work "more of a challenge, but in the best way." "It's more of challenge for me because it forces me to think faster," he said. "To make choices faster and not constantly go back and forth over something. You have to be confident in your choices because you know the character you've developed. The real challenge for me is try to be as quick-witted as Matthew and Thomas and still be relaxed. "It's that challenge, at the speed of light." Bob Daily, a veteran of NBC's classic "Frasier," is show-running executive producer on "The Odd Couple." Garry Marshall, who brought the Randall-Klugman version of the show to TV (and then the likes of "Happy Days" and "Mork & Mindy" behind it), is an executive consultant on the series.

"The Odd Couple" shoots at CBS Studio Center in Los Angeles, home to dozens of hit sitcoms over the years, including "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," "The Bob Newhart Show" and "Seinfeld." "The writing is so good," Pierce said. "I've done three-camera comedies before, but the writing is so good here. Every 'alt' they pitch -- every alternative line the writers pitch in rehearsal -- tops the one before it. "It's a great combination of being very precise with the language but also being improvisational. They give you the freedom within it to do what you want to do, but you always know you have this great foundation of well-written scenes. "It's 'Let's play.' It's like a really well-written score and all you have to do is be in tune and the music will sing." Got a TV question? Contact Dave Walker at dwalker@nola.com or 504.826.3429. Read more TV coverage at NOLA.com/tv. He's @DaveWalkerTV on Twitter, and Dave Walker TV on Facebook.

Most Read Stuart Armstrong would love Scotland call of duty - but his priority is to be a game Bhoy for Celtic (From Evening Times) Stuart Armstrong would love Scotland call of duty - but his priority is to be a game Bhoy for Celtic / Ronnie Cully , Senior Sports Writer THEY could be considered Celtic's Odd Couple, a nod to the chalk-and-cheese flatmates, Felix Unger and Oscar Madison, in the Neil Simon play, film and TV series. But while Stuart Armstrong and Gary Mackay-Steven may be diverse characters away from the pitch - the former studying for his law degree, the latter working hard to improve his personal best on his Playstation - they have been as one when it has come to improving Ronny Deila's side since they arrived from Dundee United at the end of the January transfer window. They have even managed to share the same disappointment in being left out of Gordon Strachan's squad for the matches against Northern Ireland tonight and Gibraltar on Sunday. But this omission has allowed Armstrong and Mackay-Steven a bit more time to settle into the flat they have moved into together.

The training centre at Lennoxtown has been thinly populated this week with no fewer than 12 first team squad Bhoys - Scott Brown, James Forrest, Craig Gordon, Nir Bitton, Jason Denayer, Emilio Izaguirre, John Guidetti, Stefan Johansen, Anthony Stokes, Aleksander Tonev, Liam Henderson and Mubarak Wakaso - away on international duty. Those left behind are about to be given a long weekend off before they return on Monday to begin preparations for the following Friday's SPFL game against St Mirren. Chances are that Armstrong will have his head buried deep into his reference books during this down time while his 'roomy' Mackay-Steven is up north visiting friends and family in Thurso. That may mean the law books have to give way to the cookery version as Armstrong revealed Mackay-Steven is the one who generally assumes the domestic goddess responsibilities. He said: "This is the first time we've hared a flat together, so it's the first chance to see his cooking and cleaning skills. They are poor." Given how much importance Deila attaches to diet, Mackay-Steven may be due for a crash course in the finer aspects of culinary craft.

But considering how well the duo have played since arriving at the club, they appear to be fare-ing fine. Now they are only hungry for success, having been forced to sit on the sidelines as their new team-mates defeated their old team-mates to lift the League Cup then knock them out of the Scottish Cup. The league championship is the one trophy Armstrong and Mackay-Steven can get their hands on, and a couple of winners' medals would look good in their new abode. Maintaining their form between now and the end of the season - which, for them, is only 10 games away - could also have the bonus of a recall to the Scotland squad for the Euro 2016 qualifier against the Republic of Ireland in June. Mind you, that could also throw up an unusual fixture clash for Armstrong as he is due to sit his end-of-term law course exams around that time. He never bought into the widely-held theory that, simply by moving to Celtic, the chances of a call-up would be enhanced. The attacking midfielder appreciates how strong Scotland are in that department. So being left out this week did not hit him too hard.

