In hindsight, the '90s trend of giving stand-up comedians their own TV shows really didn't work. While you had a lot of successes, you had even more failures. Corporations were so desperate for the next 'Seinfeld' that they were making a lot of odd choices. Disney/ABC gave Drew Carey so many seasons of his own show in advance that they ended up airing the last two seasons over the summers of 2003/2004 so they could get rid of them. And in the same vein of baffling decisions, we have this 'finale' that really is an exercise in poor taste.
Framed as a change in the show's status quo, we have another character played by Julia Duffy being introduced to possibly take over or prop up the original star who was dealing with a lot of stuff at this point. Viewers could probably figure that out since her hair was now a greasy jet black and she was mumbling her way through scenes to canned laughter. And this is where this becomes nineteen minutes of the weirdest TV that has ever possibly aired: it's a setup that goes nowhere. The show ends unceremoniously at this point. It looks like the show is having a change. But in reality, this is just an experiment to see if the show can finish out the season or possibly be saved. It can't, honestly, and bringing in a new actor to lead comes off as simply insane. What was anybody thinking at this point? Was anybody thinking at this point? Was it some sort of punishment by ABC to make sure that if this show ever found life in syndication it would be some immortal slam?
It's hard to say, honestly. But the reality is that at this point in the show's run it had 111 episodes, so syndication was already realized. This episode runs a good three minutes shorter than your normal 22 minute episode, meaning that there wasn't really enough material to push it out to fill a normal length episode. And honestly, one has to wonder if it's a contract issue so it was pushed out the door as soon and quick as possible and left to forget about. It resolves nothing. It's not funny. And it serves as an odd curio to a network TV trend when the medium was on the cusp of being being replaced by the rich lands of cable TV.
Why ten stars? Because I honestly doubt you'll find this funny except in possibly the biggest trainwreck way. It exists. Go out and watch it. If you've seen the show before then this will be quite a unique experience. Don't expect an ending. Just expect a really bizarre attempt to pull up as the airplane goes screaming into the ground at full speed. It truly is one of the strangest moments in all of TV history.
Framed as a change in the show's status quo, we have another character played by Julia Duffy being introduced to possibly take over or prop up the original star who was dealing with a lot of stuff at this point. Viewers could probably figure that out since her hair was now a greasy jet black and she was mumbling her way through scenes to canned laughter. And this is where this becomes nineteen minutes of the weirdest TV that has ever possibly aired: it's a setup that goes nowhere. The show ends unceremoniously at this point. It looks like the show is having a change. But in reality, this is just an experiment to see if the show can finish out the season or possibly be saved. It can't, honestly, and bringing in a new actor to lead comes off as simply insane. What was anybody thinking at this point? Was anybody thinking at this point? Was it some sort of punishment by ABC to make sure that if this show ever found life in syndication it would be some immortal slam?
It's hard to say, honestly. But the reality is that at this point in the show's run it had 111 episodes, so syndication was already realized. This episode runs a good three minutes shorter than your normal 22 minute episode, meaning that there wasn't really enough material to push it out to fill a normal length episode. And honestly, one has to wonder if it's a contract issue so it was pushed out the door as soon and quick as possible and left to forget about. It resolves nothing. It's not funny. And it serves as an odd curio to a network TV trend when the medium was on the cusp of being being replaced by the rich lands of cable TV.
Why ten stars? Because I honestly doubt you'll find this funny except in possibly the biggest trainwreck way. It exists. Go out and watch it. If you've seen the show before then this will be quite a unique experience. Don't expect an ending. Just expect a really bizarre attempt to pull up as the airplane goes screaming into the ground at full speed. It truly is one of the strangest moments in all of TV history.
