Word: gagged
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...idea-starved industry, the club comics bring some important assets. Even without acting credentials, they know how to get laughs. Often they have developed a stage persona, or an attitude, or at the very minimum a few well- tested gag lines. Yet delivering one-liners is not the same as creating a character. For every comic who has made a successful transition to prime time, there are others (Jackie Mason, Richard Lewis) who have been sabotaged by their own limitations or by the rickety contraptions built for them...
...sitcom, Thea, is a throwback to the broad, brackish family sitcoms of the Good Times ilk: streetwise sass drenched in sentimental mush. John Mendoza, who plays a newly divorced sportswriter in NBC's The Second Half, is a mellower, and less accomplished, performer, who is also defeated by tired gag situations -- the inept single guy who can't furnish an apartment or get a date without stumbling over his feet...
...George ((Burns)) and Gracie ((Allen)), still working for CBS, were involved in a running gag about Gracie's 'missing brother' George Allen . . . In working out their opening exchange ((for a guest appearance on Rudy Vallee's radio show on NBC in the 1930s)), all hands agreed it might begin with Rudy saying, 'Hello, Gracie, have you found George yet?' Scripts were prepared accordingly. NBC in a last-minute ruling, decreed otherwise. The missing brother gag, NBC held, was a CBS promotion and nuts to a rival network promoting itself over NBC facilities. The script would have to be rewritten...
Letterman's standards and sense of propriety are apparent as well in his choice of material. Writers say he often rejects jokes that stray too close to tragic news events or real-life misfortune. Rob Burnett recalls Letterman turned down a gag for a segment called Charts and Graphs -- "Dyslexics' Favorite Beatles," featuring names like ULAP and OGNRI; the host said it made fun of a serious disability. Comedian Jeff Altman, another Letterman pal from the Comedy Store days, remembers a guest appearance on Late Night in which he made a lewd crack that included the word "genitals." Letterman didn...
There are some nice supporting performances, and a good visual effect with the map of the United States. A running gag about an old movie, "An Affair to Remember...