Karen Sisco is a tough, smart, and sexy U.S. Marshal who has the unfortunate habit of falling for the same bad guys her job requires her to catch. She first appeared in an Elmore Leonard's novel Out of Sight, and then in the 1998 movie adaptation of the novel (played by Jennifer Lopez opposite George Clooney), and both were excellent. In 2003, ABC brought Karen into her own show, and I had mixed emotions going in. It's hard enough to adapt a good book into a good movie, could lighting strike twice when they spin the character off into her own series? Fortunately, as you probably guessed since I'm holding out hope for an improbable DVD release four years later, I thought it worked out perfectly. Random thoughts about the show (and a clip) after the jump.
Bob Brush (The Wonder Years, Early Edition) wrote the pilot, and Scott Frank, who wrote the movie version's script, served as a creative consultant. The series was a mixture of action and mystery, with plenty of character-based drama as well. And like any good Elmore Leonard adaptation (of which there are surprisingly few), it always managed to make the criminal element a constant source of oddball characters and plenty of laughs.
The cast was excellent. Carla Gugino, who can currently be seen on Entourage but at the time was only known for the Spy Kids movies and a season of Spin City, was cast in the lead, and in addition to being beautiful, made the character her own, and for my money played it a little better than Jennifer Lopez. Robert Forster doesn't have much range as an actor, but Karen's tough private-eye father was right up his alley. And Bill Duke (Predator) is always so mean you can't help but love him, and his role as Karen's boss was no exception. And for good measure they brought in some great guest actors.
ABC I thought did a decent job trying to promote it, but could've scheduled it better. In the fall of 2003, Alias was still a modest hit, and would've been a perfect lead-in for a show with a similar strong-but-sexy lead. Instead, it aired on Wednesdays after The Bachelor, which seemed like an odd choice. But whether it was scheduling or just America's often frustrating tendency to ignore shows I like, the audience just wasn't there, and ABC pulled it from the schedule after 7 episodes. The remaining three were shipped off to USA and aired the following spring. And that's pretty much the last we heard of the show. Although it had it's share of dedicated fans, it won't be coming to DVD anytime soon, which is a shame.
And for kicks, here's the only decent clip I could find of the show, featuring Grey's Anatomy's Kate Walsh.
Friday, April 27, 2007
DVD Wishlist: Karen Sisco
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
DVD Wishlist: TV Funhouse
Robert Smigel is a crazy, filthy-minded, genius. He first made his mark as a writer on Saturday Night Live in 1985, and remained there until becoming the first head writer on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. While on Conan, he performed in a few comedy bits frequently, as the voice behind Syncro-Voxed celebrities, but most notably as Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. He later returned to SNL, creating short cartoons under the title TV Funhouse. The success of those shorts lead Comedy Central to greenlight an original half hour series for Smigel, also called TV Funhouse, which would combine live action pieces, animated shorts, and Triumph-style animal puppets. The series was insane, vulgar, and absolutely hilarious.
The show was centered around the idea of a fake children's show. Each episode had a theme (Caveman Day, Hawaiian Day), and Doug, the host, would arrive an an appropriate costume, excited to have a fun show with his friends, the AniPals. But the AniPals, a group of Triumph-like animal puppets, had very adult interests (gambling, cock fights, sex) which always resulted in them ditching Doug's show for something more fun. Each episode bounced around between Doug parodying children's show activities, introducing cartoons, pieces mocking educational films, and the AniPals' adventures.
Despite being given a prime timeslot after South Park, the show lasted only eight episodes. Cable ratings are hard to come by, so I'm not sure if it was poor ratings or the show's more controversial elements (a sketch called "Porn for Kids" got them into some trouble, though it was not nearly as offensive as the title makes it sound) that lead to the cancellation, but I'd like to see it on DVD, and I'm sure I'm not alone. Though Saturday Night Live has released a DVD of their TV Funhouse shorts, to my knowledge there are no plans of any kind for the Comedy Central series.
