cathylr The first season showed some potential. Without having made me laugh out loud, it made me smile a few times and I found some interest in the characters. Seasons 2 to 5 were very funny, with many none sense yet witty situations. Season 5 ended in a way that I didn´t quite like as some characters started acting in a foolish (not funny) way, which led to season 6, introducing new characters, that I simply didn´t like. I therefore did not carry on watching past the first episodes of this season.

kols Crystal Bernard's Helen is an absolute wonder. Delivery, pacing, execution is as good as it gets. Helps a lot that she's given equally good dialog and staging. The rest of the female ensemble (Faye, Alex, Casey and Bunny) is almost as good in both categories. Good writing, exemplary performances.The secondary male cast is tolerable: Ray, Lowell and Antonio are often good as foils, occasionally intrusive and, rarely, just plain irritating.Then there are the misnamed brothers, the Brain who should be named Joe and the Joe who should be named Brain. Oh! that they should have been named correctly and Oh! that they should have been written as secondary foils instead of principles.The idea was, obviously, to play Brian's narcissism and egocentricity off against Joe's anal retentiveness, the name thing being part of the joke.Doesn't work on any level and both of them borderline on sociopathology in many, many episodes. Like the one in which Helen is bedridden after a particularly nasty root canal. Joe keeps running off to some kind of male bonding party with guys he doesn't give a damn about. It's obvious that it's the ritual of Males Watching Basketball on TV that he's into and nothing wrong with that, except that he keeps trying to pretend that he's tending Helen in her sickbed. When exposed, he expresses neither remorse for 'abandoning' Helen or any sense of guilt for trying to deceive her, just irritation at being caught.Easy to see what the writers were trying to do, playing the dichotomy for laughs and, while Singer could have pulled it off, it's just irritating here, to the point of wanting to put a bullet in Joe's head.Contrast that with Bernard's bedridden Helen which is a beautiful example of schtick.Brian is even worse. While the writers occasionally try to invest him with a modicum of empathy, those attempts are overwhelmingly overridden by his native egocentricity. In reality both Brian and Joe are written as borderline sociopaths, period.Again, the writers' intent is obvious; just as it is obvious that they miss the characteristic that allowed Singer in particular and Yiddish theater in general to succeed with these types: an understanding of all of their characters' innate humanity, regardless of their individual personality flaws. For some reason, while the writers get it with everyone else, they completely miss it with Brian and Joe and wind up with two totally unsympathetic characters who, thank God, are frequently underplayed, allowing the rest of the cast to shine.Despite the twin sociopaths, Wings is still a first-rank comedy on a level with Cheers, Mary Tyler Moore, Bob Newhart (the first series), Dick Van Dyke et al.When Brian and Joe are absent or secondary, it's an unquestionable 10.

bg11215 I recently re-discovered Wings while browsing on Netflix, and I'm so glad I did! I had forgotten all about it but I used to like watching it back in the 90s. There's something about the show that makes me yearn for something, like a stable life on a picturesque island with close-knit friends. Some of the episodes really crack me up, like one from season 2 where Faye loses in a tennis tournament and walks through the airport smacking things with her tennis racket, and hits a pet cage with a cat in it, making the cat shriek--she cracks me up! I just finished watching the episode from season 2 where Joe & Brian's long lost mother returns for a visit--the scenes between her & Joe made me tear up, it really tugged at my heartstrings! I'm really glad to have re-discovered this little gem of a show!

beckiwithaneye IF anyone from Paramount is reading this, PLEASE release this sitcom on DVD!! You will make lots of $$$. IT will make up for the undeserved low ratings/advertising dollars that Wings generated in the 90's. I could never figure that one out. It was the BEST show on the air!! Talk about wacky but believable plot lines that had this viewer spewing milk out her nose at improper times.Better yet, Paramount, coerce the cast of Wings to reunite and do commentary on the goings on- if the old goats can remember that far back(just kidding). That would be priceless.Gawd I hope they all don't hate eachothers guts over trivial TV star stuff. Can't we all just get along? And make lotsa money!!