Kate & Allie is an American sitcom television series that aired on CBS from March 19, 1984, to May 22, 1989, starring Susan Saint James and Jane Curtin as two divorced mothers who decide to live together and raise their children in the same home.[1] The series was created by Sherry Coben.[2]
Overview
The show stars Susan Saint James as the free-spirited Kate McArdle and Jane Curtin as her more conservative childhood friend, Allie Lowell. After both women divorce, they decide to share a brownstone in New York City's Greenwich Village and raise their families together.
Both Kate and Allie were portrayed as independent, smart women. Kate and Allie dated men regularly and were shown as wise to romantic games, but not averse to remarrying if the opportunity presented itself.
Kate & Allie first aired on CBS as a mid-season replacement series and only six episodes were initially commissioned, but the favorable response from critics and viewers alike (its first episode ranked number 4 out of all the television shows airing that week) easily persuaded CBS to commit to a full season in the fall of 1984. The show was one of the most popular and critically acclaimed sitcoms of the 1980s, consistently ranking in the Top 20 shows until its final season. Curtin won two consecutive Emmy Awards for Best Actress in a Comedy Series,[3] while Saint James was nominated in the same category three times.[4]
At the beginning of the series, Kate was a travel agent and Allie worked to care for household's domestic needs and returned to college to complete the degree she had abandoned during her marriage. In the show's fifth season, Kate quit her job and teamed up with Allie to start a catering service.
In the show's next to last season, Allie dated Bob Barsky (Sam Freed), a television sportscaster who proposed to Allie in the season finale. In the final season, now-married Allie and Bob moved into a new apartment. Bob, however, took a job that involved regular travel and his frequent absences provided a reason for Kate to move into the new apartment too. This plot development, frequently cited as one of the canonical examples of a television show jumping the shark, led viewers to lose interest[6] and CBS chose not to renew Kate & Allie for a seventh season.
Susan Saint James as Katherine "Kate" Elizabeth Ann (née Hanlan) McArdle.
Jane Curtin as Allison "Allie" Julia Charlotte (née Adams) Lowell.
Ari Meyers as Emma McArdle, Kate's daughter. Meyers left the show a few episodes into the fifth season to attend Yale University (although her name remained in the opening credits to the end of the season); she returned for the season-ending 100th episode retrospective, but did not appear in the sixth season.
Allison Smith as Jennie Lowell, Allie's daughter of similar age to Emma.
Sam Freed as Bob Barsky, Allie's boyfriend who became her husband in Season 6. He was a sportscaster after retiring as a professional football player. Freed also played different characters in two separate episodes. In the second season he played a married candidate for office named Johnathan Conti who flirts with Allie. At the end of season three he played Keith in the episode "Late Bloomers", which was a backdoor pilot for a proposed spinoff which would have starred Lindsay Wagner.
Peter Onorati as Lou Carello, the superintendent in Kate and Allie's new apartment building in Season 6. He tries unsuccessfully to win Kate's affections.[7]
Recurring cast
Greg Salata as Ted Bartelo, a plumber whom Kate gets involved with during the second season. The two break up in the season two finale. Ted returns for the fifth season, with he and Kate attempting to rekindle their relationship; by the end of this season, he is gone again.[6]
Paul Hecht as Dr. Charles Lowell, Allie's sometimes pompous ex-husband.[8]
Kate & Allie gave birth to the spin-offRoxie, a short-lived comedy that aired only twice on CBS's schedule, on April 1 and 8, 1987. Roxie starred Andrea Martin as New York City TV programmer Roxie Brinkerhoff, who balanced her professional life at local UHF station WNYV with her married life. Martin had previously appeared as a similar version of the character, named Eddie Gordon, on two episodes of Kate & Allie ("Stage Mother", which aired December 1, 1986, and in "The Goodbye Girl", December 8, 1986), in which she was a friend of Allie's who worked as a producer on low-viewership public-access Channel G.[10]
Another attempted spin-off was Late Bloomer, which was scheduled to be a midseason replacement in January 1987.[11][12] Based on the similarly named Season 3 episode that guest starredLindsay Wagner, the series was scrapped the day before its January 19, 1987, debut, which was an encore presentation of its backdoor pilot.[13]
Production
The cast of Kate & Allie
The test name for the script was entitled Two Mommies and was seized upon by Saint James who was able to use the show as a way to work without relocating her family from Litchfield, Connecticut. Curtin initially was not interested in doing the sitcom, but after speaking with director Bill Persky she decided to take the role.[14]Kate & Allie was taped on soundstages constructed at the Ed Sullivan Theater (CBS Studio 50) and also at the Teletape Studios at West 81st Street and Broadway in New York City, which at the time was the production facility for Sesame Street.[15]
Cold opening dialog sequences between Saint James and Curtin documenting city life were featured, shot on location in Manhattan with no laugh track. The theme song played instrumentally over the title shot of the Empire State Building (the first season's titles opened in a different outdoor location per episode). Closing credits also included vocals with indicative lyrics, "just when you think/you're all by yourself/you're not."[16]
Under pressure from higher-ups at CBS to quash the suggestion that Kate and Allie were lesbians, the producers were instructed to show Kate and Allie entering separate bedrooms to sleep at the end of each episode. That pressure may have been the impetus for an episode showing Kate and Allie pretending to be lesbians when they were faced with a large increase in rent.[17]
Saint James was pregnant during the taping of the fourth season. Her pregnancy was hidden by taping her behind a desk, under a sheet in a hospital bed, or in a bubble bath. The exception was a 1960s flashback which showed both Kate and Allie pregnant.
An episode broadcast in 1987, produced in cooperation with the Coalition for the Homeless, was taped almost entirely outdoors, on the streets of Manhattan. The episode was prompted by the likely absence of Saint James, who had been hospitalized due to kidney stones, and featured Allie struggling to find a way home after accidentally leaving her keys and money in a taxi.[18]
The show's final season had been picked up with a number of other returning CBS shows for midseason premieres. The lack of inclusion on CBS' 1989–90 fall schedule announced on May 19, 1989, officially ended the series' run.[19]
According to an essay by Christine R. Catron from the Museum of Broadcast Communications's Encyclopedia of Television,[6] the decline in ratings for the show's last season is attributable to the fact that the show's premise had been fulfilled at the end of the previous season, when Allie accepted Bob Barsky's marriage proposal.
In January 2021, it was announced that NBC had given a put pilot commitment to a reboot of the series. It will be produced by Fierce Baby Production, Propagate, and Universal Television with Erica Oyama writing and co-executive producing with Nahnatchka Khan, Ben Silverman, Howard T. Owens, Rodney Ferrell, Gregory Lipstone, Peter Principato, Jen Carreras, and Brian Dobbins.[20]
Home media
United States
Universal Studios Home Entertainment released the first season of Kate & Allie on DVD exclusively in the United States in May 2006. The extras include a blooper reel, a six minute interview with Bill Persky and Susan Saint James and a bonus episode from Season Two.
Canada
For the Canadian market, Visual Entertainment (under license from Fremantle), has released all six seasons on DVD. On May 4, 2010, VEI released Kate & Allie: The Complete Series, a 16-disc boxset featuring all 122 episodes of the series. Neither release include any extras.[21]
^O'Connor, John J. "'KATE & ALLIE,' ABOUT 2 DIVORCED WOMEN, ON CBS", The New York Times, March 19, 1984. Accessed December 1, 2007. "Created by Sherry Coben, the series has been fortunate enough to attract some first-rate talent, in front of and behind the cameras."
^"Jane Curtin". Television Academy. Retrieved August 9, 2019.
