Cult hit gets new life
Fox took a chance on an oddball concept from a writing pair from Letterman show
It might be hard to remember now, with hits like American Idol and Glee, but in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Fox was a fledgling network trying to establish itself with comedies that pushed boundaries or buttons, depending on the viewer. There was the brash In Living Color, the shrill Married … With Children and that promising cartoon The Simpsons. But Get a Life, which made its debut in 1990, seemed to induce only uneasiness.
For some reason, a show about a self-deluding 30-yearold newspaper boy who still lives with his parents was not universally beloved, either by viewers or the executives who broadcast the series, starring Chris Elliott.
“I remember Fox being very concerned about how responsible my character would be, and whether or not he would be perceived as an idiot,” Elliott, now 52, recalled of the show’s early prospects. “Which, of course, is exactly how Adam, Dave and I wanted him to be perceived.”
Elliott was referring to the men who created the show with him: Adam Resnick, his writing partner from Late Night with David Letterman, and the showrunner David Mirkin, a veteran of Newhart. But as shown in a new Shout! Factory box set, released last month, of all 35 episodes, the eventual cult favourite featured a model of arrested development.
His character on Get a Life, Chris Peterson, would become a showcase for a comic type Elliott had honed: the clueless simp who persists in misguided missions.
Fox, which had demonstrated a willingness to take chances, was intrigued. “I thought the idea was nuts,” recalled Peter Chernin, president of entertainment for Fox at the time. “It just felt like a shot worth taking and a way to get attention.”
The pilot featured the feckless Peterson getting stuck upside-down in a roller coaster while playing hooky with his best friend (played by Sam Robards).
“The pilot didn’t really give a hint of the oddball, surreal nature of the show we wanted to do,” Resnick said in a phone interview. “It was a little cute.”
But the premise was in place, and Peterson’s fed-up parents were cleverly cast. Bob Elliott, the droll co-star of the Bob and Ray radio show and Chris Elliott’s real father, played Dad, and Elinore Donahue, from Father Knows Best, was the cheerful Mom.
Chris Peterson’s sunny naivete and narcissism hardly let up as the show’s situations leaped into the absurd. In the second episode, Chris calls himself doughy but nonetheless enrols in the Handsome Boy Modelling School and talks trash to a handsome fellow student. In later shows, some of which end with Chris’s death, he is buried under a mountain of junk for charity and visits a metropolis inexplicably frozen in the 1940s.
Today, the premise of Get a Life may not sound all that unusual, after years of manchildren from Judd Apatow, Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis. But at the time “we heard the word ‘pathetic’ a lot,” Resnick said, recalling the notes from executives.
Today Elliott stars in a cop-show spoof, Eagleheart, on Adult Swim, and has a new book, The Guy Under the Sheets: The Unauthorized Autobiography. Where would the irrepressible Chris Peterson be now, past age 50?
“I think Chris Peterson would be hanging out with Joe Biden a lot,” Elliott wrote.