Top #5 Chris Elliott 'Get A Life!'-Moments

One of the true neglected and unsung american geniuses, I give you my top #5 Chris Elliott moments from 'Get A Life!'...

After being featured as a regular on Letterman, Chris Elliott together with friend Adam Resnick (who also wrote for Letterman) was given a sitcom on Fox. 'Get A Life!' starred Chris as 30 year old paperboy Chris Peterson living at home with his mother and father (played by Chris real life father Bob Elliott). The show ran for a total of 35 episodes, split up on two seasons from 1990 to 1992.

Absurd, surreal, offbeat and insanely funny, the show started off with a great first season but it's in the second season the madness really begins. A couple of high executives over at Fox was displeased (to say the least) with the shows direction and ratings, demanding that the characters "be more independent". Said and done, in the second season Chris moved into the garage of ex-cop Gus Borden, who likes to eat roadkill and rancid meat and was fired from the police for urinating on his boss. They also put more emphazis in killing off Chris in weird ways in every episode (pm kenny mccormick), only to be magically resurrected in the next one. You cannot help but to feel they knew they were headed for an abrupt cancellation after the second season as the insanity and absurdity grew with every episode (and was all the better for it)!

The show even featured Charlie Kaufman (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Adaptation, Being John Malkovich) as a writer, he is credited with writing two of the episodes, one being the brilliant and bizarrely named "1977 2000", where Chris, despite warnings from Gus about the dangers of time travel, has to travel back in time to stop Gus from taking a piss on his boss and subsequently getting fired off the police force.

It's pretty unfair that the show, which should have been Elliotts stepstone to super comedy stardom was such a flop and in the end seem to have slightly damaged his career. The show took the unique comedy style and utter absurdity of many of the reaccuring characters he did on the old Letterman show on NBC where he was a fixture like "The fugutive guy", "The guy under the stairs", "Marlon Brando" and took them to the next level of insanity. And while reaching pretty high humouros heights later on in CB4, Groundhog Day, Something About Mary he never quite peaked or was given the opurtunity to really shine like on Get A life!

The show will probably be the genius legacy of one of the most underrated comics ever - Some truly groundbreaking and epic stuff for the times (or any times)! So with no further adue - ze list: (Oh.. and the only donwside with these youtube clips is the laugh tracks which can be removed on the dvd releases..)

1. Zoo Animals On Wheels
"Whats the one thing all zoo animals like when thay are sad? A Light show! That's right, a light show with disco music!".

2. Chris gets smart
From the "Chris' Brain Starts Working"-episode where highly dangerous toxic waste is found under Gus's house. After being exposed to the radiactive material Chris turns into a mutated spelling bee genius and with Gus's help he proceeds to enter and win spelling bees.. until the effect wears off and he looses by misspelling the word "pants".

3. Nectar Of The Gods
Chris finds an alien Spewey, who secretes mucus from his scales which Chris proceeds to drink and refers to as "the nectar of the gods" and projectile vomits when he becomes emotional. Chris gets beaten the fuck up by Spewey for the last 3/4th of the episode, ends up eating him as barbecue but spewey is finally resurrected in the fridge and saved by his mothership.

4. Chris stalks
From the "Girlfriend 2000"-episode. Setup: Chris thinks it's one of those days where he is semi-solid and cars can go right through him, gets run over a couple of times by scientist Trisha, shows up unannounced in Trishas radiation chamber citing his ananswered love for here, encouraged by Gus he starts stalking the shit out of her. (Chris on his part gets stalked by evelyn from the pharmacy whom he bought condoms from, "incase this stalking thing pays off" in the episode finale)

5. "Handsome Boy Modeling School"
From the 'The Prettiest Week of My Life'-episode, where Chris Elliott's character enrolls to become a male model. Elliotts ambiguous reaction of self torment and self-righteousness when taking his short off: priceless! Also an interesting episode if you like your hip-hop on the semi-underground arty side. Prince Paul and Dan The Aumomator took the name of their supergroup Handsome Boy Modeling Shool from this episode, and samples from the episode are heavily features on the 'So... How's Your Girl?'-album