TV Update 5
Drew Carey’s Green Screen Show is god-awful. It’s as if somebody wanted to create the anti-funny.
A trap that otherwise talented performers can sometimes get into when performing comedy is to pile on the material by “camping it up,” or otherwise indicating to the audience that they know the material is funny. This almost never works. There are few absolutes in comedy, but it generally works better if the performers take it seriously, and let the audience see the joke.
Similarly, by taking improv performances filmed on a “green screen” and larding them with animation and sound effects, Carey’s show smothers the very life out of them. The spontaneous pleasure of Whose Line Is It, Anyway?, of which I was a fan, is lost beneath distracting ephemera.
What the hell happened to Drew Carey, anyway? His self-titled show was the second-greatest new sitcom of the ’90s (after NewsRadio)…for its first five years or so. Then it became yet another example of those shows we’ve discussed before that stagger zombie-like towards their graves for the last several years of their run. In The Drew Carey Show’s case, sinking into a quicksand of stunts, sexism and self-indulgence.
Although he was a terrible improviser (and never denied it), he made a good host for Whose Line because he saw the value of letting himself be the butt of jokes. And because he was mainly content to sit back and enjoy the work of exceptional talents like Brad Sherwood, Greg Proops, Jeff Davis, Chip Esten and most especially Colin Mochrie. All of whom are wasted on the new program (Ryan Stiles having been wise enough to stay way, way, away).
I just hope in the very near future somebody finds a better vehicle for Mochrie at least–one of the funniest men in the world.
