Shark Bytes

This show jumped the shark when Lydia quit the bar. She became some sort of sport medicine goody two shoes. The good writers of season #1 must have all moved on.

This was(is?)a great show.Sure,the concept is corny,but its TV so you have to grade it on a curve.I was really bored one day in rehab and was too lazy to change the channel and ended up being blown away by the realism and emotion of this show.The acting is top-notch.Its as if these people pour their emotions into these scripts,and thats a rare find(especially on CBS).However,the very clueless Les Moonves(CBS' president)keeps letting show from slot to slot.He has never promoted the show like he should have.Probably will end up a forgotten gem.

Victor's ridiculous death when he falls off a horse on the street while proposing to that girl from Goodfellas. Utterly ridiculous. This show died right then and there. But it even got worse the next season when they took away most of the Italian aspect of the show (theme song, etc.) Paulie (Paul Sorvino) must've been bullied by the execs to make it more mainstream. Booooo! Lame!

This show started out with a bang. It jumped the shark in several areas. #1 Lydia quits the bar job and becomes a do-gooder at the sports medicine center. I can't stand her now. I liked her better when she was fighting with her plumber boy friend. She was kind of slutty then, and much more interesting. #2 Jacky, the great and beautiful starts dating this ancient school teacher. I know she would never be caught with that guy! The rest of the cast is still great, but, Lidia sucks!

The show hasnt jumped- the network pushed it off the pier!

"That's Life" started off to be such a great show in its first season. But the second season has been so different, I'm almost convinced they have new writers now. First off, they have made Lydia such a hypocrite. She comes off as a goody-two-shoes do-gooder who tries to intervene in the lives of everyone she comes into contact with (the "care what you wear" campaign and sticking her nose in the ballerina's business), but yet she goes off and has sex with almost every guy she meets. She waited all season for the doctor at the sports clinic to break up with his bitch of a wife and then the airhead bimbo that the DeLucas inadvertently fixed him up with, only to go off and have sex with that guy (was his name Matt?) that she had known since high school, as soon as the doctor was free of both the bitch and the bimbo. Lydia's sneaking out of the house (as a thirty-something) to go have sex with Matt or whoever was easily the low point of this show. About the only redeeming moment of the show this whole season came when Lydia gave that rude restaurant customer's bad attitude right back to him!

The above poster brought this thought into my mind regarding this show: If it was set either in the South or "west of the PA border", this might have pulled through to at least a third season, if not further. Shows with such settings tend to do very well, especially om CBS. Well, hopefully someday someone will do a midwestern or southern version of "That's Life". I live closer to the "original"'s setting, but I'd give such a show a try....

The show jumped when Lydia got breast cancer. Totally unnecessary. To the previous poster who complained about the accents: The "Brooklynisms" as you so callously describe them are the way people in the New York-New Jersey area actually talk. The show is an accurate representation of life/dialect in that region. Why would the characters in the show suddenly start speaking as if they lived "west of the PA border?" If the show were set in the south, or anywhere else, I would expect the characters' speech to reflect it. As far as where Lydia goes to school, what do her looks have to do with it? She doesn't go to Princeton because she has little money, comes from a blue-collar family, and doesn't have the finances or pedigree to go there. Montclair is the typical kind of school for the character. Your arguments on both speaking styles and choice of schools are inaccurate and weak.

i dearly love this show, and hope it isn't cancelled, but i can think of no better example, than when lydia decided to be a sports medicine girl. first of all, we all knew these girls in high school, and they were gross. second, the new characters (that i'm guessing CBS brought in so guys could watch the show) were (are?) so flat and lifeless! as much as i hate the whole sports med. thing, i really hope cbs dowsn't cancel it

