Just Shoot Me!
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| Just Shoot Me! | |
|---|---|
| Format | Sitcom |
| Created by | Steven Levitan |
| Starring | Laura San Giacomo Chris Hogan (1996) George Segal Wendie Malick Enrico Colantoni David Spade Rena Sofer (2002-03) |
| Ending theme | Life Keeps Bringin' Me Back To You (Vocals by Lauren Wood) |
| Country of origin |  United States |
| Language(s) | English |
| No. of seasons | 7 |
| No. of episodes | 148 (List of episodes) |
| Production | |
| Executive producer(s) |
Steven Levitan |
| Producer(s) | Brillstein-Grey Communications (1997-2000) Brad Grey Television (2000-2002) Universal TV Steven Levitan Productions Columbia Pictures Television (1997-1999) Columbia TriStar Television (1999-2002) Sony Pictures Television (2002-2003) |
| Running time | 30 minutes |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | NBC |
| Original run | March 4, 1997 – August 16, 2003 |
| External links | |
| IMDb profile | |
| TV.com summary | |
Just Shoot Me! was an American television sitcom that aired for seven seasons on NBC from March 4, 1997 to August 16, 2003, with 148 episodes produced. The show was created by Steven Levitan, the show's executive producer. Reruns still air on several networks, TBS and TV Land in the United States, on Foxtel in Australia TV1, TV 2 in New Zealand and on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom.
Contents |
[edit] Description
The show followed the staff at the fictional fashion magazine Blush. The show originally centered around Maya Gallo, a neo-feminist writer, who reluctantly takes a job at the glamour magazine, owned by her father, the Donald Trump-like Jack Gallo (who in the story has a rivalry with Donald Trump). The cast included womanizing (and usually over-sensitive) photographer Elliot DiMauro, and the heavy drinking and sexually promiscuous ex-model Nina Van Horn. After the show's original pilot for NBC, David Spade was added to the cast as smart-mouthed assistant Dennis Finch. While the show had been designed as something of a vehicle for San Giacomo, it developed into more of an ensemble format. The show has also been credited as bringing a surge of renewed popularity for George Segal and Wendie Malick, who had been out of the public eye for some time up until Just Shoot Me. Every single episode of the 148-episode, seven season run features all five regular cast members.
The first season also included Chris Hogan as Maya's roommate, Wally, who was dropped when the show quickly solidified as a workplace sitcom, making the Mary-Rhoda dynamic obsolete. Brian Posehn appeared as mail clerk Kevin Liotta (supposedly Ray Liotta's cousin) through much of the last four seasons. Rena Sofer, the only regular added during the run of the show, played young fashion savant Vicki Costa during the final season. Also in the final season, Simon Templeman played the recurring role of British rock star Simon Leeds, who had a relationship with Nina.
Notable actors appearing in a recurring or guest star capacity included Rebecca Romijn (as supermodel Adrienne Barker, Spade's TV wife), Brian Dennehy (as Dennis' father who gets engaged to Nina in an episode), David Cross (as Elliot's younger brother who pretends to be mentally disabled), Rhoda Gemignani, Cybill Shepherd, Stephen Root, Steve Carell, Tom Kenny, Dana Carvey, Jim Wise, Tiffani Thiessen, Dave Foley, Ali Larter, Mark Hamill, George Lucas, Amy Sedaris, French Stewart, Carmen Electra, Ray Liotta, Snoop Dogg and Paul Parducci as Deke "The Dekester" Williams. Models who made guest appearances on the show included Tyra Banks, Brooke Shields as Nina's younger sister,Stephanie Romanov, Amber Smith, Paige Brooks, Daphne Duplaix, Cassidy Rae, Cheryl Tiegs, and Rebecca Chaney.
The show was rooted in Levitan's earlier career as a writer for The Larry Sanders Show. He had once conceived of a story about Janeane Garofalo's character having to sit and talk with a vapid model with whom she had nothing in common. The idea went unproduced, but Levitan liked the dynamic and later used the idea to develop a pitch for NBC. Garofalo's persona would become a template for Maya Gallo.
