Category: Entertainment

The Drew Carey Show

I was always amused by Drew Carey’s stand-up act, so I looked forward to seeing what he’d do on his own TV show.

Good grief.

With all good comedy shows, the supporting cast is critical, and success was pretty much guaranteed by Carey’s addition of his Whose Line buddy Ryan Stiles (Lewis), the hilarious Diedrich Bader (was there ever a better comedy screen name than Oswald Lee Harvey?) and the wonderful Kathy Kinney (as Mimi):

…as well as the brilliant Scottish comedian Craig Ferguson as his alcoholic boss, Nigel Wick — there was no way this show wasn’t going to be funny.

What made it all the better — and Hollywood used to know this formula, but had forgotten it somehow — was that the show took place not in New York or Los Angeles, but in Flyover Country’s capital, Cleveland OH.  Cleveland?  And it worked, brilliantly.  Carey’s “ordinary-guy” schtick was perfectly cast against the insanity of his surrounding characters and the plotlines, and it too was one of the few TV shows I’d stay home to watch, or at least set up for recording on the VCR (younger Readers can ask their dads to explain this reference).

But nothing — repeat nothing — in TV history could have prepared us for when Drew decided to have an affair with an older woman — but not just any older woman:

Okay, I came late to the Shirley Jones Adoration Society, but if ever there’s a woman who has been gorgeous at whatever age, it’s her:

Was there a man of my generation who did not feel stirrings in his loins when Shirley sashayed down Carey’s stairs for breakfast, wearing nothing but a long nightie?

Comedy gold, as was the entire Drew Carey Show.

Arrested Development

I first became aware of this show through Son&Heir and #2 Son’s howls of laughter as they watched it in the kids’ upstairs living room.  “What the hell were you two laughing at?” was my question when they eventually came downstairs for breakfast the next morning.  Well, they told me, and intrigued, I had to watch Arrested Development — whereupon a second outburst of helpless laughter filled the house.

Good grief.  This was a Married… With Children-style dysfunctional family, only with blacker humor and razor-sharp cruelty.

Michael: [after George Sr. has been handed a jail sentence] They’re going to keep Dad in jail until this whole thing gets sorted out.
[silence amongst the family]
Michael:  Also, I’ve been told that the company’s expense accounts have been frozen…
[everyone gasps]
Michael:  …Interesting. I would have expected that after “They’re keeping Dad in jail.”

#2 Son bought me the series on DVD for Christmas several years ago, and I re-watch it about every eighteen months.

This was the show, I think, where Jason Bateman finally (!) shed his child-movie-star persona and became a serious grownup comedy star — his lines delivered with a deadpan monotone which would have had Buster Keaton delivering a standing ovation.

Lucille:  You tricked me.
Michael:  I deceived you. “Tricked” makes it sound like we have a playful relationship.

And:

Buster:  Mom is becoming a little controlling.
Michael:  What tipped you off? When she locked you out on the balcony again?
Buster:  That was half my fault. I thought I saw a Graham Cracker out there.
Michael:  [to his mother]  You baited the balcony?
Lucille Bluth:  Prove it.

And speaking of Lucille Bluth, don’t even get me started on the exquisite Jessica Walter (on whom I’ve had a crush ever since the 1960s).

And from the show:

The Bob Newhart Show

Back when I were a lad in South Africa, there was no TV (it was only “allowed” by the government in 1975).  So I used to listen to LPs.  (Younger Readers can have their grandparents explain this term to them.)

And if I wasn’t listening to rock ‘n roll, I was listening to comedy records — and more often than not, to Bob Newhart, again and again and again, simply because his deadpan delivery always had me in stitches.

[Walter Raleigh phoning England to let King Bob know what was happening in the Virginia Colony, and listening to the King’s response to the explanation of tobacco]:

“So Walt, what do you do with the dried leaves?  Uh huh… uh huh… you roll them up in paper, and then… you stick it in your mouth?  Of course you do, Walt.  And then what?  No wait, don’t tell me… really?  You set it on fire!  And it makes you cough… of course it does.  Walt, I hate to break it to you, but come the fall here in England, we get quite a few dried leaves ourselves…”  and so on.

So when I emigrated to the U.S. (a.k.a. The Great Wetback Episode of ’86) and discovered The Bob Newhart Show in reruns (on Nickelodeon, I think), bang went that part of my day.

“CBS decided it wanted to concentrate more of the show on my job as a psychologist.  I think one of the reasons for the change is that some CBS officials heard the word “condominium” and thought the show was about sex.”

Only Newhart as “Bob Hartley” could make psychology funny — as opposed to simply pathetic — and often was the time I woke the neighbors with my roars of helpless laughter.  And like so many of the good comedy shows I’ve been talking about, the supporting cast members of Newhart were wonderful, my favorite being long-time patient, the hapless Mr. Carlin.

But nothing repeat nothing compared to Emily.  I’d had a serious boyhood crush on Suzanne Pleshette (OMG that voice), and seeing her as Mrs. Hartley each episode made things a lot worse.  She’s still one of my all-time favorites.

Newhart on Hartley:

“Well, if you’re a native Chicagoan, you know how dumb he [Dr. Robert Hartley] is. He gets on the Ravenswood El, he goes past his stop on Sheridan Road, he gets off in Evanston, where the El is on the ground, and then he walks back 55 blocks to his apartment. Now, would you want to have that man as a psychologist? A man who misses his stop every day?”

(By the way, an honorable mention goes to the follow-on Newhart series, thanks to the brothers Larry, Darryl and the other brother, Darryl;  as deadpan as Newhart, and absurd withal.  And the final reveal in the last episode of Newhart was one of the greatest ever filmed.)

Married… With Children
This show was never supposed to be popular, with its unrelievedly hostile approach to the subject matter.  And yet it was, enormously so, perhaps as an antidote to all the saccharine TV families that had gone before, with their wise mothers, irascible yet good-natured fathers and spunky but lovable children.  Instead, we got Ed Neil’s snarling loser father, Al Bundy, his slatternly non-housewife partner Peg (Katey Sagal), with snarky sex-starved son Bud (David Faustino) and the slutty daughter Kelly (Christine Applegate).  When I first watched this show, I spent much of the time helpless with open-jawed laughter, and it became one of the very few TV shows I looked forward to each week.  And while I loved the buxom Peg, I have to admit that young Kelly Bundy turned me into a Dirty Old Man every time she flounced onto the screen.  I don’t think that I’m alone in this, either.