Get a Life (TV series)

Synopsis

Chris Peterson is a carefree, childlike bachelor who refuses to live the life of an adult. At the age of 30, Chris still lives with his parents and maintains a career delivering the St. Paul Pioneer Press; a job that he has held since his youth. He has no driver's license (instead, riding his bicycle wherever he goes). He is depicted as being childish, naive, gullible, foolish, occasionally irresponsible, and extremely dimwitted. His lack of intelligence is exaggerated to absurd levels: at one point, he tries to leave his parents' house but is unable to operate the front door. He also fell out of an airplane after opening the plane's airlock, believing that the "EXIT" sign was a restroom.

Chris' parents (Fred and Gladys Peterson) are a vapid middle-aged couple who are almost always seen in their pajamas and robes (even when they leave the house). They are often shown doing something abnormal like polishing handguns, or trying to shoot the deer that ate the flowerbulbs out of their garden. Gladys (Elinor Donahue) is a smiling, caring mother who doted over Chris, though often makes cynical, passive-aggressive comments about him and his lifestyle. Fred (Bob Elliott) is a much more blunt, wise-cracking old man, who is constantly exasperated by his son, and seems to have a reckless disregard for Chris' well-being (on one occasion, Chris demonstrated how his father taught him to use a shotgun by placing the barrel in his mouth).

In the early episodes, Chris wanted little more than to spend his days reliving his childhood with his father and his best friend, Larry (Sam Robards). Larry was Chris' friend since childhood, but unlike Chris, Larry has since "grown up", owns a house, works a dead-end job as an accountant, and has two children and a wife, Sharon (Robin Riker). Sharon is an overbearing housewife who does not want her husband associating with Chris, preferring instead that he make friends with more sophisticated socialites that better befits their image. Sharon despises Chris, and Chris takes any opportunity to irritate her. Larry is envious of Chris' carefree lifestyle, and is often coerced by Chris into joining him in his adventures, despite his wife's wishes. To Chris' dismay, Larry eventually heeds his advice and leaves his wife and children at the beginning of the second season. This leaves Sharon traumatized, and she becomes more and more obsessed with killing Chris in revenge.

In a defiant nod to Fox Network demands that his character "be more independent", Chris Peterson was moved out of his parents' house at the beginning of the second season, much to his parents' amazement and joy, and into the garage of ex-cop Gus Borden, played by Brian Doyle-Murray, who had been fired from the police force for urinating on his boss. He is a gruff, demeaning sociopath with minimal tolerance for Chris' antics, which Chris seems to be oblivious to, while looking up to Gus as a sort of paternal figure. For that reason, Gus serves as Chris' comic foil throughout the second season.

One of the more controversial episodes featured a character named Spewey the Alien (a parody of the films Mac and Me and E.T.), an extraterrestrial who secretes mucus from under his scales (which Chris proceeds to drink and call the "nectar of the Gods") and projectile vomits when he becomes emotionally overwrought. At the end of the episode, Peterson and Gus barbecued and ate Spewey, although the creature was resurrected inside their refrigerator.

Development

In the DVD commentary for the series by David Mirkin, he discusses the development of the Chris Peterson character and the series in great detail. Mirkin states that the Chris Peterson character was originally somewhat based on Dennis the Menace, i.e. "What would Dennis The Menace have been like when he was 30 years old?" In the pilot, "Terror on the Hell Loop 2000", Chris Peterson was a fully functioning, wisecracking adult who is beating the system. However, as the series went on, he became a darker, more psychotic, character. According to Mirkin, the main character was made more likeable in the pilot to get the network to agree to order the series, and once the series was ordered, the producers took the character in the darker direction that was always intended.

Mirkin explains that the series itself was both an homage to the sitcoms of the 1960s and 1970s as well as a subversive farce of the genre. Ultimately, Chris Peterson was a modern, borderline psychotic inhabiting a world of standard sitcom characters from a prior era. In particular, his main foil, Sharon, dresses and acts like standard sitcom character from the 1960s. Her house is a standard sitcom set, and she has a standard sitcom family. The town is inhabited by standard sitcom archetypes, often played by well-recognized character actors from that era (e.g. James Hampton from F Troop and Graham Jarvis from Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman). A particular homage to that era of sitcoms is that the same actors would play different minor characters, only episodes apart. Mirkin also noted that the use of the original house from The Munsters as a backdrop at the end of the show's opening credits was another homage to the genre.

According to Mirkin, the network executives did not understand a lot of the more surreal, violent content of the scripts but nevertheless allowed it to go ahead. This enabled the writers to proceed with limited interference. However, the studio did not want the episode "Spewey and Me" to be aired, largely on the grounds of the alien being disgusting and getting eaten by Chris and Gus. Written as a parody of science-fiction films E.T: The Extra-Terrestrial and Mac and Me, the show's creators intended it to be a hopeful story of rebirth, hence the alien's resurrection at the end. However, Peter Chernin, who was in charge of Fox, proclaimed the episode to be one of the series' funniest and ensured that it would be broadcast.

Had the show continued beyond its second season, Elliot, Mirkin and Resnick would have depicted Chris becoming a hobo, which would drop Fred, Gladys, Gus, and the others characters from the storyline. As Mirkin explained, he wanted to do a series that changed every year and did something different each season; "Chris would have moved out of Gus' garage and become a homeless drifter. And he would have traveled the country, in every place touching someone else's life and making it a little bit worse" [1].

Reruns

The show was rerun in 2000 on the USA Network, although the series was only partially shown, and the theme song "Stand" by R.E.M. was replaced by generic music to avoid royalties for each playing of the theme. Occasionally, however, episodes aired with the correct theme.

Home video

Rhino Home Video released the best of on VHS and DVD – four VHS tapes with two episodes each and two DVDs with four episodes each, as well as one or two bonus features. The eight episodes on VHS are the same as the ones on the DVDs. The DVDs were released in 2000 and 2002 respectively. These have all gone out of print.

Shout! Factory released the complete series on September 18, 2012. Although Chris Elliott stated in 2005 that he had recorded commentary tracks with Adam Resnick, none of Elliott's and Resnik's commentaries were used; they were substituted with commentaries by David Mirkin, and Mirkin is similarly the only creator present in the DVD set's extras.

It was noted by Mirkin that the reason the full DVD box set took so long to release is that the original producers of the show felt that all of the incidental music was very important to the series. They didn't want to release the series until all the rights to the songs had been secured, and the series could be released with all of the original music intact.

Legacy

Hip hop producer Dan "the Automator" Nakamura is a noted fan of the series, stating "it was probably one of the best shows on television". Handsome Boy Modeling School, consisting of Nakamura and "Prince Paul" Huston, is named after the series, and other works by Nakamura have referenced both Get a Life and Cabin Boy. Tom Scharpling and Jon Wurster of The Best Show on WFMU became friends due to their mutual appreciation of Get a Life.