NewsRadio. Season 3, Episode 20. "Our Fiftieth Episode" Bill is committed to an asylum
I'm going to lavish praise on three aspects of this episode.
1. Phil Hartman & Jon Lovitz: together: wonderful. They are a perfect comedy pairing. Their scenes together are hysterical.
2. While Bill is away from work, Lisa and Joe take over the running of his show: with Mr. James interfering. You see Mr. James has been conducting market research and - as a consequence - keeps tinkering with the show. His tinkering makes the show worse and worse. Even better: we can see that the 'market research' is meaningless (Beth is making stuff up!). What a wonderful, wonderful comment on network interference. I wanted to applaud, I really did. (Knowing a little of the background to NewsRadio's relationship with NBC helped me appreciate these scenes all the more.)
3. Bill is in the asylum and - after much prompting from his crazy buddy - recounts the plot from an episode of Family Matters. To rapturous applause from the inmates. Again, here's some wonderful commentary on the state of television. Family Matters is perceived as low-brow nonsense, while NewsRadio is perceived as one of the smarted shows ever to appear on TV. One is a beloved stable of pop culture, and the other - despite five seasons on-air - is relatively obscure. Sigh.
10/10
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NewsRadio. Season 3, Episode 20.
