Thursday, June 6, 2013

Where do our comedies come from?

Sometimes, the really great sitcoms on TV come out of the really good sitcoms on TV.

One example would be "W!," the laff-a-minute hilarity on FOX from 2001-2009. It featured the antics of "Dubya Junior," who portrayed a lovable rube who rose to a high office through some sort of damned mixup. Very little is remembered about that show. It was like laughing about a breeze that momentarily tickled you, but later, didn't seem all that funny at all.

The genesis for that show was the old "George and Bar" show, which was cancelled after four years on the Retirement Living Channel.  That was a show about a man married to a woman that everyone kept taking for his mother, and his hilarious attempts to blend in with normal people by buying sox at a KMart (but not having a wallet) and having dinner with Japanese diplomats (but immediately thereafter doing the technicolor yawn.)  George tried to hold onto a job that he was given by his friend Ronald, who used to play cowboys in the movies, but he made promises that he couldn't keep, one of which was the time that people from the Lone Star State tried to form a new state, but he stood firmly in opposition, famously stating, "Read my lips!  No New Texas!"

Then there was "Frasier," which took the self-absorbed psychiatrist from the old "Cheers" show and placed him in Seattle, and gave him a normal dad, a self-absorbed brother psychiatrist, and a radio show.

I wondered for years what was the deal with the closing theme to that show..."Tossed Salads and Scrambled Eggs."  It turns out that it's all about Dr Frasier Crane's efforts to deal with his patient/callers, whose thoughts are tossed like salads and scrambled like eggs until they are out of their heads. You can read about it here!

But even now, I don't know what to do with those tossed salads and scrambled eggs.  Once I hear that song, I can't get it out of my head!




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