Change That We Can ALL Believe In

If I was the President of the United States, I would probably push for any canceled television shows that I loved to be put back on the air.

"Undeclared"
"Freaks and Geeks" (poor Seth Rogen would have to do double duty)
"Seinfeld" (though I'd be ok with the reunion that is supposed to occur on "Curb Your Enthusiasm")
Either the "Larry Sanders Show" or "It's Garry Shandling's Show" (both were awesome)
"Mr. Show"

Maybe, just for kicks, I'd see if Jerry Mathers could squeeze into his jeans and baseball cap to recreate Beaver Cleaver. That would be funny. Then I'd probably make him dance and throw nickels at him, yelling, "This displeases Hugh Beuamont" until he broke down in tears.

I would broadcast this every week on Pay-Per-View , with a new celebrity of course, until we got enough money to solve the deficit.

But I would definitely make it my mission to get "Arrested Development" back on TV. And if Michael Cera didn't want to do it, I'd excommunicate him.*

* I know that excommunication can only be done by the Pope, but it would be a modern miracle if I ended up as President, so I may as well go the whole nine yards and become the world's first Pope/President.

Anyhow, Cera would be living the rest of his life in Liberia or Burma (or is it Myanmar now?) or maybe the Arctic Circle until he wised up.

But this sort of thing happen--not the excommunication of Michael Cera--command performances by the wealthy and powerful.

When Michael Jackson died, I read an interview with Carrie Fisher, who was one of his buddies and she spoke about what a loving father the man was. As an example of his love, she said that Jackson's kids were crazy for "Star Wars" and one Christmas, as a surprise to them, Jackson asked Fisher to come over and act out a few scenes.

And she did it!

What scenes did she reenact? Did she do the Jaba, metal bra one? Did she put her hair in those space cinabuns for the kids? Did she tell Mark Hammil to quit watering her lawn for the day and come and help her out?

Can you even imagine being that insanely rich or powerful that you could call Carrie Fisher or some other actor or actress and have them come over to your house on Christmas day and recite lines from one of their movies? Of all the things I read about Jackson after his death, that's the one that stopped me in my tracks.

Elephant man bones? Meh.
Secret room in his closet he used to stash kids? Figures.
He had no nose because of all the plastic surgery and needed to wear a prosthetic--that may or may not have been stolen from the morgue the day he died? Weird, but ... no. That's really weird.

But the Carrie Fisher thing made me think that even though the guy lived the life of a pariah for the last two decades of his life, he still had a ton of influence. I wonder how much he paid her. I mean, he had to pay her, right?

And here's the thing, I know why Jackson's kids had no friends; there's no way that their parents could ever top any thing Michael Jackson did.

It's like that scene from "The Simpsons" where Homer goes to Krusty Klown Kollege* and becomes a regional Krusty. Unbeknownst to the Millhouse family, they hire him thinking that they got the real Krusty. Bart knows different, which leads to perhaps one of the greatest exchanges in Simpsons history:

Millhouse: Surprised Bart? My dad got Krusty the Klown for my birthday.
Bart: Oh. I'm sure I could do that too.
Millhouse: I don't know Bart, my dad's a pretty big wheel down at the cracker factory.

In other words, no matter how big of a wheel your dad is at his cracker factory, you're not going to beat Michael Jackson.

* This episode had so many awesome lines and was so good, yet no one talks about it. It's criminally underrated.**

** BTW, my wife hates my asterisk interludes, but I like them a lot. Sorry honey.

So if you like my platform, remember: Magrane in 2016! I don't want to run against Obama--I heard he reunited the Sweathogs just so that he could shave Gabe Kapplan's mustache.

46.Andy Richter Controls the Universe

It occurred to me that the problem with my last entry was that I spent way too much time focusing on why the show (“Grosse Pointe”) didn't work, rather than the purpose of the Blog: why a particular show works for me. After all, this is my Blog, my list on my favorite shows, who cares why it didn't work for the rest of the TV-watching world? (Jesus, that last sentence had more “my's” than a Johnny Gill song). That being said, at first blush, the title of this show, “Andy Richter Controls the Universe” could be considered among the worst titles ever imagined for a sitcom.

But look again.

Unless you were a fan of “Late Night with Conan O'Brien”, the name Andy Richter probably meant nothing to you. If you were a fan, you might have been saying to yourself, “Sure, Richter is funny, but he can't star in a television show, much less control the universe.” And that may have been the exact point the producer was trying to make about the show and life in general. Andy Richter (the character on the show has the same name as the actor) was just normal guys who worked from 9-5 at a place he didn't like because it paid the bills. Despite never realizing his dream of becoming a writer, Richter still controlled the universe in his mind. The show was sort of an updated version of the classic short story “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” by James Thurber.

The premise of the show was simple and a bit mundane: Richter got into a sticky mess and 30 minutes later he got out of it. Standard stuff.

But the genius wasn't how he got out of the mess per se, but like Mitty, it was the journey that he took to get out of the mess. Laced with dream sequences of how Andy really wanted things to go, talking to his company's 170-year-old (and dead) founder and using an omnipotent narrator (Richter) the show fooled with typical TV and story telling conventions. For example, the company's founder would often portray Andy's “bad” side and urge him to look at or solve problems in a less-than-PC way. Or Richter would dream of solving a problem in a most absurd or violent way, before ultimately deciding against it.

These solutions were often the funniest and more surreal bits of comedy on the show and despite an often absurd dream solution, grounded Richter as a nice guy who does the right thing.

ARCTU only ran for 19 episodes over two years and when the show originally aired, I vowed not to watch a second of it because it took the place of another favorite of mine, “Undeclared”. However, I broke down after the initial episode and found that it was both quirky and smart. Which meant that it was going to be cancelled soon. Fox pulled the show after a few weeks and aired it again as a mid-season replacement the following year before giving it the Old Yeller treatment at the end of the 2003 season.

Aside from Conan O'Brien, who guest starred in an episode late in the show's run, Fox never tried to use any sort of stunt casting that they would often do to spice up low-rated programs. For example, on the aforementioned “Undeclared” both Adam Sandler and Will Ferrell were key guest stars on different episodes and it was not an uncommon occurrence to see someone like Oscar-winning actress Charlize Theron guest star on “Arrested Development”. This allowed for the cast and the writing to speak for itself. Unfortunately not a lot of people were listening.

As with the last show that I looked back on, Irene Molloy was the “hot one” in this show too. But unlike her character in “Grosse Pointe”, Molloy played a sweet, almost naïve girl who is the secretary that is new to the office. Andy is silently smitten with her, but she is unaware of his feelings as she is dating his best friend. Obviously this is vein that has been mined many times in many different sitcoms, however ARCTU put a new spin on it with some of the unconventional story telling methods listed above.

In spite of it's short run and relative obscure cast list, “Andy Richter Controls the Universe” was a fun, original television show. If you happen to catch the reruns or bump into the DVD (which hasn't been released yet—though there are rumors that say that it will be), do yourself a favor and watch it.

Richter is a terrific talent that was utilized well on the Conan O'Brien show and was excellent in his one appearance on “Arrested Development”, even his subsequent show “Andy Barker, PI” was decent too, though it lacked the originality of ARCTU. The problem isn't that he's a bad actor, he's great with the right roles, it may be that the public that knows him sees him a second banana (from his days on Conan) and the public that doesn't know him, don't find much in the way of his subtle comedy stylings. And that's a shame.