BUY IT AT AMAZON: CLICK HERE!
STUDIO: Warner Home Video
MSRP: $9.98
RATED: NR
RUNNING TIME: N/A
SPECIAL FEATURES: None
The Pitch
Senior Warner Bros. DVD Exec: “What’s our standard policy for TV DVDs?”
Junior Warner Bros. DVD Exec: “To release a pathetic offering of a few episodes before giving up the full season box sets and slapping a generic name like Television Favorites on it.”
Senior Warner Bros. DVD Exec: "Good, let’s go with that."
Sadly, the "I Know What You Did Last Episode" episode didn’t quite set the Nielsens ablaze…
The Humans
Drew Carey, Ryan Stiles, Diedrich Bader, Christa Miller, Kathy Kinney, Craig Ferguson, John Lynch, Cynthia Watros
The Nutshell
Carey played the eponymous character who was the personnel manager for a department store in Cleveland and who reveled in his blue-collar life. He has a trio of lovable loser buddies: Lewis (Ryan Stiles), Oswald (Diedrich Bader) and Kate (Christa Miller). He also had an arch nemesis at work in the over-mascara-ed form of Mimi Bobeck, with whom he frequently traded insults.
Nor did the "Tribute to Richard Pryor’s Freebase" episode…
The Package
Did I mention pathetic? Six episodes, apparently chosen at random, from the various seasons. There’re no special features, and it’s in the original TV standard; but at least the audio is in Dolby Digital Stereo. The cover art is actually quite decent, but if that’s the thing you care about most, you can get it on the Amazon link up above and save yourself 10 bucks.
The Lowdown
When not at work, Carey and his pals spend their time drinking beer, shooting pool in Carey’s back yard or ditching each other in romances and even a wedding here or there. When they’re not doing that, they’re dancing in the elaborate opening numbers for the show. There’s the typical yuks from Carey, a highly successful comic before the show, although on more than one occasion, it looks like he’s just tossing in material for the hell of it rather than it having to do anything with the story. The Drew Carey Show ran seemingly forever, nine seasons, and Carey used the popularity of the show to launch his improv comedy show, Whose Line is it Anyway.
Unfortunately, Carey’s inability to get out of character after his guest appearance in the 2001 Royal Rumble caused a bit of trouble on set…
This was the third of three Television Favorites sets that I got to review. It certainly looks the best as the production values for the show were of much higher quality than either Welcome Back Kotter or Night Court. Like the other Television Favorites discs, however, this is a cheap offering, certainly before the full season box sets start to come out. Warner Bros. seems to like to do this more than any other studio, as they also did it with the Batman: TAS, Superman: TAS and Justice League sets. I didn’t fall for it then and I’m advising fans of this show not to either.