Reconstructing the Carol Burnett Show: Part 38: Carol in the 1990s

A new batch of episodes from Carol's early 1990s period--encompassing the anthology series Carol and Company on NBC and her short-lived 1991 CBS rebooted variety series--have cropped up on YouTube.

Carol and Company (NBC 1990-91)

Season One:

May 12, 1990: Myna and the Messenger
Guest Star: Howie Mandel

Carol and Howie Mandel in
Myna and the Messenger

A neat little morality tale written by playwright Mark St. Germain who had some success Off-Broadway with plays such as Camping with Tom and Henry and Ears on a Beatle. Carol plays Myna, a deeply religious woman who prays for a miracle to save her church which is set for the wrecking ball. In walks Mandel (After St. Elsewhere but before Deal or No Deal) as regular-guy angel Steve. 

Steve persuades Myna to go to Atlantic City and gamble her life savings in order to save the church. Much of the comedy derives from the straight-laced Myna coming up against prostitutes and bikers. But after a few Harvey Wallbangers, she begins rolling sevens at the craps table and forgets her Sunday School morality. The twist ending is unexpected as Myna discovers she was betting on the wrong angel. Dennis Burkley has a nice guest turn as a burly biker who turns out to be more than his scary exterior would indicate.

Season Two:

Oct. 6, 1990: Going to the Chapel

A rare double header with two skits in the same setting, divided by the commercial break. Carol plays Evelyn Sweets, a Las Vegas-based minister with a kitschy wedding chapel. In the first segment a prospective bride walks in with a ventriloquist's dummy as her groom. It's a good for a brief sketch and has some laughs provided mainly by Richard Kind as the voice of the dummy and Meagan Fay as the bride convinced she can marry the dummy and have a child by him. The second piece features regular Terry Kiser as a client who reads Evelyn's taxi-cab ad: "I'll Marry Anybody" and takes it literally, thinking she'll take his hand in wedlock rather than just perform the ceremony. Kiser is brilliantly funny as the clueless loner whom Evelyn instructs in the art of romance.

Oct. 10, 1990: Guns 'n' Rosie

Anita Barone, Carol and Meagen Fay
in Guns 'n' Rosie

An unusually prescient political allegory about the proliferation of firearms in American life. This allegory is even more relevant today with our near constant barrage of mass shootings than when it aired over 30 years ago. Set in a not-too-distant future where everyone is armed to the teeth and crime is rampant, this satire casts Carol as Rosie, along with regulars Meagen Fay and Anita Barone as friends playing cards. All carry weapons and have received an injury from assailants. Rosie walks with a limp while her friends sport an eyepatch and a neck brace. When a petty, harmless burglar (Richard Kind) breaks in, the trio decides to kill him and they will probably get away with it in this lawless society. The ending is ironic and heartbreaking as the ladies wind up shooting each other as they quarrel over whether or not to off their captive. Without hitting us over the head, the skit delivers its message with dark humor and subtle wit. Perhaps the darker tone of this segment and a few others is what killed the series.

The Carol Burnett Show (CBS, 1991)

Nov. 15, 1991: Robert Townsend

Townsend had recently released a popular satiric film called Hollywood Shuffle (1987) about African-Americans trying to make it in show biz. His career as a performer didn't really take off after that but he did direct several films and TV shows. Apart from his introduction at the top of the show, he only appears in an extended, tired sketch with Carol where they play a pair of bickering elderly former film stars. The casting of a black actor opposite Carol as a romantic lead is the only fresh element. The elder gags are recycled bits from The Old Folks sketches as the pair quarrel over what kind of car they used to drive and which restaurant was the location for their rendezvous. They are interviewed by Jessica Lundy impersonating Leeza Gibbons of Entertainment Tonight and then they star in a spoof of a typical Astaire and Rogers musical. It's doesn't compare to the brilliant move take-offs from Carol's original series.

