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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. Set in the same universe as Friends and Mad About You.
Cast
- Laura San Giacomo - Maya Gallo
- George Segal - Jack Gallo
- Enrico Colantoni - Elliot DiMauro
- Wendie Malick - Nina Van Horn
- David Spade - Dennis Finch
Description
The show followed the staff at the fictional fashion magazine Blush. The show starred Maya Gallo, a neo-feminist writer, who reluctantly takes a job at the glamour magazine, owned by her father, the Hefner-like Jack Gallo. The cast included womanizing (and usually over-sensitive) photographer Elliot DiMauro, and snarky ex-model Nina Van Horn. 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. 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 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 first half of the final season.
Notable actors appearing in a recurring or Guest star capacity included Rebecca Romijn (as Rebecca Romijn-Stamos), Brian Dennehy, David Cross, Rhoda Gemignani, Tom Kenny and Paul Parducci as Deke "The Dekester" Williams.
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.
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 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, 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.
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 Allie; Maya's mother (and Jack's ex-wife) 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.
- Models who made guest appearances on the show included Tyra Banks, Stephanie Romanov, Amber Smith, Paige Brooks, Daphne Duplaix, Cassidy Rae, Cybill Shepherd, Cheryl Tiegs, Rebecca Chaney, and Tiffani Thiessen.
- 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 an unusual turn for such a long-running show, every single episode of the 148-show run features all five cast members.
- An infamous Christmas-themed episode called "How The Finch Stole Christmas" featured Finch stealing all the Christmas decorations in the office, parodying How the Grinch Stole Christmas!.
- Every surviving male cast member 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.
External links
1990s TV shows in the United States | 2000s TV shows in the United States | NBC network shows | Sitcoms | Modeling-themed TV shows | Televisa network shows | Sony Pictures Television shows | NBC Universal Television shows | Channel 4 television programmes
"Just Shoot Me!"