For me, this lightweight but still fun show also represented a classic case of an opportunity squandered. The year before this started, "Felicity" star Keri Russell lost her beautiful curly hair, thus starting her show's legendary twilight. So CBS decided to capitalize on the resulting brouhaha by creating a thirtysomething Felicity with guaranteed long locks, complete with family to pull in the older demographic. The resulting show was no classic (spot the SharkJump! This show had a lot of them!), but still was a nice guilty pleasure.(Danielle Harris' Plum's transformation from trendy, sullen WB refugee to a perky but intelligent young woman on a wondrous self-discovery journey all but upstaged Lydia's plotlines!) But the whole thing was doomed when they cast Heather Page Kent (capable enough, but better suited to supporting roles) as Lydia. Before this, Kent appeared on "Jenny", "Stark Raving Mad", "Life With Roger", (plus guest appearances on) "Men Behaving Badly"(USA), "Chicago Sons" and "Norm". (Paula Marshall and Debroah Farentino, you've got competition for the distaff Ted McG here!). Add in a second season featuring proven show killers Titus Welliver ("Brooklyn South", "Falcolne") and (a guest shot by) Jamie Luner ("Savannah", "Melrose Place", "Profiler"), the death of Victor, moving (Lydia returns home from her apartment, Frank quits toll collecting to operate the Cuccina), the impending birth of Jackie's child by Victor, the departures of Lyd's old fiancee Lou and friend Candy...I'm amazed "Bellfield" wasn't a seaside town and that we never saw water skis in Lyddie's bedroom! Or a speedboat in the DeLucca backyard! Man, oh man...Still, even with all that Jumping, I actully liked it anyway, particularly its carefree tone and scenes involving Montvale U. and/or Plum Wilkinson. Hopefully, Danielle Harris will get a hit TV show someday. In the meantime, "That's Life" was/is a nice little confection, but it could have been even tastier if they limited the family's appearances, spent more time at the college with the lead interacting with (and usually outwitting) the other students, and cast a Jill Hennessey-type actress in the lead. Hey, "that's life" indeed.....

I am a person who enjoys watching TL. I find it to be entertaining and fun. Of course some of the things that happen on the show are a little far-fetched; but isn't that what people want? To escape a little? If I wanted straight-up reality then I would watch only "Survivor", "Real World" or other shows of that nature. And thanks to clever editing, how much of those are 100%? Let's cut some slack to a show that shows a strong family, a strong female and proves that sometimes the glass IS half-full.

Despite an incredibly likeable and talented cast, the scripts in general are far too superficial to make this show must-see. Add in the fact that it's starting to get jerked around in the Friday/Saturday night graveyard timeslots and things don't look so good for a third season. Ultimately this show will be barely remembered as being an okay casual watch, never quite fulfilling the promise of "what coulda been"...

I can't pinpoint the exact episode, but this season is really starting to turn me off. I used to love this show, but now it's turning into some sort of blue collar "Touched by An Angel" whereby anyone down on their luck who stumbled upon the DeLuca family suddenly finds themselves saved. The son marrying that freakish college student, the bus-boy at the restaurant, ANYONE Lydia finds (always a guy, and after she "saves" him he falls in love with her!) I loved this show when it first came on, and I think they need to go back to focusing on the basic premise - a single, young woman who wants to stand on her own. No family dependency, no fiance, just a degree and a job. Instead it put Lydia back in the house and having mom making 3 meals a day for everyone, even her grown children. The actors are all so great, I will probably watch it as long as it's on tv, but I wish they would stay true to the main characters and stop bringing on new people to "save" every episode. It's like "Dr. Quinn" each week, the DeLuca's show them the light and they all change their wicked ways. ENOUGH!

Yeah, Professor Leski's death on this season"s opener could qualify. Guess that was this show's answer to "South Park"s absurdly lengendary Kenny deaths, though Prof. Leski, unlike Kenny, never returned. Even so, I still like this show better than I thought I would, and will still watch it to the end. I've watched this show since Day One last year, and despite some flaws (a little too much of Lydia's family, a little too little of her days at Montvale U; I was loooking forward to her showing up the Generation Y students a bit more than they let her do), I still think this is one of TV's Best Kept Secrets. Both Heather Paige Kent and especially Danielle Harris are terrific in their roles. A pity the fading "Felicity" (which I doubt will be back next season) is getting all this publicity, because I think this is a better show, warts and all. The lighter, more optimistic tone and the aforementioned Kent and Harris make all the difference. Despite the loss of Kenny, oops, Prof.Leski, I am really pulling for this show to come through in its new Saturday time slot so it continue past this season. As long as Ted McG doesn't show up--and as long as Jackie doesn't hack off Lydia's hair--us "Lifers" will be happy. Now its up to CBS......

First of all, the show takes place in New Jersey, not NYC. I like this show a lot, it's very good (not great). While I agree that it often resorts to typical TV gimmicks like pregnancy & cancer, the superior dialogue and acting make up for it. Debi Mazar is great, as are Burstyn & Sorvino. And as an Italian American, it's refreshing to see non-Mob characters. Too bad it's buried on Friday night, it's far better than a lot of the other shows CBS has in its lineup.