Years:  1992, 1993
Genre:  TV series, Comedy
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Bob Newhart, Carlene Watkins, Cynthia Stevenson, Jere Burns
Guest appearances:  Lisa Kudrow, Betty White, Dick Martin, Tom Poston  
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     Did you know that after Newhart, Bob Newhart had another show, cleverly named Bob?  It’s true, he did – I just saw it!  It ran in 1993 for 33 episodes, all of which are on the Complete Series DVD out April 10th from Paramount Home Entertainment.

      Newhart plays Bob McKay, a cartoonist who works on a comic book called Mad Dog.  He has a wife and a daughter and a bunch of very. Quirky. Co-workers.  Now, I LOVE Newhart.  And I think Bob Newhart is one of the funniest people of all time.  But watching him in Bob is like watching Terrell Owens struggling to make the cut in the Indoor Football League.  It’s depressing. 

     See, this is how it works.  Bob will make a long speech about how his daughter is the calmest, most rational human being he has ever known and that nothing can make her freak out.  And THEN, the elevator door opens right behind him, where his daughter is FREAKING OUT!  Which makes his previous speech hilarious because of its proximity to Trisha’s meltdown!

     And that’s it.  Some of the Newhart gang make appearances here and there.  A very young Lisa Kudrow guest stars as a very boring girl very reminiscent of Phoebe on Friends.  And the omnipresent Betty White shows up for the second season as Bob’s boss.  Actually, a whole new cast shows up around Bob Newhart for the second season.  It just didn’t help.  Maybe replacing all the writers would have worked much better than replacing all the actors.  Cause Bob, sadly, for all 33 episodes, really and truly sucked.

     P.S. Here’s a great way to tell that a series is dated, from the pre-internet days. When it has a title that is clearly not google-conscious. In order to get any information at all about Bob, the series starring Bob Newhart about the comic book and then the greeting card company from the early 90s, you pretty much have to type ALL of that in google, and then it’s still the ninth search result.  If only they had seen google coming!  If only they had seen their cancellation coming!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 10th, 2012 at 8:26 am and is filed under 1992, 1993, Comedy, TV series. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.