TV: Moon over Parma, bring my love to me tonight

I've been mostly disappointed with this summer's run of The Drew Carey Show, the finale to its nine seasons on the air. That a show I once loved, a show that once burst with originality and humor, should exit in such an ignominious fashion in the first place is dispiriting enough. But even worse is the fact that they're not even trying.

A note on why a whole season's worth of new episodes is being burned off like this over the summer: about three years ago, when The Drew Carey Show was riding high on the Nielsens, as was Drew's side project, Whose Line Is It Anyway?, ABC, which had recently suffered through the Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? implosion, desperately wanted to keep one of its few remaining non-game or -reality show stars onboard. So they threw a boatload of cash at The Drew Carey Show, in the form of two entire seasons bought in advance. Funny thing happened, though, when the first shows of that first prepaid season aired: they tanked. Hard. So hard, ABC yanked the show off the schedule midway through the season, and aired the remaining episodes during the dead of last summer, under the radar, with next to no commercial promotion, as stealthy as a ninja graverobber.

Fall 2003 comes around, and ABC finds itself in quite a bind. They've got another entire season of Drew Carey bought and paid for, but they don't want it anywhere near their fall premieres. I don't know why ABC even allowed the filming of this final season to occur; perhaps they figured they'd recoup some of their losses in summer commercial money, perhaps Drew Carey himself, or the show's production company, insisted on the shows being made to add to the lucrative syndication package. Either way, here we are, burning off an entire season over the summer hiatus, two episodes per week.

As I said, though, the real sting comes from the lackluster effort everyone involved in the show is exhibiting. The writing, which used to take chances, and go off in unique and experimental directions (the musical episodes, the April Fool's episodes, the live, semi-improv-ed episodes, the hilarious "special" episode, in which every single melodramatic sitcom cliche was exploited in a blatant bid for Emmy attention), is rote and uninspired, and the performances from the actors -- it would be generous to say they were phoned in. It's more like they're communicated via tin cans attached by waxed string. They all know they're lame ducks, killing time until they hit their quota of episodes, and they all act (or fail to act) accordingly.

Drew Carey was never a gifted actor, and as he stumbles and fumbles over his lines in these episodes, ruining punchline after punchline, you can almost see a weary, baggy-eyed, half-drunk director behind the cameras chanting, "Keep rolling, keep rolling." But it's the real comedic core to the show that disappoints the most: Ryan Stiles as Lewis and Deidrich Bader as Oswald. At one time, they were one of the best supporting comedic duos ever to hit the TV screen. Ever. Now, the ennui of the production has sunk into their performances as well, and their chemistry, their timing, their sheer joy have all taken a hit. They, like everyone else, are waiting for this zombie of a show to realize it's dead, and stop moving once and for all. The only life shown by a performer this season has come from guest stars Michael Gross (Family Ties) and Susan Sullivan (Dharma and Greg) as Kellie's wickedly self-absorbed, vicious, alcoholic parents. Now that was a funny episode.

The major storyline of this final season doesn't help things any: Drew has gotten girlfriend Kellie pregnant (the lovely but in-over-her-head Cynthia Watros, who can't come close to matching even the half-assed comedic mania of Stiles and Bader; that said, she's still a better actress than Christa Miller, whom she replaced last season -- and who, strangely enough, is showing more comedic talent in her occasional guest appearances on Scrubs than she did in seven seasons on Drew Carey). Plus, Mimi's son Gus is getting storylines of his own. So the majority of this summer season features child-based humor. The last refuge of the creatively bankrupt.

I offer a fond farewell to The Drew Carey Show, an important and influential member of the modern sitcom family. It's just a shame it didn't get the chance to go out in a blaze of glory (as Friends and Frasier did this year), instead having to suffer through an extended, painful, and largely unheralded death. RIP.