Suddenly Susan

Susan Keane (Brooke Shields) has always been taken care of by someone else. She worked as a copy editor at The Gate, a fictional San Francisco magazine. On her wedding day, she realizes that she and her wealthy, vain fiancé, Kip, are not meant for each other and that there is more to life than just being known as the "s" in "The Kip Richmonds." She abruptly leaves him at the altar. Now, she's suddenly just Susan. Susan's parents, played by guest stars Swoosie Kurtz and Ray Baker, were less than ecstatic about their daughter deciding to end her engagement to Kip, though her grandmother and confidant, Nana (Barbara Barrie) stands as a pillar of support for Susan.

Suddenly Susan

The day after the wedding, Susan goes to her boss, Jack Richmond (Judd Nelson), the rebellious brother of Susan's former fiancé, Kip, begging for her job back. Instead, Jack assigns Susan to write a regular column about being suddenly single. Susan's coworkers include photographer Luis Rivera (Nestor Carbonell), boyish rock music reporter Todd Stities (David Strickland), restaurant critic Vicki Groener (Kathy Griffin), and, in later episodes, investigative reporter and Susan's old enemy Maddy Piper (Andréa Bendewald).

At the beginning of the fourth and final season, Judd Nelson and Andrea Bendewald left the show; series developers and executive producers Steven Peterman and Gary Dontzig also left the series, and the show replaced almost its entire writing staff (with the exception of new co-showrunner Maria Semple, who joined the series the previous season). The Gate was transformed into a men's magazine by its new owner, Ian Maxtone-Graham (Eric Idle), and relocated from its trendy uptown offices overlooking the bay to a dingy former warehouse in Chinatown. In tow, Ian brought his own team of workers, including executive assistant and U.S. Navy veteran Miranda Charles (Sherri Shepherd), sports writer Nate Knaborski (Currie Graham), and freelance photographer Oliver Browne (Rob Estes). Faced with new challenges, Susan suddenly had to prove herself all over again.

Suddenly Susan was about a woman named Susan Keane (played by Brooke Shields - the project was a star vehicle for Shields, who had been a very famous model and actress when she was young but had gotten out of acting and modeling to attend college in the mid-80s. In her late 20s in the 1990s, she got back into acting and the networks were falling over themselves to come up with projects to cash in on her star power) who was engaged to a rich jerk and had her whole life planned out for her as being part of his rich family. However, she realized that she didn't really LOVE him, so she broke off the engagement and now, for the first time in years, she was just "Susan" and not the future Mrs. Kip Richmond. So she was "suddenly Susan." Get it?

In tow, Ian brought his own team of workers, including executive assistant and U.S. Navy veteran Miranda Charles, sports writer Nate Knaborski and freelance photographer Oliver Browne. Faced with new challenges, Susan suddenly had to prove herself all over again.

1996 was the kind of year when trying to turn Brooke Shields into a sitcom star seemed like a good thing to do, and Suddenly Susan did a good job of making each of its four seasons forgettable enough that you might have also forgotten that Brooke Shields was a sitcom star. Not that she was terrible as the titular magazine columnist finding her way around single life again, but there was a reason the show only spent one year on the Must See TV lineup before being shifted to Monday nights, where Suddenly Susan lost not only lost millions of viewers over the next three years, but also central cast members Judd Nelson and Andrea Bendewald. (As well as the late David Strickland, but that's something else entirely.) Season 4 completely revamped everything, from the fictional magazine to the actual writing staff, and not even the inclusion of comedy genius Eric Idle could save this sinker. We can all agree Suddenly Susan was kinda not-so-suddenly bad, right?

Brooke Shields is suddenly facing life on her own in this lukewarm new comedy. Vicky, her co-worker, decides to exploit Susan's height and recruits her for her basketball team. But she gets miffed when teammates vote Susan most valuable player. One regular watcher remarked that it was a particularly tame episode - sexual innuendo usually figures more prominently. (PG-13) 041b061a72