Woops!

OK, so it was not the best attempt and perhaps the subject matter did not leave much room for development. But I kind of liked this little fill in show. It started with a parade and some clumsy kids then showed a guy in a VW bug at at a gas pump surrounded by desert. I have just finished converting the 5 and a half episodes I could find on some old tapes to DVD and the one episode that I really loved came through...the guilt ridden Santa show. This was one of the most hilarious Christmas shows I have ever seen. It seems when the bombs dropped, Santa panicked and locked Mrs. Claus out of the bunker. Now he is torn by guilt and becomes a pain in the butt for the hapless survivors in the farm house. Great stuff. OK, so it was may have been a poorly done rip off of Gilligan's Island. You had the liberal, the spoiled rich Republican, the stupid hot chick, the frustrated mid aged gal, the urbane black guy (Rembrandt Brown from Sliders) and the homeless guy. Comparisons can be made to the island bound folks. While they did make a good will attempt to entertain I think it was doomed from the start due to built in limitations. But it was diverting, as these quickie Fox shows go,and I would like to see it on DVD someday. After all, look at how popular the 6 episodes of Police Squad are.

I had been shopping for a Christmas present and saw the television "20 Q" and knew I could stump the game with this show.

It was referred to as the "thinking mans Gilligan's Island" but couldn't be really referred to as that because it wasn't a thinking show but rather a funny take on a very unfunny subject, nuclear annihilation and how people who are forced into living together to survive learn to live with each other.

It was a funny little show that had a BAD time slot (Sunday morning 12:30am here) and therefore was doomed from the start.

The final episode that aired was the Christmas episode and the other episodes of the short-lived show never aired.

Our loss, it was a half hour show to just get away from your problems and think about nothing.

I have seen some really lame shows out there (Friends, for example), but Fox really took a chance with this series. With a premise inspired by or stolen from Gilligan's Island, seven strangers manage to survive a disaster caused by an accidentally launched nuclear rocket. One man is in his indestructable Yugo, another is in a bank vault, another under a freeway underpass,,,,,they all find their way to a valley unaffected by the blast and decide to recreate humanity from themselves. There were few jokes in this limited series and one really interesting episode where a radioactive jem causes an one of the female characters' chest to develop over night. Fred Applegate played an optimistic bum firing off one hilarious one-liner after another as Evan Handler played the smart Gilligan, the unofficial leader of the group, while the rest of the characters were rough amalgamations of the castaways with the bum as the skipper, a Wall Street broker as the millionaire, a coroner as the professor, a dumb redhead as the actress and a cute blonde as the ingenue. Apparently, the similarites became too close and someone had the foresight to pull the plug before it was too late.

The group decides to form a simply economy to make things feel civilized. They base the economy on twist-ties just for fun, and then divvy up some goods. The stockbroker takes nothing but some simple tools.

Later they're all having fun trading goods and services for a few twist-ties. It's basically a bunch of kids playing store at this point, until they ask the stock broker for a shovel. He charges one of them 50 twist-ties for an hour's worth of shovel-time. The show actually takes a dramatic commercial break here.

The show returns after the break to see the broker as a self-appointed King. They're all basically serfs/slaves on King's land. They start an underground newspaper, which is nothing more than a note that says the King sucks or something similarly simple. The main character makes a smart remark about the paper, and another guy walks up says 'Yeah I stopped subscribing because they keep running the same article.' FUNNIEST LINE IN THE SHOW....sigh.

Finally the overthrow the King when the former-teacher fixes him some 'super-fiber' muffins. She owns all the toilet paper still, and charges him a million twist ties per roll.

In the next scene you see the woman has now appointed herself queen, treats the people even worse, and has a crown made of twist ties. Which is a little bit funny.

Somehow they just give up on the economy and go back normal. Lesson learned (I don't know what it was). End show (probably the best ever).

The Fox Network, when it was making a name for itself, loved taking chances on such goofy fare as "Get a Life" and "The Edge." However, before many of their stations got their own news anchors, Fox tried to turn the 10pm-11pm Sunday Night slot into another hour of comedy. One of these is "Flying Blind" which had it's moments. This is the other half of that experiment, and it was far less luckier.

The only real thing I'll remember about "Woops" is the moment the world ends. The hero (his name is unimportant) is in his volvo making a bank deposit when suddenly the bomb hits and everything is desert. After a long walk, he ends up at this valley where this farmhouse and surrounding yard is saved and where five other people have found. Thus, the setup for the comedy is set, right?

Wrong.

"Woops" is a black comedy without the comedy. The episode about how they will repopulate the human race and four of the men decide wheither they'll take the hot young blonde or aging 40-year-old is just sickening. A valiant effort at comedy, but more than not it was a odd and strange retread of a "Different Strokes" sitcom. Not that funny. Of course, only 10 of the 13 episodes were ever aired, so that really proves my point.

I doubt this show will ever see the light of broadcasting ever again. Shame? Maybe not.