Just Shoot Me!
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Template:Infobox television Just Shoot Me! was an American television sitcom which aired for seven seasons on NBC from 1997 to 2003. The show was created and executive produced by Steven Levitan.
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Description
The show followed the staff at the fictional fashion magazine Blush. The show starred Laura San Giacomo as Maya Gallo, a neo-feminist writer, who reluctantly takes a job at the glamour magazine, owned by her father, the Hefner-like Jack Gallo (George Segal). The cast included womanizing photographer Elliot DiMauro (Enrico Colantoni, later of Veronica Mars fame), and snarky ex-model Nina Van Horn (Wendie Malick). David Spade was added to the cast after the show's original pilot for NBC, and proved to be the x-factor as smart-mouthed assistant Dennis Finch (a thinly veiled reproduction of several characters he played while on Saturday Night Live). While the show had been designed as something of a vehicle for San Giacomo, it quickly became Spade's ticket to stardom, also allowing for marked comebacks for the careers of Segal and Malick.
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 through much of the last four seasons. Rena Sofer, the only regular added during the run of the show, played young fashion savant Vicki during the first half of the final season.
Notable actors appearing in a recurring capacity included Rebecca Romijn, Brian Dennehy, David Cross, Rhoda Gemignani, and Tom Kenny.
The show was rooted in Levitan's earlier career as a writer for The Larry Sanders Show. Levitan had pitched a story about Janeane Garofalo's character having to sit and talk with a vapid model with whom she had nothing in common. While the idea went unproduced, Levitan liked the dynamic and later used the idea to develop a pitch for NBC, and Garofolo's dynamic would become a template for Maya Gallo.
Series History
Early on, the series was a very competitive hit, consistently winning its time slot despite numerous changes in the schedule. 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, and after just two of these airings, the order was bumped up to a full season. The show was never given a definitive timeslot, however, likely because its ideal time of Tuesdays at 9 was taken away when NBC returned that slot to Frasier, which had tanked in the coveted Thursdays at 9 slot. In its fifth season, Just Shoot Me! was given Thursdays at 9:30, after Will & Grace, 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 lead to its cancelation. 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, 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.
The show continues to thrive in many U.S. syndicated markets, airing seven days a week in many cities. As of early 2006, it remains the only second-run show ended three or more years prior to air daily before 1 a.m., other than Seinfeld.
Broadcasting Abroad
Just Shoot Me has been airing in the United Kingdom in an early morning timeslot on Channel 4 since September 2005. It is broadcast on weekdays at 8am. The U.K's LIVINGtv has also started airing the show weekdays at 2pm.
In Southwest Asia, it started airing on Star networks since early 2003.
Trivia and Items of Note
- Just Shoot Me perhaps holds the record for the most unseen characters on a sitcom: seven. Characters regularly spoken about (or to, via telephone) included Jack's daughter Hannah and his wife Ally; Maya's mother Eve; Nina's friend Binnie; Elliot's negligent father; ubiquitous office worker Baxter; and Jack's rival Donald Trump. The majority of these characters eventually appeared in some form.
- The set of the original pilot featured a staircase, which would be privy to comedic entrances from Nina. When the show was picked up and the pilot reshot, however, the staircase was not included, with the justification that a typical office wouldn't have this kind of affectation. Wendie Malick good-naturedly fought to get the staircase back for several seasons to no avail.
- In a DVD audio commentary for NewsRadio, former NBC president Warren Littlefield compliments NewsRadio creator Paul Simms by saying that his show was the definitive 90's officeplace comedy. Simms retorts that that title would actually go to Just Shoot Me, which Littlefield's network had been much more prone to advertising.
- In an unusual turn for such a long-running show, every single episode of the 148-show run features all five cast members.
- The infamous Christmas-themed episode features Finch with his dog stealing all the Christmas decorations in the office, parodying The Grinch. The song replaces "Mr. Grinch" with "Mr. Finch".
- A 1997 episode featured the first (and to this date, ostensibly only) sitcom appearance of Hollywood legend Woody Allen, who is heard on the phone talking to Maya.
- Every surviving male castmember of NewsRadio guest-starred on the show at some point.
- A pre-Spongebob Squarepants Tom Kenny occasionally played spat-upon office worker Persky throughout the first three seasons.fr:Voilà !