The Drew Carey Show went off to a strong start in 1995 and kept getting funnier and funnier until it started to run dry right around 2000. Up until 1999, there was no funnier show on TV. PERIOD. The brilliance and wit of this show were criminally underrated. Yes, it was popular from the beginning but its popularity waned down until the show was forced to cancellation.
Very few shows were able to compete with the genius of this show. I'd say Frasier was the most powerful competitor (along with 3rd Rock from the Sun in its first two years), but at the end of the day, the Drew Carey Show came ahead. Friends was funny and consistently well-written. Seinfeld had quite a few brilliant Larry David moments (and Jerry's usual hilarious comedic banter). But not one show in my opinion ever came close to the Drew Carey Show's constant rapid-fire succession of killer lines and situations. Line after line after line, this show had some of the wittiest, funniest, cleverest, most brilliant content EVER. The show was just way ahead of its time.
Where does one start with this show? I'd say with the characters. This is a heavily character-driven show. Let's see:
Drew Carey (played by Drew Carey): lovable, overweight and in a rut. Those sum the poor man's life. He's been in the same stinkin' job for over a decade. To give you an idea how bad it is for him, his position is "assistant director of personnel", but there *is* no director of personnel, so had the job of both but without the perks or paycheck of the director. He has a hellish co-worker (Mimi) whose non-stop pranks, schemes and put-downs never seem to take a break, not even when she's pregnant or nursing her child. Drew deals with his life with laughing and making jokes, sometimes at his own expense. It's what gets him through life (oh yeah, and beer - lots and lots of beer). That and his friends. He does badly on relationships, but he doesn't quit, giving us endless joy and laughter in one trainwreck of a relationship after another. You can't help but love Drew. Something feels so homey and close about him.
Lewis Kinisky (played by Ryan Stiles): tall, thin and creepy. Lewis works in a shady drug company with a history of questionable practices and suspicious experiments. But, he doesn't care one bit. Why should he? He's 40, still single and still a janitor. He's got nothing to lose. So he's pretty trusted there, shifting up from his janitorial position at times and then demoted back because he screws it up somehow (he's not the smartest janitor out there). Ryan Stiles is absolutely hilarious in this part. An improvisation master, he had a cult following among the fans especially because of his improvisational comedy abilities on the British "Who's Line Is it Anyway?". Presumably, many of his lines on the show are also improvised.
Kate O'Brien (played by Christa Miller): she's the cold-blooded witch from Scrubs (Dr. Cox' ex-wife), but here she's just adorable. She's cute, she's funny, she's the second of Drew's close friends. Oh yeah, she's kind of a slut too. Absolutely shameless when it comes to sex and masturbation, she's quite liberated from society's judgments. She just doesn't care.
Oswald Lee Harvey (played by the supremely-versatile Deidrich Bader): the third of Drew's friends, he's Lewis' best buddy and arguably one of the dumbest people to ever appear on a TV show. Played to perfection by Deidrich, very rarely has dim wit and stupidity been played this good on TV. Let's see, Gob from Arrested Development, Bridget from 8 Simple Rules, Homer Simpson, Peter Griffin, I'd say those five are on anyone's short list for "funniest dumb characters in TV history". This character is absolutely hysterical.
Mimi Bobeck (played by Kathy Kinny): a nightmare on feet, she's Drew's arch nemesis in the office (and often times in real life). She puts him down endlessly about everything, she hatches evil plans all the time, she made him the victim of countless pranks, her mission in life is to ruin his. She was never intended to be a recurring character, but thanks (many thanks) to popular feedback from the audience, she was kept.
Nigel Wick (played by Craig Ferguson): Drew's English boss. He's my favorite character on the show. Played to extreme comedic heights by Ferguson (who's Scottish), you'll be amazed how well he gets the English accent. Compare his English accent to Americans doing the accent. God, so embarrassing. Craig gave me the surprise of a lifetime when he spoke his true Scottish accent one time. I was shocked. I could've sworn he was 100% English. Wick constantly ruins Drew's life, albeit not always on purpose. He's cold-hearted, selfish, self-centered, he's the epitome of the Machiavellian approach. Every line is a classic. Every scene is hysterity. One of the main reasons I watched this show.
The show only kept getting better until 2000, then it started to go downhill, unfortunately. Drew lost his trademark (and funny) weight, the comedians lost some of their glare, bizarre - and utterly disgusting at times - plots were hatched (the low point being the very old gay couple living with Drew, describing some "intimacies" that include waxing each other, ugh), and very sadly, the show was not what it once was. But from 1995 to 1999, there was arguably no funnier show on TV, not even Seinfeld. Sure, it was more popular, but by no means better. The Drew Carey Show blew Seinfeld out of the water. Now we just have a sad and fond memory of a brutally funny and well-written show that is no more.
