“A casual relationship with reality”
Categories: Television
I just got the newly released DVD of the first two seasons of NewsRadio. For any of you that don't remember, NewsRadio ran between 1995 and 1999 on NBC. It never really found the audience it should have, largely because NBC kept screwing around with its timeslot. During the five season run, it was on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Sundays and probably another night as well. Never, however, on Thursday night, which was a mistake on NBC's part.
However, despite that, NewsRadio was a brilliant, brilliant show. It's one of my favorite sitcoms, but that wasn't always the case. For the first several years of its existence, I assumed it was just another sitcom and didn't have anything special to offer. In fact, there were times I was almost downright hostile to it. This wasn't the first, nor last, time I'd judged a show without actually watching it. But this is the one I regret the most, because once I finally figured out that NewsRadio was something special, the show was ending it's second to last season.
But thank God for syndication. In syndication, I discovered what a hilarious show it was. The cast was a perfect ensemble that included Dave Foley, Maura Tierney, Phil Hartman, Stephen Root, Vicki Lewis, Joe Rogan, Khandi Alexander and Andy Dick. And for each of the names I just mentioned, NewsRadio was probably the best work they've ever done.
Dave Foley was who I first started watching the show for. He came to NewsRadio a year or two after the end of The Kids in the Hall, the brilliant Canadian sketch comedy show. I liked him on that show, but his acting on NewsRadio really reminded me of Dick Van Dyke's performances on "The Dick Van Dyke Show", with these very smooth deliveries that often didn't "sound" like jokes. Let me explain that one. Dick Van Dyke had this rare ability to deliver punchlines completely straight-faced. Not deadpan, exactly, but very naturally, without "hitting" the punchlines in ways that every other comedic actor does by instinct. It's not necessarily a better or worse way to deliver comedy, but it's very rare and surprisingly refreshing. I've never seen another actor able to do it until I saw Dave Foley on NewsRadio. Like Van Dyke, he didn't do it for every punchline, or even at all in a lot of episodes. But there it would be, ready to surprise you with how velvety the delivery was.
So, by the summer of 1998, I was watching it every night in syndication. In terms of actors, I started with Dave Foley, but came to appreciate the entire cast a lot. Obviously Phil Hartman was already a legend from "Saturday Night Live", but having a single character to play week after week really fit him, and luckily it was a character where he flex all sorts of comedic muscles. He could move so smoothly between broad, loud comedy to very subtle stuff all within the same characterization.
Maura Tierney was another revelation. She was a complete unknown prior to NewsRadio, but she has mad skillz when it comes to acting chops. Now she's Nurse Abby on "ER", and is easily the most talented member of that cast. The funny thing is, if you saw her on NewsRadio but not ER, you'd think she's great at comedy but probably couldn't do drama. If you've seen her on ER but not on NewsRadio, you'll think she's great at drama, but probably not so hot at comedy. but if you've seen her in both shows, you realize just how amazingly talented she really is. Plus she's hot in a very realistic sort of way.
And Stephen Root. You know Stephen Root without even knowing you do. He played Milton in the movie "Office Space", the weird mumbler on a quest to get back his red Swingline stapler. He also played the blind radio station owner in "Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou?". He's also the voice of the pathetically hilarious Bill Dautrieve on "King of the Hill". But his performance on NewsRadio is by far my favorite. Apparently (according to the commentary on the DVDs), he was cast as Jimmy James, eccentric billionaire owner of WNYX, the news radio station at the heart of NewsRadio, because the producers had like 200 people read for the part. 199 of them read it one way, Stephen Root read it another, and thus was he cast. And man he was good. Probably of the entire cast, he was the one who had his characterization most fully-formed in the pilot episode, and sort of had to wait for the writing to catch up to his performance, which it quickly did.
The rest of the cast really deserves a brief individual rundown, but I want to move on, so that means screwing over Andy Dick, Joe Rogan, Khandi Alexander and Vicki Lewis. Sorry guys.
There's another star of the show, though, and that's the writing staff. Damn, the writing was good. And fast, especially in the third and fourth seasons, but even in the first two seasons, the writing was hilarious. The best thing about the writing is how often they'd defy your expectations. In the episode "Station Sale", for instance, Jimmy James is selling the station and the staff is trying to talk him out of it:
Jimmy James: Look, I've got to call the Robertson Communications people by midnight, is anyone else going to try to talk me out of selling the station? Matthew (Andy Dick): We don't have to. Jimmy: What? Matthew: You see, when you weren't looking, I took the liberty of setting the clock ten minutes forward. It's now 12:05, which means you've missed your midnight deadline. Yes! (Big applause break for this very sitcom-y denouement) Jimmy: Matthew, that twelve o'clock deadline was more of a loose guideline. I'm dealing with a corporation here, not magical fairies.
I love that. So many shows would have been happy to let it end with that ridiculous trick, and the audience would say to themselves, "No, that's not how it works!". Not to mention, even if it did work, Matthew would surely have his ass fired for screwing the boss out of a multi-million dollar deal.
And there's plenty of other examples where the comedy comes from taking a hard left turn. And after that, the comedy comes from packing in three or four jokes in the time it takes most other shows to do the setup for one.
Anyhow, so now I have the DVDs, which includes commentary on 20 of the 29 episodes (the first season was only seven episodes long since it was a midseason replacement). Originally, it was just going to be released as a bare-bones package, with no extra features. Paul Simms, the creator and executive producer of NewsRadio, stepped in and delayed the release until they could record commentary and assemble some other extras, so thanks, Paul.
posted by Mark Kawakami at May 28, 2005, 01:05 PM // permalink // (9) Comments