The Bonnie Hunt Show

September 22, 1995

'Dweebs' slips on easy jokes, while 'Bonnie Hunt' soars

By Curt Schleier, The Detroit News
You laugh at the guy who slips on the banana peel, but good humor is rooted in reality.
Dweebs, which premieres at 8 tonight on CBS (Channel 62 in Detroit), is a bunch of guys slipping on banana peels, funny at times but not satisfying. Bonnie Hunt, which follows Dweebs at 8:30, seems more real.
In Dweebs, computer-phobe Carey (Farrah Forke) is hired as office manager of a software firm populated by nerds who can relate to machines but not to humans.
The firm's founder, Bill Gates-like Warren Mosbey (Peter Scolari), cannot put a full sentence together. His incoherence is cute the first time. Only.
The same is true of his three programers. Karl (Stephen Tobolowsky) cares little about clothing. "Everything I own is the color of mulch," he says. Vic (Corey Feldman) and Morley (David Kaufman) have known each other since high school, when they had their "heads stuffed into adjoining toilets."
In short: The four are more caricatures than characters. They seem so far removed from reality, even for nerds, they can't bridge the chasm to the audience.
Presumably in upcoming episodes, Carey will show them the way. As she tells Mosbey, "You could start talking to people, feeling something."
If he and his crew do, Dweebs may have a shot.
Bonnie Hunt is not a conventional comedy. It is a combination of improvisational humor -- Bonnie Hunt and several other cast members are alumni of the Second City troupe -- and traditional sitcom jokes mixed with pathos. It is chancy and not for the fainthearted.
Viewers will have to pay attention because mood changes are rapid and often subtle. Two characters frequently talk at the same time -- or so it seems, the dialogue is so quick.
Bonnie Kelly (Bonnie Hunt) has just moved to Chicago from Wisconsin, where she has left her widowed mother. Mom's always calling, and in a tender moment that will strike a responsive chord in anyone who has an elderly parent, it sometimes takes three or four goodbyes before Bonnie actually gets to hang up the phone.
That she listens to her mother with such love and patience even though she's late for her first day at a new job sets a tone. Bonnie is a nice person and we will like her.
Her new job is as a correspondent for a local television station. She's surrounded by quirky characters, all of whom are quite good: an enigmatic boss, Bill Kirkland (Mark Derwin), of whom we will learn more in episode two; best friend Holly Jankofsky (Holly Wortell), a makeup artist at the station; and Diane Fulton (Janet Carroll), as Kirkland's officious and overly protective assistant.
In each show, Bonnie does a news report that is clearly unscripted and very funny.
The Bonnie Hunt Show is different, but different in a good way. I love Bonnie Hunt. Oh, and I like the show, too.

Copyright 1995, The Detroit News