Armstrong does concede, however, that, having had a small taste of it when still with United, he is hungry for more. "Every player has that ambition to play for Scotland," the 22 year-old told the Celtic View. "I have had little tasters of it before, being on the bench or in squads, which is nice. "You get to see the quality that is there and play with players who have been at that level for a number of years. "Even training with the boys here and playing alongside guys like Scott Brown is encouraging and helps you develop as a player. "But I don't want to get too far ahead of myself. "I am happy with the start I have made. "It could have been better, in certain respects. But it could have been a lot worse, so I am very happy about how it has gone so far." There have been so many new things to experience and to which Armstrong has had adjust. One more is about to hit him as Monday will be the first time he has been sitting in the dressing room when so many of his team-mates come in bursting with stories about what happened when they were away on international duty. Armstrong will listen intently, but not with envy.

"Scotland would be very exciting, but for now it's just about focusing on club form," he explained. "If you take care of that, Scotland takes care of itself." And with that, his case rests. Tony Randall Fondly remembered as Felix Unger in TV&apos;s The Odd Couple (From HeraldScotland) Jobs Business Directory Local Info Dating Buy Sell Book an Ad Tony Randall Fondly remembered as Felix Unger in TV's The Odd Couple Tony Randall will be best remembered as Felix Unger, from the television version of The Odd Couple, though he was also a great raconteur, appearing on Johnny Carson and David Letterman's shows more than 100 times each, and he appeared in dozens of films, with co-starring roles in three Rock Hudson-Doris Day comedies. Randall specialised in sophisticated, but rather fussy best friends, like Felix, and helped lay the foundations for such contemporary characters as Frasier and Niles Crane. He denied he was like Felix and slightly resented the typecasting success brought, though he loved Manhattan, art, opera and serious theatre, spending $1m of his own money to found the National Actors Theatre in 1991.

When Ewan McGregor and Renee Zellweger paid homage to the Hudson-Day sex comedies last year in Down with Love, David Hyde Pierce, who plays Niles on Frasier, took on the role of McGregor's best friend that would once have been played by Randall, while Randall played Zellweger's boss. Loading article content Hearing of his death, Hyde Pierce said: ''We've lost a great actor, a great comedian, and a great role model.'' Then, most tellingly, he added: ''Who am I going to steal from now?'' Randall had a triple heart by-pass in December, an operation from which he never fully recovered. He died in his sleep in hospital in New York on Monday. Theatre lights were dimmed on Broadway on Tuesday night and American television repeated episodes of The Odd Couple as a mark of respect. He was born Leonard Rosenberg, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1920, the son of an art dealer, and decided at an early age that he wanted to be an actor.

His early stage career was interrupted by service in the Signal Corps during the Second World War, after which he worked regularly on radio and made the breakthrough on television - playing a best friend - on the sitcom Mr Peepers in the early fifties. Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957) provided him with a leading film role as a neurotic advertising executive who recruits a Hollywood sex symbol, played by Jayne Mansfield, to promote lipstick. Director Frank Tashlin compared directing Randall to playing a Stradivarius. He starred opposite Debbie Reynolds in The Mating Game (1959), an Americanisation of H E Bates's The Darling Buds of May. More often Randall provided support to the leading man, most notably Rock Hudson in Pillow Talk (1959), Lover Come Back (1961) and Send Me No Flowers (1964).

He co-starred with Marilyn Monroe and Yves Montand in Let's Make Love (1960), played eight different roles in 7 Faces of Dr Lao (1964), he was Hercule Poirot in The Alphabet Murders (1965) and he provided the voice of the Brain Gremlin in Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990). Felix Unger will, however, be regarded as his greatest role, even though The Odd Couple was not a hit when first shown in the early seventies. Neil Simon's comedy about two ill-matched, male, middle-aged flatmates began life as a play with Art Carney as Felix and Walter Matthau as the slobbish Oscar Madison in the original 1965 Broadway production. A film followed in 1968 with Jack Lemmon as Felix and Matthau reprising the role of Oscar, and the television series arrived two years later, with Randall as Felix and Jack Klugman as Oscar.

It ran for five years and 114 episodes without ever making the US TV Top 20, an act of faith by the network that would be unlikely in today's climate, even though repeat screenings have become enormously popular. There was a black sitcom version, a female stage version, and even a cartoon version, The Oddball Couple, about a slobbish dog called Scruffy and an uptight, tidy cat called Spiffy. Randall and Klugman were reunited in a TV movie The Odd Couple: Together Again in 1993 and the process came virtually full circle with Lemmon and Matthau in The Odd Couple II in 1998. Randall met his first wife, Florence Gibbs, when they were students. They were married 54 years, until her death in 1992. Three years later he married Heather Harlan, an actress 50 years his junior, and in 1997 he became a father for the first time. A second child followed. ''It's the greatest joy I've ever known,'' he said. He is survived by his wife, daughter and son.

Tony Randall, actor; born February 26, 1920, died May 17, 2004.

Question: Flatmates Felix Unger and Oscar Madison are the central characters in which play, film and TV series?
Answer: The Odd Couple