Network: Fox; Genre: Comedy; Content Rating: TV-PG (for language, innuendo and adult content); Available: DVD; Classification: Contemporary (star range: 1 - 4);
Season Reviewed: Complete Series (1 season)
Created by Dan Milano (from his own short "The Greg the Bunny Show"), Spencer Chinoy and Steven Levitan (a hack assembly line sitcom producer, here stumbling on his best work with Milano); "Greg" is set in a universe in which the puppets from children's shows are alive off-camera and cohabitate the Earth with humans. This may not sound new, but "Greg" takes an angle exploiting the political and cultural differences between the humans and these living pieces of sewn together cloth hilariously. Puppets, you see, prefer to be called "farbricated-Americans", speak the near dead native tongue of "puppish" and the most offensive racial epithet you can hurl at them is "sock". The writing is witty; cleverly dispensing pop-culture jabs and one-liners with a sense of irony and cartoon-like self-deprivation.
In "Greg" adorable little bunny puppet Greg (voiced by Milano) gets shoved into the starring role of "Sweetknuckle Junction" - a low-rated public access children's show that includes the crackled Junction Jack (Bob Gunton), Dottie (Dina Waters, crying a lot), and puppets Count Blah (Drew Massey), Warren Demontague (Milano) and Tardy the turtle. Behind the scenes Greg's friend Jimmy (Seth Green) is the PA, Jimmy's father Gil (comedy god Eugene Levy) is "producer/director" with Alison (Sarah Silverman) as the voice of the network. Somewhere in there is "Susan the monster", one of the funniest running characters on the series.
My review of the initial televised run of "Greg" would not have been a positive one. I felt the show was awkward and never became outrageous enough or hit - yes, what Roger Ebert calls - escape velocity to become really funny. I'm happy to say that that wouldn't have been right. Fox ran the episodes out of order and used the lamest gags to promo it (actually gags in which the joke was that they where supposed to be lame).
Good thing for DVD. The show did indeed start out awkward, lacking comic delivery and the actors still seem uncomfortable. But when you reassemble the series in production order you get a show that gets better and better as it goes. The actors get more comfortable with their puppet co-stars, the stories get wackier and more creative. Eventually, the show finds its rhythm as an ensemble comedy.
As a Shakespearian trained actor trapped in a children's show, Warren the Ape just about steals the series. However, all the puppets are endearing. Milano has concocted a colorful cast of characters to play with here and it becomes a joy watching them - and all their ticks - interact. The show takes full advantage of the things it can get away with with a puppet cast (the turn-around episode "Rabbit Redux" features a puppet funeral roast). And some things are just intrinsically funnier when said by a puppet. You haven't quite lived until you've heard Count Blah punctuating a tale of his romantic endeavors with the phrase "she blahed me". This isn't Jim Henson and the show is shabby in the puppet production department, as Greg literally has buttons for eyes in the first half, but that is part of its slacker comic charm.
Typically mugging Seth Green wisely underplays and gets some of his biggest laughs ever (an over-the-top reaction in "Surprise" is a favorite). But then there is Eugene Levy, who is so effortless you can't tell if he's slumming. Even if this show may only reach the kids who just know him as "the dad" from "American Pie". It boggles the mind that a network can cancel a show that is able to harness the comic talent of Eugene Levy each week. For her part Sarah Silverman has never looked sexier. She never really seems to warm up to the puppets, but, honestly, she is lucky just to be standing next to someone like Levy.
Normally I would fault hack producer Levitan, but "Greg" was constantly being cut off at the knees by the network - one that doesn't know what to do with this type of show and wants it to be "edgy" one minute and at the same time appeal to the kids that would watch the kind of shows this one is parodying the next. Got that? No, it doesn't make sense, and it is awkward but that's Fox - always wanting to please everyone all the time and in the process alienating the show's likely audience.
But just in time Milano's wacky vision starts to crawl out from under the network constraints and hits its stride in the last half. "Father and Son Reunion", "Blah Bawls", the screwball "The Jewel Heist", "The Singing Mailman" and particularly "Surprise" and the unaired "Jimmy Drives Gil Crazy" are terrific. Corey Feldman, Mad TV's Michael McDonald and Marilu Henner (as Warren's ex-wife) show up in gutsy guest spots. The show ultimately finds a nice middle ground between silly "Sesame Street" jokes and the vulgar excesses of Robert Smigel's "TV Funhouse".
In the normal life cycle of a long running TV series, it is often a given that the first season is a write-off as a time when the show was still experimenting and trying to find itself. Of course now, with the networks hair-trigger reaction to cancel shows that don't perform instantaneously, most of the time a first unrepresentative season is all we have to go on. I can't forget the mis-steps of the first few episodes, but they are forgivable and hardly out of the ordinary. It is only Fox's fault that this show didn't blossom into the full-blown comic fun that seems capable of. "Greg" is original, crazy, adorable, smart and very funny. Put it on your list of Great Shows Canceled Before Their Time.
* * ½ / 4