Click below for a whole bunch of TV Funhouse clips:
Wonderman 1:
Wonderman 2:
Sted-man!:
A new Scooby-Doo cartoon:
Mnemonics:
Thursday, April 5, 2007
DVD Wishlist: Andy Richter Controls the Universe
This TVSquad article and subsequent discussion in the comments lead me to think about some of the shows I miss that have either gotten a weak DVD treatment or none at all. Which brings me to the first edition of my TV on DVD wishlist.
As a fan of Late Night with Conan O'Brien during the early days, I was crushed at the news in 2000 that Conan's lovable sidekick was leaving. When Andy Richter's subsequent sitcom, Andy Richter Controls the Universe premiered in 2002, however, I immediately knew that it was worth it. But after two seasons of extraordinary television, the show was canceled. And almost 4 years after Fox pulled the plug and despite a rabid fan base demanding one, there is still no DVD release scheduled for the show, which is a shame.
The series followed the adventures of five friends in an office working for a giant corporation. Andy writes manuals for military applications, a poor substitute for his dream to be an actual writer. Jessica (Paget Brewster, Huff) is his boss and friend, a capable career woman with a pretty disastrous personal life. Wendy (Irene Molloy, Grosse Pointe) is the hot new secretary who Andy had a crush on. Keith (James Patrick Stuart) is Andy's best friend, who uses his good looks to avoid doing any hard work. And Byron (Jonathan Slavin) was an artist who worked with Andy, who alternated between a sort of angry depression and an innocent child-like optimism.
In many ways, Andy Richter Controls the Universe was a traditional workplace sitcom. Most of the action takes place at the office, and all the regular characters are his coworkers. And the basic feel is nothing out of the ordinary. Some conflict between characters leads to a bunch of laughs, resolves itself within 30 minutes, and we often get a nice lesson in the end.
But there was a lot that made the show different and special. It was stylistically similar to Scrubs, in that it was a single camera show with no laugh track, and Andy narrated the action, frequently relying on his fantasies, flashbacks, and non-sequiturs for gags. It differed from Scrubs in that it never took detours into maudlin territory, nor did it push any romantic subplots. It was at times edgy, sweet, smart, and brilliantly stupid, but always funny.
The six-episode first season aired on Tuesdays in the spring of 2002. There was a good amount of critical buzz, and Fox seemed to really get behind it with the promotions, plugging it frequently during the embarrassing but highly rated Celebrity Boxing special the previous week. Strong ratings ensued for the pilot, which raised hopes high for a successful series. But each of the next two weeks saw the audience shrink. Fox showed enough faith to give the series a 13 episode order for a followup, but at some point between the first and second seasons, really lost confidence in the show.
The second season premiere was pushed back to December, where the schedule is traditionally loaded with reruns. Airing on Sundays and Tuesdays, the network showed eight episodes in six weeks before pulling the plug. That they came in such rapid succession, in an unusual month for television, and around the holidays, meant that many fans missed some or all of the second season. On top of that, Fox left five finished episodes unaired.
Sometime later, the Paramount Comedy Network (whatever that is) and HDNet aired reruns, so the unaired episodes finally saw the light of day, and they've been floating around on the internet ever since. One would think the studio would see the excitement fans had over uncovering the last episodes, but still nothing on the DVD front. Amazon.com has a page set up for if (when?) there ever is a release, but it's been there for quite a while. Until that happens, the best we've got are a few clips floating around on YouTube. Not the moments I'd have picked, but they still provide a window into the crazy world of Andy Richter Controls the Universe.
In the first, from the pilot (I think), Andy introduces us to his imaginary friend, Mr. Pickering. He appeared on occasion throughout the series, and was hilariously offensive every time. Medium and The Ghost Whisperer may have done the talking to dead people thing more successfully, but Andy Richter did it first. Truly a show ahead of its time.
In the second, from the second season episode "Twins," Andy suggests an unusual theory for his boss' boyfriend's mood swings, and is reminded of his theorizing track record:
