Sybil Schneiderman, the breakout character on Hulu’s new sitcom “Mid-Century Modern,” is discussed, amply, before she is seen. “The woman could probably make it another 20 years just on cottage cheese and spite,” her son Bunny (Nathan Lane) declares. But when she finally appears, it’s an event. Bunny has moved his two best friends into the Palm Springs home he shares with Sybil, and, she declares, it’s good that he won’t be alone when she’s gone. “Which won’t be for a long while!,” she declares, her voice suddenly crescendoing into a scream.
That was not to be. Linda Lavin, the TV legend who plays Sybil, died in December, during the filming of the season, and Sybil is written off the show in the ninth episode. In her time on “Mid-Century Modern,” she provided the best argument for viewers to keep watching, imbuing the particular, vintage form of the series — a multicamera sitcom — with joie de vivre and sharp wit. And her farewell, on a show that tends to play things fairly light, proved to be surprisingly moving.
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Throughout the series, Sybil’s tendency to nag gave ample ammunition for her two children (Pamela Adlon plays daughter Mindy in a recurring role) and her houseguests. “She may be critical, but at least she’s unpleasant,” Mindy declares at one point. And Lavin’s delivery turns what could read, in lesser hands, as shopworn material into a symphony of shrewd, nervy undercutting. Sybil doesn’t dislike her children — nor, for that matter, her guests, the sweetly naive Jerry (Matt Bomer) or the high-flying aesthete Arthur (Nathan Lee Graham). She just thinks they could all do better. Her habit of hiding Bunny’s beloved Fig Newtons is, yes, a comment on his weight; it’s also a bit of gamesmanship, an insistence that if he wants a cookie, he has to really earn it. Is it ideal parenting? Well, no. But it’s certainly a kind of love.
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That sense of a well-meaning but unrelentingly bossy presence remains as Sybil leaves the show. There’s no elegant way to write a character out suddenly, and one can presume that cast and crew were all slightly shocked — so presenting the information of her departure in a lengthy monologue makes both pragmatic and emotional sense. Bunny tells his friends about a drive to the hospital, one during which Sybil’s repeated exhortations to slow down to avoid a speeding ticket abruptly stopped; that silence, one she’d never allowed him, was the moment he knew she was gone.
It’s a lovely little piece of writing on a show that finds good moments when it counts, but that can drag, too. Created by “Will & Grace’s” Max Mutchnick and David Kohan, the series is doubly a throwback. From its first moments, it feels, studio audience and all, like something from yesteryear, and then, a few minutes in, it hits you: This show about a cynical protagonist, his two friends (one daffy, one sharp-witted), and his mother all living together shares more than a little creative DNA with “The Golden Girls.”
That makes Lavin, the star of “Alice,” the Estelle Getty. She’s well-equipped for the role, as versatility was her stock in trade. Lavin, a two-time Golden Globe winner for “Alice,” emerged at a moment when a character actress could anchor a network sitcom for nine seasons. Subsequently, she popped up in movies from “The Muppets Take Manhattan” to “Being the Ricardos,” and on TV from “The Sopranos” to “The O.C.” to, most recently, “No Good Deed,” just last year. And, in her late 80s, she set forth fearlessly to be a member of the ensemble of a show that might go on for years to come, with so much verve that no one involved might have considered that the show would end up going on without her.
She was like Getty in a particular way, too: Lavin had the power to deflate the delusions and pretensions of the characters with whom she’s unexpectedly sharing life in her old age. Sybil isn’t necessarily thrilled at every moment to be around her son and his friends. But you never for a moment disbelieve that she’d have opened her home to them, or that they miss her, badly, once she’s gone. And that kind of sitcom writing, amidst all the silly one-liners, is a throwback, too.
