Meals at the restaurant in its early days were sometimes strained affairs, as the perfectionist Per Se staff struggled to adapt the culture of Mr. Keller's flagship restaurant, the French Laundry, in Yountville, Calif., to the strange and exacting urban theater that is Manhattan.
You'd give it good grades in a drama school seminar for the unflashy but effective dialogue and for the acting of Mr. DiPietro and Monique Vukovic, who portray the title couple over several years in the life of a strained love affair.
It's a strained, generic affair that, like "Sean Saves the World," appears to be trying much too hard to recapture the glory days of NBC's mid-'90s dominance.
So how did it ever come to this? Strained finances, dubious tax affairs, administration, liquidation, then reincarnation and re-entry at the bottom level of the Scottish game.
Relations between the Ecuadorean government and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange are becoming "incredibly strained" over the latter's involvement in the Edward Snowden affair, The Independent has learned.
First was a tumble in Mr. Reagan's popularity over the Iran-contra affair, followed by famously strained relations between Mr. Regan and the president's wife, Nancy Reagan, over managing the presidency.
Their marriage was increasingly strained as he learned of her affair with Dali Mpofu, but he supported her during her trial for kidnapping and assault.
Things got going even more when Nick vowed to tell his wife the whole truth (wouldn't he be frantic and frightened they'd do to his family as they'd done to Abi?) only for Julia to instead tell Maya after their strained lunch that her husband is having an affair.
Roger Catlin of the Hartford Courant felt that newcomers to the series would be "surprised at how laughless the affair could be, and how nearly every strained gag depends on the sheer stupidity of its characters".
Newsday's Noel Holston called the episode "sweet and dumb and satisfying," while Roger Catlin of The Hartford Courant felt that newcomers to the series would be "surprised at how laughless the affair could be, and how nearly every strained gag depends on the sheer stupidity of its characters".
