The Jeff Foxworthy Show

Really latetotheshow - but I have both seasons on DVDs & recently rediscovered them & rewatched.

Very funny & great stories (for that era) I'm surprised there are only 10 written reviews here (11 with mine now) & 735 just rated with stars only, and the series garnered a 5.7. I'm sure it would've been at least 6.5, possibly 7 if more people had seen it.

One little thing kept 'taking me out of it' - the brother-character Wayne. He should'a had a mullet haircut.

He was funny, but he would've been ten times funnier with a mullet.

I also really missed Walt & Russ after they summarily & needlessly got wrote off the show . . .

I like the actress who played Karen's sister, but something about her just didn't fit the show. And the writing for her just wasn't always good.

My take is, they made too many drastic changes with characters in season one, so people probably quit watching - They should've kept Russ & Walt & brought in Wayne & let Wayne & Russ buddy together to drive everyone crazy.

The obnoxious boojie neighbor disappeared too, and everyone liked the contrast between him & Jeff.

The reason why this show was a flop was this: 1) The only people who watched it were fans of his comedy acts. 2) Those people knew all his redneck and other jokes by heart already 3) The show was just another forum for him to tell these same jokes.

Now I noticed the second season they actually started trying. But it was too late.

The original series on ABC had some funny moments, but most of the scripts seemed forced. It's also generally never a good idea to have the female lead get pregnant one or two shows in to the series.

The series on NBC was a good one, and should have gotten at least another year to build up an audience - which I think it would have. I didn't care for Cusack as the new Karen, but that version of the show was a lot more "Foxworthy" than the ABC version.

Jay Mohr... was just awful. Bill Engvall was a better (and funnier) foil for Jeff. The addition of his character (and Michelle Clunie as Dee Dee Landreaux) was a vain attempt by ABC to boost up the ratings on the show.

The only thing that could have saved the original ABC show was different writers - but by the time that happened, it was on a new network. NBC was just as forgiving as ABC was.

This show doesn't taint Jeff's comedy at all, but I can only imagine that he didn't care much for the ABC storyline.

I have the first season on DVD and started watching it again last night. I thought this was a very good clean show that the family could watch instead of the garbage we see today. It wasn't dealing with the dysfunctional family like we saw on Roseanne, The Simpsons and Married with Children. It's just too bad the networks didn't give it a chance to build an audience and bring in the people needed to tweak it. But then again, these same networks got all panicky and wanted to can shows like All in the Family, M*A*S*H, and Seinfeld because they weren't doing so good in their first few seasons. Big mistake on the networks part and the reason you see so many people watching more shows on networks like The Discovery Channel than are watching the major networks.

I guess when they started filming the first season, the network executives at ABC didn't know that Jeff Foxworthy had already sold more comedy albums than Carlin, Cosby, or Pryor. Instead of going with Foxworthy's proved style of comedy, they decided to juxtapose a Southern, rural, redneck Jeff against his Midwestern-intellectual-snobbish in-laws, his neighbor Craig, and his wife Karen. Perhaps the suits thought the in-laws and others would act a foil against which Jeff's Southern persona could be displayed. It never really worked. Jeff's existing fan base, myself included, did not recognize Jeff Foxworthy in his own show; "Who's this guy?" - it was nothing like his comedy - totally alien. In an interview years later Foxworthy explained that for the first six months of filming he wasn't even allowed in the writer's room.

ABC tried to retool the show by dumping the characters Russ and Walt, who worked at Jeff's HVAC business and bringing in Jay Mohr as Jeff's wild brother, Wayne. Still didn't work. Eventually the ABC suits cancelled the show.

But it was resurrected and retooled by NBC. Jeff's business tanks and he returns to his hometown, the fictional Briarton, Georgia, but his wife is played by a different actress, Ann Cusack. I don't know why Anita Barone left, maybe NBC thought she was too saucy to be believable as Jeff's wife, so they brought in whiney Cusack. They also have another son, Justin, played by Jonathon Lipnicki.

The move to the South provided Jeff's character with a history from which Foxworthy's comedy could flow. The setting and characters allow more of the familiar Foxworthy comedy to come out – professional wrestling, big hair, trailer parks, mud boggin', cousins marrying and so forth. Jeff's high school best friend, Bill Pelton, played by real life friend and comedian Bill Engvall, Jeff's dad Big Jim Foxworthy played by G.W. Bailey are central characters that add so much more to the show than the ABC version's peripheral characters ever did.

But even NBC couldn't leave the show alone. The biggest changes were at Jeff's place of employment, Pitt's Trucking. Bosses came and went, so did truck drivers and dock workers. The second season had strong episodes and weak ones, but overall was a vast improvement. Unfortunately the network suits didn't want to invest another season in hopes of improved rating, and the show was eventually cancelled, this time for good.