What a Dummy

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.

I actually remember, God only knows why, tuning into this show quite by accident the Sunday morning it premiered on the Fox network (I'm pretty sure it was on FOX Sunday mornings)and thinking to myself, "What an awful title for a show, some kid is gonna get ragged on because of this in some grade school." So I sat down to give it a see. Pleasantly surprised that it wasn't as bad as I had anticipated though it was, by no means, a real winner either. Still, it was easy enough to pass the time on an otherwise empty time slot for the time it was on. It was a guilty pleasure that I fondly remember to this day of tuning in to view to see what that wisecracking Buzz would do and say resulting in mayhem for that day. Go get 'em Buzz, we need more dummies just like you in this world.

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. :)

I am still in disbelief this show was canceled. It just goes to show that network execs have no freakin clue what the public wants. I remember when Alf came out, I was the first person to say "this is the most unrealistic show I have ever seen." I mean, come on people... a talking Alien?!? Give me a break! Its common knowledge that if aliens would come to Earth, they wouldn't speak English. And lets just face it, Alf was not even that funny (although that Lynn Tanner did have a nice set of hooters) Now that leads me to this great show. What a Dummy is not only a realistic account of what happens when dummies go wild, but it was HILARIOUS too! I love all of Buzz's little comebacks. Oh man, I remember rolling on the floor after Buzz goes "and they call ME the dummy" LOL! After being a fan of ventriloquists for the last 17 1/2 years, I totally get what they were going for. My only gripe about this show is Stephen Dorff. I think they could have found a better actor for this role. Perhaps if they ever do a remake, I would want to see someone like Heratio Sands, Pauly Shore, Steven Wright, or perhaps the guy who played Paul on the Wonder Years as a possible replacement. That is considering Stephen DorK probably thinks he is too good to go back to the roll that launched his career. I think its a shame this show is no longer on. I would like to propose to all the fans on here to start a letter writing campaign to try to get this finally released on DVD. I would buy a Blu- Ray machine just for that! If those gosh dark studio heads do not release it after that... well maybe they are the one's who are hallow!