Very few shows were able to compete with the genius of this show. I'd say Frasier was the most powerful competitor (along with 3rd Rock from the Sun in its first two years), but at the end of the day, the Drew Carey Show came ahead. Friends was funny and consistently well-written. Seinfeld had quite a few brilliant Larry David moments (and Jerry's usual hilarious comedic banter). But not one show in my opinion ever came close to the Drew Carey Show's constant rapid-fire succession of killer lines and situations. Line after line after line, this show had some of the wittiest, funniest, cleverest, most brilliant content EVER. The show was just way ahead of its time.
Where does one start with this show? I'd say with the characters. This is a heavily character-driven show. Let's see:
Drew Carey (played by Drew Carey): lovable, overweight and in a rut. Those sum the poor man's life. He's been in the same stinkin' job for over a decade. To give you an idea how bad it is for him, his position is "assistant director of personnel", but there *is* no director of personnel, so had the job of both but without the perks or paycheck of the director. He has a hellish co-worker (Mimi) whose non-stop pranks, schemes and put-downs never seem to take a break, not even when she's pregnant or nursing her child. Drew deals with his life with laughing and making jokes, sometimes at his own expense. It's what gets him through life (oh yeah, and beer - lots and lots of beer). That and his friends. He does badly on relationships, but he doesn't quit, giving us endless joy and laughter in one trainwreck of a relationship after another. You can't help but love Drew. Something feels so homey and close about him.
Lewis Kinisky (played by Ryan Stiles): tall, thin and creepy. Lewis works in a shady drug company with a history of questionable practices and suspicious experiments. But, he doesn't care one bit. Why should he? He's 40, still single and still a janitor. He's got nothing to lose. So he's pretty trusted there, shifting up from his janitorial position at times and then demoted back because he screws it up somehow (he's not the smartest janitor out there). Ryan Stiles is absolutely hilarious in this part. An improvisation master, he had a cult following among the fans especially because of his improvisational comedy abilities on the British "Who's Line Is it Anyway?". Presumably, many of his lines on the show are also improvised.
Kate O'Brien (played by Christa Miller): she's the cold-blooded witch from Scrubs (Dr. Cox' ex-wife), but here she's just adorable. She's cute, she's funny, she's the second of Drew's close friends. Oh yeah, she's kind of a slut too. Absolutely shameless when it comes to sex and masturbation, she's quite liberated from society's judgments. She just doesn't care.
Oswald Lee Harvey (played by the supremely-versatile Deidrich Bader): the third of Drew's friends, he's Lewis' best buddy and arguably one of the dumbest people to ever appear on a TV show. Played to perfection by Deidrich, very rarely has dim wit and stupidity been played this good on TV. Let's see, Gob from Arrested Development, Bridget from 8 Simple Rules, Homer Simpson, Peter Griffin, I'd say those five are on anyone's short list for "funniest dumb characters in TV history". This character is absolutely hysterical.
Mimi Bobeck (played by Kathy Kinny): a nightmare on feet, she's Drew's arch nemesis in the office (and often times in real life). She puts him down endlessly about everything, she hatches evil plans all the time, she made him the victim of countless pranks, her mission in life is to ruin his. She was never intended to be a recurring character, but thanks (many thanks) to popular feedback from the audience, she was kept.
Nigel Wick (played by Craig Ferguson): Drew's English boss. He's my favorite character on the show. Played to extreme comedic heights by Ferguson (who's Scottish), you'll be amazed how well he gets the English accent. Compare his English accent to Americans doing the accent. God, so embarrassing. Craig gave me the surprise of a lifetime when he spoke his true Scottish accent one time. I was shocked. I could've sworn he was 100% English. Wick constantly ruins Drew's life, albeit not always on purpose. He's cold-hearted, selfish, self-centered, he's the epitome of the Machiavellian approach. Every line is a classic. Every scene is hysterity. One of the main reasons I watched this show.
The show only kept getting better until 2000, then it started to go downhill, unfortunately. Drew lost his trademark (and funny) weight, the comedians lost some of their glare, bizarre - and utterly disgusting at times - plots were hatched (the low point being the very old gay couple living with Drew, describing some "intimacies" that include waxing each other, ugh), and very sadly, the show was not what it once was. But from 1995 to 1999, there was arguably no funnier show on TV, not even Seinfeld. Sure, it was more popular, but by no means better. The Drew Carey Show blew Seinfeld out of the water. Now we just have a sad and fond memory of a brutally funny and well-written show that is no more.