Lightening The Darkness
Despite receiving early favorable critical reviews, the first season finished 96th overall, in part due to its time slot opposing Roseanne (which was fourth overall during the same season), however by Larroquette's own admission, the show's first season wasn't prime-time material due to its dark nature - at least not for network television.
The show faced cancellation, until Larroquette requested the chance to retool the series, which NBC granted. Unfortunately, although the series continued in this new, more Prime Time friendly format for 2 more years, the results took the show away from what it had originally promised to its existing followers - a dark and edgy comedy that tackled real life issues..
Much of the dark humor was removed, for a more "toned-down" feel. The sets were brighter. The cast were transferred from the night shift to days. John's dingy bed-sit was traded for a nice apartment. Even Oscar, the old bum who lived in one of the bus station phone booths, was cleaned up and became a shoeshine boy, and the prostitute character Carly (Gigi Rice) went "straight" - buying the bar and becoming a model citizen. The producers also decided to give John a nice clean romantic interest in the form of nurse Catherine Merrick, played by Alison LaPlaca.
These changes alienated the existing fan-base who had loved the dark and edgy nature of the first season, and to this day it is those early episodes that fans clamour to be able to revisit.
Read more about this topic: The John Larroquette Show
Famous quotes containing the words lightening the, lightening and/or darkness:
“As on the highroad he who walks lightest walks with most ease, so on the journey of
life more happiness comes from lightening the needs by poverty than from panting under a
burden of wealth.”
—Marcus Minucius Felix (2nd or 3rd cen. A.D.)
“In externals we advance with lightening express speed, in modes of thought and sympathy we lumber on in stage-coach fashion.”
—Frances E. Willard 1839–1898, U.S. president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union 1879-1891, author, activist. The Woman’s Magazine, pp. 137-40 (January 1887)
“Runs falls rises stumbles on from darkness into darkness
and the darkness thicketed with shapes of terror
and the hunters pursuing and the hounds pursuing
and the night cold and the night long and the river
to cross and the jack-muh-lanterns beckoning beckoning
and blackness ahead”
—Robert Earl Hayden (1913–1980)