Mad About Baby: Paul Reiser

By BOB THOMAS= Associated Press Writer LOS ANGELES (AP) Many parents collect tales of their newborns in baby books. Comedian Paul Reiser converts his young son's doings into fodder for a book, as well as his NBC sitcom ``Mad About You.'' The book is titled ``Babyhood,'' a followup to his 1994 ``Couplehood,'' a best seller with a reported 2 million copies sold. Reiser reportedly received $5 million to write the sequel. Conveniently or by design, co-star Helen Hunt gave birth to a baby on ``Mad About You'' last season. ``Writing the book took longer than I thought,'' says the author-funnyman. ``There was so much to write about; every day there is something different, new and amusing with a baby. The bad news is: You're too tired to remember exactly what.'' ``You think, `Something's funny, but I can't quite remember it.' Hopefully you get a good night's sleep and it comes back to you.'' Paul and Paula Reiser had been married several years before deciding to have a baby. The decision came after a woman on an airplane told them, ``It's the greatest thing in the world.'' Reiser writes: ``We made an elaborate ceremony out of retiring all birth control paraphernalia (or, as a friend of mine so delicately put it, `We yanked the goalie off the ice') and jumped into bed.'' ``We laughed and hugged and giggled and kissed. And proceeded to not have sex for 2 months.'' Eventually Ezra Samuel Reiser arrived, and his father realized some of the truisms that parents have encountered for eons. ``How your relationship changes was interesting to me,'' he says. ``You spend years as a couple, fine-tuning that relationship. Then you take the next step and add a baby, which is a natural outgrowth of that couple, and the relationship is changed entirely.'' ``You now have a new priority. It's not about you guys, it's not about either single one of you. It's about this guy. Whatever you can salvage for yourself, good for you.'' While he doesn't plan to plagiarize his own book, Reiser expects some of the same topics to pop up in ``Mad About You.'' ``The show has always been about `The Couple,''' he reasons. ``Some people have voiced concern: `Oh, is it going to change now with the baby? Is it going to become a fuzzy show?''' ``The truth is, it's going to be exactly what it has been: a very smart, grownup look at a couple. But that couple itself changes. There's a lot of wear and tear on the relationship; that's the stuff that's fun to explore.'' Sitcoms from ``I Love Lucy'' onward have added babies to the casts with differing results. After Murphy Brown's baby was born, the show put a heavy focus on the newscaster's domestic matters. Now son Avery is scarcely mentioned on the show. Not because Dan Quayle and others criticized the kid's illegitimacy, but because Candice Bergen was funnier as her acerbic self in the network workplace. Reiser sees no such danger for ``Mad About You,'' which he created and produces. ``The show is what it has always been: a comedy,'' he says. ``It's not a show about the baby. It's about these two people whose lives have this big new thing in it. ... These are two people who are pretty good at life, but now they're doing something they're not good at.'' ```Murphy Brown' is a workplace show. You follow her through her professional career and not as much at home. Since she was such a tough-as-nails character, softening her up seemed to change the nature of the show. In our case, it's a domestic comedy. There's nothing more organic for a couple than having a baby.'' Copyright Los Angeles Times