According to imdb.com, Robert also appears in a sketch about Joan of Arc where he plays her executioner, but he can't find a match to light her fire. (Sounds hilarious--not!). But this scene is not in the YouTube version. There is a similar sketch about Noah's Ark with Chris Barnes as Noah and Carol as his sexually frustrated wife. Lots of sex gags. A sorta funny running sketch involves Chris and Richard Kind doing a talk show in an elevator for a high-rise where celebrities live. The regulars do their impressions of Robert DeNiro and Kathleen Turner. Also, Carol plays a drunk at a bar trying to pick up Chris and a bitter ex-wife who enjoys luncheon kvetch sessions with a fellow former spouse who was married to the same louse. The tables are turned (literally) in the latter sketch when the third wife of the same husband is dumped in favor of the second, Carol's lunch companion. 

Nov. 29, 1991: Delta Burke, Tony Roberts, Andrea Martin

Carol with Delta Burke

Delta Burke had just been fired from Designing Women (as she told the audience in the Q&A session). She subsequently starred in two short-lived sitcoms Delta and Women of the House which ran for only one season each. She joins Carol in two very funny sketches. In the first scene, she pairs with Carol as televangelist sisters who also sell merchandise on a combination Home Shopping Network vehicle and church service with Meagen Fay very funny as their organist. The madness ends with sirens wailing and the siblings hightailing out of the hall because their goods are all stolen. Next Delta plays a high school girl stood up on Prom night and Carol is her mother. It turns out Carol was also left dateless on her big night. Then Tony Roberts shows up as the boy who stood her up 30 years ago. Now a successful lawyer, he asks Carol if he still wants to go. "There is no more prom! Where were you?" she demands. "I got scared," he replies. Tony winds up taking Delta to a diner and in a weird quirk of fate, Carol goes out with Delta's beau who appears after they other two have left. 

There's also a hilarious sketch featuring Carol as the new hire at a law firm with an eccentric boss (a brilliantly bizarre Chris Barnes, one of the regulars) who reverts to childhood whenever he sees the exposed neck of an employee and forces everyone to play a game where you have to hold an orange with your chin and pass to the next person. For the finale, the musical comedy truck stop diner sketch makes its debut here with Carol and Tony Roberts singing a medley of 50 show tunes with dinner.

For some reason, the gender-reversed Star Trek sketch with Andrea Martin as Spock is stuck in this episode and I assumed it was part of the Dec. 6 segment because Martin was one of the guest stars then. Maybe they filmed the sketch earlier and added it here because they didn't have enough material.

Dec 6, 1991: Andrea Martin, Steven Wright

I'm guessing they filmed the Star Trek for this episode but stuck it in the Nov. 29 segment. Martin was a brilliant character comedienne like Carol, creating a raft of hilarious ladies such as Edith Prickley and Edna Boyle on SCTV. She went on to win two Tony Awards for My Favorite Year and Pippin. Wright was a deadpan comic whose dry delivery of absurdist gags was his selling point.  

Andrea Martin, Carol and Jessica Lundy
spoof the Del Rubio Triplets

Carol, Andrea and Jessica Lundy spoof the then-popular Del Rubio Triplets, a camp trios of older ladies who warbled pop tunes with straight faces. Roger Kabler does his Richard Dreyfuss impersonation in a commercial for the Good Son Hotline where lonely moms you can hire "clean-cut college graduates" to call them. (Eh.) Carol revives the investigative reporter bit from an earlier show as Andrea Waltower interviews Steve as a man who lives in a suit of bubble-wrap. 

Meagen Fay plays ultra-successful yet needy daughter to Carol's passive-aggressive mother. Carol's constant needling leads Meagen to drink vodka, smoke, and scarf chocolate-chip cookies. Miss Abigail's Enchanted High-Security Gingerbread Cottage makes a return from the first episode (see Reconstructing the Carol Burnett Show, Part 34). It's the same idea as the previous sketch, but still funny and the best bit in the show. Steve and Andrea then play the owners of a Clown Shoe Store. Steve appears to be clownophobic, but is actually in a closet clown. Very short, not too funny.

The hour concludes with Carol returning to a reliable musical formula, the lonely charwoman characters croons "Meantime" to a melancholy saxophone accompaniment.

After this attempt at a return to the variety format was cancelled following the next episode with Bernadette Peters and Tony Roberts, Carol called it quits on series TV and focused on specials. (More on those in a later blog.)