A show that was doomed from the start – Action

James’ post about Serenity/Firefly kind of inspired me, so I’m totally ripping off the basic concept of talking about a show that died before it’s time.

The show I’m talking about was…Action.

Yes, that is Jay Mohr. I know, he comes across as kind of a smarmy douchey guy, but that absolutely works here. He’s Peter Dragon, top producer for a Hollywood studio. He’s coming off the first bomb of his career, and trying to climb back on top. A lot of the material was actually cribbed from the real-life events around the show’s producer (and real life movie producer) Joel Silver.

The woman to the left of him is Wendy Ward (Illeana Douglas), a whore who he’s just hired as a VP of Production. To the right is his uncle Teddy (Buddy Hackett), a bitter old bastard who serves as head of security and driver when he’s not deeply engrossed in a nap…or drunk.

The show lasted for only 13 glorious episodes for several reasons, the main one being that it was on network television. Fox to be specific. There is no way in Hell that should have happened, and if this popped up today it would be on HBO, Showtime, FX or another specialty cable channel. But in 1999, HBO and Showtime were still mostly known for movies and boxing broadcasts, and FX (if it even existed yet) was a home for shitty third rate sci-fi programming only. So if a show wanted to be put on television, it had to be broadcast on a major network.

This was never going to work for the simple reason that the show is delightfully, hilariously foul. Obviously, the obscenities were bleeped out during broadcast, but there were a healthy number of beeps. Come on, the secondary character IS A FUCKING HOOKER.  Five minutes in to the show, she’s in a theatre as Peter’s guest giving Keanu Reeves a hand job.

That’s pretty tame. At one point he’s looking for funding for an upcoming project, and finds himself with a very Hasidic jeweller…who goes on to make Holocaust-related jokes…

He threatens to sodomize a writer with a People’s Choice Award. A pimp ends up buying in to movie production, and becomes a producer…soon followed by a psychotic Mid-Eastern gentleman who likes to formalize contracts with bloodletting. The head of the studio ‘gets his way’ in contract negotiations by showing off his massive cock as a method of intimidation. The original star comes out of the closet to Peter, who tries to be understanding by pretending to also be gay…and gets a blow job for his trouble. By the final episode, they knew the show was doomed and just didn’t give a fuck anymore. So Wendy has to get the full production rights of the film by having a three way with Action’s version of the Weinstein Brothers.

So yeah, not exactly major network fare. I’d love to know how in the Hell this show was ever even greenlit by Fox, even in a 10:30 time slot. Sure, big name talent was attached to it, but still…really? Also, how long afterwards did the person responsible for that signing remain employed by the network?

And in the end it’s too bad, because the show is pretty goddamn hilarious, even with some of the jokes being rather dated by 2010 (they still play pretty funny).