[edit] Series history
Early on, the series was a very competitive hit, consistently winning its time slot.[1] The show was so popular that its first season of six episodes were all aired by NBC in a single month in March 1997. It was renewed for a 13-episode second season, fitted at 9:30 after Frasier, and then was moved in the spring to Thursdays between Seinfeld and Friends.[2] After just two of these airings, the order was bumped up to a full season. When Seinfeld left the airwaves in 1998, Just Shoot Me was one of the contenders to take the coveted 9 p.m. Thursday slot.[3] Frasier instead won the slot, and Just Shoot Me was instead given Frasier's 9 p.m. Tuesday slot.
Just Shoot Me was never given a definitive timeslot during its series run. When Frasier tanked in the coveted Thursday slot, NBC returned that show to Tuesdays at 9, moving Just Shoot Me (in its third season) to another time that night. It still retained good ratings, though: in its fourth season, it was the top-rated show for NBC Tuesday nights and had an average rating of 6.1/16 share.[4]
For its fifth season, Just Shoot Me! was put on to Thursdays at 9:30, between Will & Grace and ER, where ratings saw an immediate (though expected) spike and where the show would remain for two years.
The show's seventh season saw several drastic changes that inevitably led to its cancellation. Series showrunners Moses Port and David Guarascio left the show at the end of the sixth season to pursue a development deal with NBC, and were replaced with Jon Pollack and Judd Pillot (Coach, Anything But Love) and John Peaslee (Spin City). Also noted as a big factor was the addition of Rena Sofer to the cast. Her addition was mandated by NBC, who had sought a successful vehicle for her for years. (She later starred in the ill-fated U.S. version of Coupling for the network). Many of the series' fans felt betrayed by the addition of Sofer to the show,[citation needed] which hadn't added a new regular cast member in its entire run.
At the same time, NBC also gave the show one of its most difficult timeslots, Tuesdays at 8 pm. Ratings fell sharply in the first few weeks, and the show was put on hiatus by November, showing only one new episode until the following April. During this time, production resumed, but Sofer's character was written out immediately. By this point, NBC had canceled the show, and promised Levitan to run the remaining episodes twice a week until the series finale. When the first of such installments was not as successful as NBC had hoped with its "Return of Just Shoot Me!" campaign, the show was again pulled, and new episodes were burned off in the summer, the final pair of episodes airing on a Saturday in August 2003. Three more episodes, including Sofer's speedy good-bye, were not aired in America until their respective slots in syndicated airings. Levitan publicly denounced NBC's treatment of a former Must-See TV show and refused production deals for several years.
[edit] Cast
- Laura San Giacomo – Maya Gallo
- George Segal– Jack Gallo
- Enrico Colantoni – Elliot DiMauro
- Wendie Malick – Nina Van Horn
- David Spade – Dennis Finch
- Brian Posehn – Kevin Liotta
- Rena Sofer – Vicki Costa (2002–2003)
[edit] DVD release
The complete 1st and 2nd seasons have been released on Region 1 DVD but the rest of the show's DVD release is unknown.
[edit] References
- ^ SUSAN KING (1997, November 25). Sophomore 'Just Shoot Me' Proves Timing Is Everything; Television: When the series moved from Wednesdays to Tuesdays behind 'Frasier', its ratings took off :[Home Edition]. Los Angeles Times, p. 2. Retrieved September 13, 2007, from Los Angeles Times database. (Document ID: 23603986).
- ^ STEVE WEINSTEIN (1998, April 16). Lightweight With a Punch; With his TV, film and stand-up careers all booming, David Spade is the first to acknowledge he's not a 'studly guy.' Thank heavens :[Home Edition]. Los Angeles Times, p. 50. Retrieved September 13, 2007, from Los Angeles Times database. (Document ID: 28683320).
- ^ Bill Carter (1998, January 28). Show Could Be A Contender. New York Times (Late Edition (east Coast)), p. 9. Retrieved September 13, 2007, from National Newspapers (5) database. (Document ID: 25669289).
- ^ Joe Schlosser (2000, April). 'Just Shoot Me'--for the fifth time. Broadcasting & Cable magazine, 130(17), 34. Retrieved September 13, 2007, from Research Library database. (Document ID: 52852274).
