Working

I think Working was one of the freshest and most clever new shows of the past several years. I agree, the cast changes in season 2 weren't the best idea, but change isn't always bad. If you have seen the pilot, Delaney and Jimmy were played by different actors than in the first complete season. That was a good change.

But even with the season 2 changes, the show was still very, very clever and completely entertaining. If it only had to compete with itself, season 2 wasn't as good as season one. However, competing with all of the shows on TV at the time, season 2 was still one of the best shows going. I have all 39 episodes taped, and rewatch them on a regular basis.

Working, we miss you.

I remember watching the first season of Working on network television. The show was funny, satirical, well-written, and structured to become a success. What happened to it after the first season was a shame and an obvious disaster with cast members like Sarah Knowlton who was great as the Yale graduate working as a secretary. It brought much more truth to the working circumstances and environments that we live and work in. I still think the episode in which Fred Savage's character is believed to be gay after bringing an old college friend to his boss' picnic. When they sing at the piano, you just couldn't help but laugh. I liked the annoying perky secretary and dark, pesimistic colleague too. I missed the funny guy with no work in the second season. I thought the changes were too much. I loved Yvonne Freeman's character as loyal company servant. Too true, it should have stayed as it was. I guess the network wanted to cancel the show so they botched it with terrible decisions and changes. Much like the Working premise itself, they got scared when they saw themselves on television!

Very sad that a good show was ruined and then went off the air. There are so many idiotic program on regular and cable TV that it is a pity to see one that was truly funny become ruined so fast.

Memories of this show prove to me that TV executives are idiots. Working was a fast furious and funny show with the speed and humor of the Mel Brooks and Airplane movies. So what happened ? Someone moved it from a great time slot to Monday nights. When the fans followed it, the execs found another way to kill it: they removed some of the best characters and replaced them with no talents. What happened: the series limped on with a bullet in its side and died. Execs win; viewing public of America ticked off. This show was a hit for Fred Savage and he deserved one after that "Wonder Years" fiasco refused to die after so long. This satire on corporate America had all the best actors with Maurice Godin as the swarmy boss Tim Deale, Seinfeld's Steve Hytner as the weasel John Delaney, stand-up genuis Dana Gould as childlike Jimmy Clarke and incredibly sexy Arden Myrin as prim and proper Abby Cosgrove. Rounded out with "She-Wolf" Kate Hodge and lovely Sarah Knowlton as Hal the working mother as the office sex symbols for Deale to drool over, the show was an instant hit, and we had less than a year of funny programming before the most evil and vile forces on earth took it away!

Working was great for the first season. But when season 2 came, a couple of great characters were gone and inexplicably replaced. I remember one of the replacements was very attractive and while this may be unfair, because she wasn't a good actress and her part added nothing to the series I felt like maybe she was some executives daughter or girlfriend and they just insisted she given a part. Because it just made no sense.

Of course, it may just have been incompetence. It may be that the series wasn't doing as well as they thought it should and some cocaine-fueled executive got put in charge and was like, we need to sex it up more, we need changes, make it all different, get me more coke!

It was seriously one of the most inexplicable retoolings in the history of television. I wish I knew the story behind it.