TV: NewsRadio

To help assuage the summer TV doldrums, I got three DVD box sets from Amazon today (they had a sale, what can I say). Arrested Development season 1, which I've actually rented before on DVD, but for those prices, I had to buy it; Wonderfalls, the complete series, which was sadly only 13 episodes (I think); and, best of all, NewsRadio seasons 1 and 2.

As good as I've often said NewsRadio was -- and I'd put it up there in the top five sitcoms ever -- watching the first few episodes makes me think I've been damning it with faint praise. Man, this show had it going on, right from the first episode. The actors already knew their characters so well. All of them would become progressively more insane in later years, but none of them changed in ways that weren't natural progressions from this very first show.

It's hard to refrain from singling some of them out, but if you start down that path, you have to mention them all (and I will!): Dave Foley as the stuttery, bewildered, put-upon boss (by a remarkable coincidence also named Dave), Maura Tierney as the brainy, ambitious, but insecure Lisa, Vicki Lewis as loopy secretary Beth, Joe Rogan (yes, he used to be cool, before Fear Factor) as conspiracy theorist and dangerous inventor Joe... and then you get to a comedic trifecta which is nearly unmatched in all of television history: Stephen Root as the alternately manipulative, lackadaisical, and delusional station owner, billionaire Jimmy James, Andy Dick as neurotic spaz Matthew, and the late great Phil Hartman as the late great Bill McNeal. His senseless death still pains me. God, he was amazing.

I intentionally omit Khandi Alexander as Catherine; I don't think she ever quite fit into the show. In fact, she would eventually leave (returning only for the first episode to air after Phil Hartman's death, when the characters mourned the passing of Bill McNeal, which I thought was an incredibly touching and classy move on her part, and the show's), most likely due to that very fact: she just didn't fit in, and the writers could never quite figure out how to make her fit in. She wasn't a bad actress, nor even a bad comedic actress, not by a long stretch; she had plenty of comedic highlights on this show. But she always seemed like an afterthought.

Interesting to note in the pilot episode is that a different actress plays Catherine -- Ella Joyce, who had played Charles S. Dutton's wife on Roc. Her name is in the title credits for the pilot, but she doesn't have a single line, and is barely seen on-screen. The really odd thing is that the people making the commentary for the pilot don't say why she was replaced; they don't even mention her, even though they make a point of talking about how Ray Romano had originally been cast as the handyman, and was fired midway through taping. (Too bad there are no deleted scenes with him in them.) Even odder: I had always heard that Mike O'Malley had been cast as the original (well, second original, after Romano, I guess) Joe the handyman (and IMDb backs this up), but not only does Mike O'Malley not appear in the pilot, but the handyman is named Rick and is played by someone named Greg Lee (who never appeared on the show after). Again: not a word of this in the commentary. That's a lot of interesting cast-shifting that's not touched on. Maybe it's still a sore subject with some of those involved?

Other than that, the commentary is great, with the people involved expressing real affection for the show and the cast and crew, but also giving plenty of insight into the creation and casting (again, with the exceptions noted above), as well as their embattled history on NBC, from lack of promotion to unwelcome notes.

Okay, I got sidetracked. My point is: damn this is a funny show, right out of the gate. The characters were solid (even though certain character quirks, like Matthew's worship of Bill, were yet to be added), the actors had great rapport, the writing was brilliant, with the humor coming from the strong characters, rather than the standard setup-punchline, setup-punchline formula of most sitcoms. It only took three episodes for them to produce a classic, "Smoking," in which Bill gives up smoking and Dave gives up coffee. The scene in which Bill and Dave calmly discuss their progress, then go off the deep end when Matthew enters the room... to see Phil Hartman, whose demeanor had been so unflappable and reserved to that point, suddenly crack and bellow, "JUST ZIP YOUR SNIVELING LITTLE LIP AND HAUL YOUR SKINNY ASS OUT OF HERE!!!" is one of the funniest things I've ever seen in my life. I rewound that bit literally ten times, and every single time I was laughing until there were tears in my eyes.

This is comedy gold, folks. Sitcoms rarely, if ever, get better than this. Get this DVD. Get it now!