The Good Life

This truly was a worthy (and, most important, funny) series that was cut down before it ever reached its prime. In hindsight, it had sort of the feel of "The Drew Carey Show" (duh, Drew Carey was in it) meets "Everybody Loves Raymond."

Funny, engaging, a tiny bit risqué in one episode, but mostly just good, clean family fun. A real winner that somehow lost. And now we've made the prime-time transition from warm, witty sitcoms to "reality" television that has nothing at all to do with reality -- unless you've ever been shipwrecked and had to live 30 days on an island populated in part by cameramen and TV hosts.

"The Good Life" deserved better, and we as television viewers deserved and continue to deserve better.

The summer of '94 saw three replacement shows - "The Boys," "The Building," and "The Good Life" - that beat the hell out of the majority of network sanctioned tripe. Of the three, "The Good Life was easily the best. When Drew Carey hit it big, I hoped it might spark some interest in this forgotten gem, like say a run on a certain cable comedy channel. Alas, "The Good Life" remains buried in the annals of TV history, with only Drew's show and Shay Astar's role on "3rd Rock" as pale reminders of what once was. I fondly recall the episode in which those two discovered a mutual love of the Grateful Dead. Drew's tie-dye was a sight to behold. And "Don't forget to Clark the door!" - that should have gone down as one of TV history's classic lines.

My buddy and I were at Universal Studios in CA and were recruited to go be in the audience of a TV show. They told us the title of the show was "The Bowmans." They put us in a bus and took us to the studio and then dropped us off back at the park about 3 hours later. It was pretty cool.

What I remember most is Drew Carey. I knew who he was from his stand-up. The warm-up comedian was really stupid and no one was laughing. He had his girlfriend there and seemed to be trying to impress her. So after a bit, Drew Carey took over doing the comedy between takes and was hilarious!! I thought it was a shame the show got canceled.

This is one of the funniest shows ever! I know it didn't last long, but I wish they would release this on DVD. The episode when they broke there bosses statue and sneak in to fix it is great! When they play Nerf basketball on there lunch break and keep score by what the ball strikes! "Hit futuristic looking collar" "Check"! Absolutely the best! Drew Carey was very funny, but definitely NOT the center of attention. All the cast had there moments. This show could easily be a hit today, especially since the television is packed with so many ex-comedian's with a hot wife type sitcoms. Hollywood loves to remake and repackage things, why not start here?

I remember watching the show whenever I could. My NBC affiliate kept preempting it for garbage they were airing. I can remember the comment about the CFL teams. "What would you like to name yourselves?" "Rough Riders." "Nah... We've Already got a Rough Riders" "How about.... Rough Riders?" "C'mon, we need the teams..." Thank goodness Drew got his own vehicle, but what a shame that this dissolved away into nothing. The kids were cute, but I remember a guest appearance by one character later on Full House. I know that Drew even had him on his show as a guest once, too, but by then it was WAY too little, too late. It seemed like he was doing a dying man a favor. Or, how about the promo during the Olympics of the three-man Bobsled team. It didn't suffer from lack of promotion, just consistency, and local network support, along with LOW watching.