The Drew Carey Show

Drew Carey is someone I saw on my television screen on a weekly basis as I was growing up.  I would watch him host the American Version of Whose Line Is It Anyway and then I would of course watch his show, simply titled as The Drew Carey Show.  It ran from 95 – 04, Nine Seasons.

Drew Carey and Bruce Helford are responsible for brining this show into existence.

The show stars Drew Carey, Ryan Stiles (Lewis), Diedrich Bader (Oswald), Kathy Kinney (Mimi), Christa Miller (Kate), and Craig Ferguson (Mr. Nigel Wick)

What is the show?

Drew Carey plays a version of himself, he works a mundane, cubicle, go nowhere job. Carey is the everyman, down on his luck, nice guy. Drew Carey is someone you could relate to, the show centres around him and all his crazy group of friends and relatives. Hilarity often ensues.

Why should you watch this show?

The Drew Carey Show broke all the rules of your typical sitcom. It breaks the fourth wall and has themed and musical episodes. The show featured live, improvised episodes every other year, featuring members from the Whose Line cast. They were often hit or miss. The show was never nominated for a single Emmy, so Carey decided to do an episode to address this; full of over the top “Emmy Award winning” storylines. These types of episodes were brilliant. “What’s Wrong With this Episode?” was another set of themed episodes they would run year to year. They would purposely make obvious and subtle mistakes for the audience to spot and win prizes.

The show would feature big musical numbers to serve the storyline in some capacity. For a show made in the 90’s, these numbers were pulled off flawlessly. The numbers were very entertaining to watch, the chorography was nothing special but they were very engaging and worked for a sitcom format.

Drew Carey’s brother, Steve (John Carroll Lynch), a tall, bald man was introduced season three, who happened to be a cross dresser. A cross dresser! The big masculine man you would least expect to be a cross dresser was a cross dresser! That’s when I said this show is brilliant. The brother wasn’t gay and he wasn’t really effeminate in any way, he just happened to love wearing women’s clothes. They didn’t make a big deal out of this, it wasn’t really mentioned, and it wasn’t even used as a punch line all that often. However, by season five Steve stopped wearing women’s clothes when he started dating Drew’s nemesis, Mimi. The subject of Steve not wearing women’s clothes was rarely discussed, unfortunately. It was a part of Steve’s character from the very beginning and have it not even come up ever again felt like a betrayal.

Drew could never catch a break; he rarely had a happy ending with both his work and relationship problems. His boss, Mr. Wick played by the brilliant Scottish, now talk show host, Craig Ferguson would continually abuse his power and was like an evil genius, even inheriting an evil laugh throughout the series. Mr. Wick was an alcoholic, which Drew would shamelessly use to his advantage.  Mr. Wick would manipulate Drew Carey’s good nature on a regular basis, even marrying him so he could score a green card to stay in the country.

Ryan Stiles’ Lewis and Diedrich Bader’s Oswald were inseparable; they were like a whole other show in itself.  Lewis worked for a drug testing company that would be an ongoing gag throughout the series. If someone had something wrong, Lewis would suggest a new drug that may turn you into a monkey but would probably solve your problem. One of my favourite episodes of the series was “DrugCo” (Season 4, Episode 20) where you find out what DrugCo is actually doing with its science experiments. Oswald was the loveable, fun, good-natured dumb guy. I loved Lewis and Oswald’s friendship; they were often mistaken as a gay couple and would act like an old married couple. They even lived together; they built their first house together, inseparable to the very end, possibly one of the best comedy duos of the past couple of decades.

While The Drew Carey Show followed the situation sitcom formula, it would deviate from the typical sitcom reality. When watching certain episodes of Drew Carey, you will have to park your logic at the door; the show would regularly set itself in a heightened reality. The show eventually ran itself into the ground, by not living with the philosophy ‘quality not quantity’. I think it simply ran out of ideas by the end of its seventh year. I would consider the first 7 seasons ‘must watch TV before you die’.

The Drew Carey Show was a unique sitcom with fun loving characters you want to see succeed.