Is There "Life" After the Wedding?

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"My Big Fat Greek Life" debuted in the Monday night with an appropriately travel-oriented scene - with Toula (now renamed Nia) and her also renamed husband Thomas (formerly Ian) waiting for luggage at the airport as they return from a Greek honeymoon. Unfortunately, other than a passing reference to visiting the Parthenon and to making love on a beach, their exact itinerary wasn't revealed to the TV audience. Surely some enterprising travel packager will jump on the omission.

Many viewers may have been hoping for a high-speed, miniature version of the movie to get into the spirit of the series and comfortable with the cast, especially the poor guy assigned to follow in John Corbett's footsteps. He's all right, but it's hard to resist the temptation to hope that there was some sort of mishap in Greece and that Nia accidentally misplaced her real husband somewhere back on Mykonos. (She's new at this marriage/relationship thing, it could happen...)

The producers of the TV show are obviously depending on the movie to act as a kind of pilot for the series. An original pilot, prepared before the breakaway success of the film, was tossed aside in favor of recasting from the film version.

But this was one case where you can't have it both ways... either carry on seamlessly from the film, or revise the story universe entirely under new sitcom rules and regulations. While incidents from the film are changed around to suit new plot purposes, it is assumed that everyone in the audience already knows who the characters are. But for all the "Big Fat Greek Wedding" fans among us, the arbitrary changes from the movie are jarring - what happened to her parent's house, its pseudo-Parthenon facade now reduced to an odd, vaguely Spanish brick porch, and stripped of most of its Greek kitsch? After taking such joy in its own ethnicity in the movie, the family seems to have moved into Generic Sitcom Set #1.

But even with a domestic US take of close to $250 million dollars, the TV show will, if it's lucky, attract viewers who never saw the movie. These "newbies" will be bewildered.

So, will Nia Vardalos' undeniably perky, quirky charm be enough to bring TV viewers back for more? Or, like many couples, will there be considerably less "life" after the "wedding" - and honeymoon - is over?

Tune in and see for yourself. Starting March 2, the remaining episodes of the short-run midseason series will be shown on Sundays at 8pm. The word from those who saw a perkier Episode Two - where Nia's parents make a will leaving the restaurant to Nia, much to her horror - is that there may indeed be a long "Life" after the "Wedding". Here's hoping.