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1) "Wow! That's some breasts! Good for you!"
2) "This is just a disaster!"
OK, maybe it's not a disaster, but yes, those are some breasts.
As an aspiring L.A. lounge singer in this real-time comedy-musical, Louis-Dreyfus, 41, is the latest Seinfeld co-star to confront what has come to be known as the Seinfeld Curse.
The good news for the ex-Elaine is that Watching Ellie is far better than Bob Patterson or The Michael Richards Show. The bad news is, what wasn't?
Working with her husband, fellow Saturday Night Live alumnus Brad Hall, Louis-Dreyfus certainly scores points for audacity.
Without a laugh track and filmed with a single camera, Watching Ellie feels like it belongs on HBO, closer in tone and content (co-star Don Lake bares his buttocks; Ellie calls her ex-boyfriend an expletive that cannot be repeated here) to Sex and the City than Friends. Louis-Dreyfus herself spends much of tonight's premiere bouncing around in a bra.
Racy? Check. Inventive? Check. Funny? Um, not very. Certainly not enough to attract a Friends-sized viewership. And probably not enough to break that dreaded Seinfeld Curse.
It's a shame, considering Louis-Dreyfus' ample talents (I'm referring to her acting, of course) and the wonderfully sublime supporting cast she has surrounded herself with.
Among them is Lake (Best In Show) as Ellie's next-door neighbour, Peter Stormare (Chocolat) as her Kramer-esque building maintenance man, Darren Boyd (Smack The Pony) as the married guitarist she sleeps with, and Louis-Dreyfus' real-life sister Lauren Bowles as Ellie's sibling.
Like 24, Watching Ellie unfolds in real time. But unlike that Fox thriller, Ellie doesn't have an overriding plot to drive the action forward, leaving the writers to stretch the long arm of coincidence until the bones break.
Tonight's premiere, for example, starts out innocently enough with Ellie getting dolled up for a singing gig.
Within 15 minutes, there are flooded toilets, head injuries, naked veterinarians and ex-boyfriends whom she happens to run into on the street.
The episode concludes, much as Seinfeld used to, on stage, with Ellie up there singing. Louis-Dreyfus is clearly a gifted performer and
Watching Ellie is not the painful exercise in self-adulation it might have been.
But in flexing their creative muscles, Louis-Dreyfus and Grey have forgotten the one unbreakable rule of comedy: Always leave 'em laughing.
SEINFELD STARS STILL STRUGGLE
A launch pad to stardom? Or a career crash site? For Seinfeld's actors, the Show About Nothing has been both.
JASON ALEXANDER: Playing a motivational speaker, the former George Costanza and Dr. Pepper pitchman couldn't motivate anyone to watch his flop Bob Patterson.
MICHAEL RICHARDS: Wacky is the icing, but it can't be the cake. It's a lesson this ex-Kramer learned with the failure of his Michael Richards Show.
WAYNE KNIGHT: "Hello, Newman." Perhaps no line of dialogue has ever helped an actor more. Knight just wrapped up his role on 3rd Rock from the Sun. He was most recently doing voicework for Buzz Lightyear of Star Command.
PATRICK WARBURTON: As Elaine's boyfriend Puddy, Warburton was a dead-on delight. He brought that patented deadpan to his role as the crime-fighting title character in The Tick, which has been unjustly squashed.
JERRY STILLER: Stiller was a standout as George's demented dad, Frank. Stiller is now seen as another demented paternal figure in the hit comedy The King of Queens.
JANE LEEVES: After making her mark as a virgin who gets deflowered by John F. Kennedy Jr., Leeves landed the role of Daphne on the long-running smash Frasier.
COURTENEY COX: Curse talk aside, for many of Jerry's on-screen girlfriends, the show was a blessing. Cox is one example. After a one-episode stint on Seinfeld, Cox landed on her feet in a show called Friends. You may have heard of it.
TERI HATCHER: Hatcher's career took flight in the mid-'90s Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. But first, she guest-starred on Seinfeld as a woman endowed with perfect breasts. Hatcher moved on to make a string of TV ads with football star Howie Long.
BOB BALABAN: Balaban was the NBC executive in charge of Jerry and George's sitcom. He can currently be seen in Robert Altman's Oscar-nominated Gosford Park.
STEPHEN McHATTIE: McHattie was a perfect comic menace as Elaine's shrink/boyfriend. He was last seen by Canadian audiences as a cop in the CTV drama Cold Squad.