What a Dummy

I've been telling people about this TV show i watched when i was like 14 for years, i really didn't think anyone else had ever seen this show. I would always tell people about the show Stephen Dorff was on before anyone knew who he was, i just couldn't believe that someone really made a show about a talking dummy. But i do have to admit that i watched the show a lot. Although i do not think that i ever actually enjoyed it, I'm not sure why i watched it. It is kinda of like a car wreck you just have to watch. I'm not sure i can even think of a show that was worse than this show, although i have seen a lot of really bad shows that were only on for maybe half a season. But i would have to say this is one of the worst ideas for a TV show. There are some runner ups in this contest, Alf being one of them. It made perfect sense when i found out the guy that created Alf was on drugs, who would have guessed. I'm sure i could go on and on about this subject, but I'm going to bring this to an end for now. Id also have to recommend Hey,Dude for this contest even though i really did love that show.

Was it a dumb show?

Who knows? It's all relative.

Okay, so yeah it was a dumb idea for a show. It's not like it hasn't been done before. What about the poor mans Married with Children show with Bobcat Goldthwait? Madams Place in the early 80's?

I watched it, I was about 16 and it's how I discovered Stephen Dorff. I saw that wacky puppet, Stephen caught my eye, I became an immediate fan and have followed everything he's done since.

Sure it wasn't going to win any Emmy awards. Perhaps the producer who pitched the idea was hitting the smoke too much during the late 80's.

If it were on re-runs somewhere I'd say it's definitely worth a TiVo option.

So the show was good for something after all, even if it was only gaining him one more fan. :)

As embarrassed as I am to admit it, I actually watched this show when I was little. Most short-lived shows that I've watched, I usually forget about. But this show was stupid to the point where you almost couldn't forget it. Back in the late 1980s/early 1990s, almost every syndicated show was awful ("Small Wonder", "Out Of This World", "Learning The Ropes", "She's The Sheriff", "The Munsters Today") and the bar was already set pretty low.

The thing that gets me is how in the world someone could pitch an idea of a family comedy which centers around a talking dummy and not get laughed out of the room. The fact that this show was actually picked for syndication makes me wonder what in the world these people were thinking. Didn't someone have the courage to stand up and say how unbelievably stupid of an idea this show was? I mean come on: A talking dummy? That is sure to give people nightmares for years to come.

I know that "Mr. Ed" had a far-fetched plot about a talking horse and became a successful sitcom. However, that show had wit and charm and a talking horse is a lot less freakier than a talking dummy.

I remember that every episode would use the same joke. Someone would say something stupid and the dummy would always respond by saying, "And they call me the dummy?"

Well, no, you're not the only dummy. The people who decided to put trash like this on the air are beyond stupid.

It's truly awful. Remarkably so. The dialogue feels like it was written by a someone whose resume was "I've seen TV, I can write this crap", and nobody involved cared enough to stop them. The puppet is dreadfully unfunny and his grating voice caused me sensory issues. He had lines like "he isn't just spinning a yarn, he brought his own loom". It's almost confusing, like you think you are hearing jokes, but they aren't quite right, like an odd translation. The acting comes off as bad across the board, but I think it's the clunky dialogue thats tripping them up. It feels generic, corporate produced 90s sitcom, crafted by the lowliest interns. And yes, Stephen Dorff was really cute, hence the two stars.

I remember watching What a Dummy when it was in first-run syndication in the early 90s and thought it was one of the worst sitcoms of the decade. Here's a show that had a very far-fetched premise about a late ventriloquist's dummy named Buzz who was locked in a trunk for years before was finally brought out by the Brannigan family. Almost every episode had the family lying to keep Buzz a secret and that started to wear thin after a while.

On the brighter side of things, it was one of the first shows to see Stephen Dorff before he went on to several movies. He played the oldest son Tucker. It was also great to see sitcom veteran Kaye Ballard as the neighbor Mrs. Travalony. Other than that, What a Dummy was a big dummy of a sitcom that fortunately was not renewed after its only syndicated season.