“Neil Simon, Boffmeister,” in The National Observer, Vol. 10, No. 46, November 20, 1971, p. 24.

In the following essay, Ridley observes that in The Prisoner of Second Avenue Simon has moved from the cheerful innocence of his early comedies to a comedy painfully aware of distress and hopelessness.

As The Prisoner of Second Avenue begins to unfold, it's clear that Mel Edison (Peter Falk) is your prototypical middle-class New Yorker. A 46-year-old account executive who has lived six years in his 14th floor apartment—handsomely realized by Richard Sylbert—at Second Avenue and 88th Street, he is beset by all the existential woes of the urban condition.

It's 89 degrees outside, but it's an airconditioned 12 in his living room. The stewardesses next door play Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head at 3 in the morning. All his food is artificial, and health food makes him sick. Dogs bay in the streets; garbage piles up...