Lookwell

A friend and former roommate and I just happened to be sitting around watching TV, not expecting anything special, when this came on. It was a pilot episode and NBC threw it on the air during the dead summer months. We were bowled over by the sense of humor, right in our ballpark. The stamp of O'Brien and Smigel, that we now are quite familiar with from over 10 years of watching them on Late Night, is all over this puppy.

Adam West plays an actor who played a 1970's TV detective, who thinks he's a real detective. That's about all you need to know, but the writing and acting really sell the show. One of the funniest ideas ever. My friend and I still talk about it from time to time. (Okay, fine, we're losers who have nothing else to talk about.)

It is one of the crimes of television history that NBC did not pick this up even for a 6 episode run. I've been thinking about trying to dig up a copy of this masterwork. When I try to describe it to people who haven't seen it, they just shrug and go "whatever," but I assure them that they are missing out on comedy gold.

Okay, maybe I'm overhyping it, but it sure is one of my favorite undeservedly obscure TV nuggets of all time. I put it up there next to "Quark" with Richard Benjamin. At least that one had 6 episodes. Somebody dig this up and put it as a bonus on a DVD of Late Night or something, would ya?

NOTE: As of late 2006, the show is readily available on several different internet video sites for viewing. Apparently the show made an appearance on the late lamented Trio cable network within the past 5 years, and some people recorded it. Catch it if you can.

I have seen Lookwell (the television show) which was canceled years ago without it been given a chance by NBC. Let me tell you that this show would have been bigger than Seinfeld, Married With Children, ER, Friends, Everybody Loves Raymond, Super Bowl VI, The Larry Sanders Show, Live With Regis and Kelly, Dallas, and Live With Emeril Lagasse COMBINED. OK, maybe I'm exaggerating, but Lookwell was the funniest thing I've ever seen. To my pleasant surprise I found out, right on this web site, who wrote the script for Lookwell. It was a young Conan O'Brien AND the guy who does the voice for Triumph The Insult Dog (Robert Smigel). I just pray that that show, the little of it that was recorded, becomes available on video so that I can buy it. People this was FUNNY with a capitol T. Americans should be making long lines in Macys department stores all across America to kiss Conan O'Brien's, Robert Smigel's, and Adam West's ass. No animals were hurt during the making of this memo. Enough of this, let me go make a sandwich. Sincerely kneeling FrankPenab@AOL.com

Some time ago, the cable network TRIO aired the pilot for LOOKWELL as part of its "Brilliant But Cancelled" series. I TiVoed it and have watched it many times since.

Ty Lookwell is the role Adam West was born to play, which is good as it clearly was written for him. The writing plays to West's strengths as a comedian, particularly his surreal delivery of lines that no one else could say without cracking up.

It might have been exhausting to keep this going week after week, but I sure would have liked to see them try.

Someone should assemble a "great unsold pilots" DVD series; LOOKWELL could certainly headline the comedy edition.

This show is really about Adam West. His deadpan delivery and obliviousness to his own shortcomings (or maybe it's denial, tough to tell from just one episode) is really what fuels the comedy here. It's campy and hilarious, but it's mostly a specific type of humor and while there are some jokes that deviate from this basic strategy, the show is not a conventional sitcom (which relies heavily on one-liners). The show is about characterization, specifically that of Lookwell. If you see him interacting with someone for 30 seconds and don't find it funny, it's not for you. If you like West's portrayal as Mayor West on Family Guy, you'll probably find this pilot hilarious and I'd recommend trying to find it online.

"Lookwell" is the thinking man's "Police Squad," a fiercely funny sendup of the TV detective genre. It's a national tragedy that NBC execs pulled the plug. Adam West's deadpan delivery is so slyly self parodying that at times you wonder if he was in on the joke.

O'Brien and Smigel manage to drop in references to nearly every Quinn Martin 70s police drama while at the same time weaving a bitterly hilarious ode to the chew-em-up, spit-em-out world of Hollywood TV actors who go from being essential pop-culture icons to unemployable has-beens in what seems like weeks.

Often overlooked in glowing tributes to "Lookwell" is the work of longtime television director E. W. Swackhamer, a veteran of the very shows "Lookwell" parodies, who imbues every frame with the dead-serious crime-fighting authenticity of "Tenspeed and Brownshoe" and "S.W.A.T." One imagines the mighty O'Brien could feasibly get "Lookwell" back in production, and he should do so at once. An essential piece of television.