The Drew Carey Show
Warner Brothers Television Favorites
Drew Carey, Diedrich Bader, Christa Miller,
Kathy Kinney, Craig Ferguson, Ryan Stiles
6 Episodes
Warner Home Video 2006
131 minutes
I really like the concept the people at Warner Brothers came out with recently with Warner Brothers Television Favorites: 6 episodes of your favorite, or a well-liked, television sitcom on one DVD. The Drew Carey Show allowed star Drew Carey to take over the small screen in the late nineties, early two-thousands with both Whose Line Is It Anyways?, which you could often see two or three times a week, his own sitcom. The Drew Carey Show was an excellent situation comedy in its early years and Warner Brothers Television Favorites features episodes from the first four seasons.
Although The Drew Carey Show did overstay its welcome a bit, you have to give Drew Carey due credit for always trying to innovate and make the show a rewarding experience for the viewer. He did have the couple of live performance shows, the spot the mistakes shows, and the sitcoms based on cult movies like The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Personal favorite on this best of sitcom DVD is Playing The Unified Field with guest star Jamie Lee Curtis. Drew asks his barber, the always funny and beautiful Jamie Lee Curtis out on a date. She proves to live a lot more on the edge than Drew can handle. One of the many great lines here is, “We went to a biker strip bar and it was open mic night. Poor Mike.”
The pilot episode of The Drew Carey Show does a great job of introducing the characters. Proof of this show’s strength right out the starting gate is very little was retooled from the pilot. Mimi (Kathy Kinney) shows up for the first time when she applies for a cosmetics counter job that Kate also wants
We’ll Always Remember Evaluation Day opens with a series of practical jokes in the ongoing war between Mimi and Drew and then centers on the fact Drew gave his girlfriend Lisa a bad evaluation. This show opens with the long version of the episode opener 5 O’clock World.
Drew Blows His Promotion is an entire episode build around fart jokes. Fortunately, it is actually funny. Drew is, once again, up for promotion at Winfred-Louder if the new company training video on safety and sexual harassment works out for him. Problem is his birthday is also coming up and Kate decides to join in on the tradition of pulling a prank on Drew on his birthday by inserting fart sound effects in the copy of the video Drew shows the board. Of course, pun intended, this backfires.
The innovative streak in The Drew Carey Show is most evident in the last two shows on the 6 episode Warner Brothers Television Favorites DVD. My Best Friend’s Wedding opens with a very funny scene where Drew Carey interacts with Daffy Duck and does a great Elmer Fudd imitation and a salute to the Duck Season, Rabbit Season skit. The episode itself is about Kate leaving Oswald at the altar. This show guest stars Adrienne Barbeau.
Also innovative is DrugCo, with guest star Charles Nelson Reilly (of Match Game fame). Drew’s dog Speedy is having eye problems and Lewis (Ryan Stiles) gets the dog in a drug trial at the drug company he works for. The gang decides to break in and liberate Speedy when they get worried about what is going on at DrugCo. This allows the writers to do a series of quick gags about what goes on at a drug company and indulge in a series of one-off special effects as Drew and his friends discover what is behind various doors at the company.
The Drew Carey Show Warner Brothers Television Favorites is a solid collection of 6 very good episodes from this very innovative sitcom. It would have been nice if the powers that be had included one of the spot the mistakes episodes but as it is this situation comedy DVD is a good addition to your collection of favorite TV shows.
Episode lost:
Pilot Season 1 1995
Playing The
Unified Field Season 1, show 18 1996
We’ll Always Remember
Evaluation Day Season 2, show 1 1996
Drew Blows His
Promotion Season 2, show 15 1997
My Best Friend’s
Wedding Season 3, show 28 1998
DrugCo Season 4, show 20 1999
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