The Final Episode #94: Suddenly Susan (1996 - 2000)

 

Somethings about myself are baffling. Okay, most things about myself are baffling. However this is one thing about myself that I think is incredibly baffling. It's the fact that I watched Suddenly Susani regularly as a kid. I don't know when during the four year run between 1996 and 2000 that I started watching but I remember the show. Mostly just an episode or episodes that had Hulk Hogan in them. During his Hollywood Hulk Hogan time. You know when he was a bad boy dressed in black who didn't take his vitamins or love America.  During some era of Wrestling I didn't know about because I didn't watch wrestling but some kid in my school named Kevin loved. Kevin was a nice enough kid. I liked him. 

So yeah, let's go back to Suddenly Susan and all I can say is I really really want to see what was on other channels during this time that made me go "YEAH BROOKE SHEILDS IS THE WAY". Like I really want a complete set of Newfoundland Heralds that show what was on during 1996 and 2000. Like during this time it had TWO different time slots. Was nothing else on at this time? Was it because it was a rerun and the other shows were reruns? Was it budding puberty and the need to look at any lady??? I will probably never know but hopefully one day I will be given the answers. I will look onward to the future so I can solve the problems of the past!

So what was Suddenly Susan all about huh? Well Susan, played by Brooke Shields ends up not marrying some man and getting her job back at a magazine writing about being suddenly single again. Yep. Riveting background huh? Still I'd take it over the unending wave of reboots and remakes and movie remakes of tv shows and everything. You know what's on netflix now. A reboot movie of Spenser for Hire called Spenser Confidential. WHO THE HELL EVEN FUCKING REMEMBERS SPENSER FOR HIRE? That's not all. They are bringing back HIGHWAY TO HEAVEN as a series of movies on Lifetime For Women (weirdly enough these episodes I watched were recorded off Lifetime for Women. Wild huh?) This show might not be great or even good but at this point I'll take it over the 82,000 heartless remakes that are coming out. And even the 12 remakes that showed some effort by the producers. Something new please, not a bad attempt at recreating something from the past.

So since I had something of an extensional crisis over if I had even seen this show. Or why or anything. I decided to watch one extra episode just to refresh myself. First off It's been 21 years since I've seen most of this show (the Hulk Hogan one showed up on YouTube and you bet your sweet bippy I watched Kathy Griffin and the Hulkster as an adult) and my memory is bad. Also the comedy on this show is very unmemorable. Yeah I think that's what I'll go for. It kinda reminds me of Veronica's Closet but if I had to pick between the two shows I would pick Suddenly Susan. It had better acting and honestly I did laugh a few times mostly at Eric Idle (who shows up in the fourth season. is it weird that no Monty Python member really got popular in America except maybe John Cleese? Like John Cleese had A Fish Called Wanda and Eric Idle had Suddenly Susan and the  3rd best National Lampoon's Vacation movie (the European one)) and the angry black person in Suddenly Susan was more of a character because she wasn't just ALWAYS ANGRY because that was what black people did in the 1990s. Be angry on television for white peoples laughter.

So the episode was called The Gay Parade and Susan makes fun of the Gay Games, an Olympic games thing for gays. Oh, she wrote it making fun of a guy who thought it was stupid. Of course Eric Idle puts it in the magazine for comedy sakes and oh at least half of the episode is the relationship problems between Susan and some boring asshole who works with her. In fact he's the guy she's making fun of. So that's one problem right there. Susan getting the ire of the gay community is a great hilarious idea and you waste half of it on the boring dipshit and you waste the other half on mostly not very good jokes. Eric Idle does get in drag and that gives me weird erotic feelings I mean good comedic laughs!

I have to say this, the last five? episodes of this series were left unseen for a few months. They just left them there until they ran them off in the summer. I think this is really sad honestly. It doesn't matter how good the damn show is just run all the episodes. Don't shove The Final Episode of any show off into some random night of the week during the summer when people are doing shit. That's really sad. So yeah we start off the TWO PART Finale of this show with Susan and her dipshit boyfriend doing this weird annoying bit that almost causes Kathy Griffin to throw something at you. You know you should stop doing what you are doing when it bothers Kathy Griffin. Then we get the theme song which is very bad. I do not like it.

So Susan got an article in the New Yorker which really freaks out Eric Idle (the character's name is Ian but I'm just going to call him Eric Idle). He even tries to trick her into signing a contract. We then get a big thing about Susan and the office people trying to have a birthday for the dipshit boyfriend. Who is stuck on a plane. This is what causes the problem during the episode. He wants her to move to New York so they can be closer together (This confused me because I thought they WERE in New York because she was in the New Yorker...). Anyway Susan wants to help a person in the office get a job on MSNBC. He fails BUT Susan is picked up because the lady producer freaks out when she sits down with him to help him. She thinks she is perfect! So they do an amusing bit with her interviewing a guy who had 8 mail order brides! 8! 

So now you'd think that the dipshit boyfriend would be happy. Nope he ends up buying a fucking house in San Francisco with a 30 year mortgage so he can be with her. They have an argument and he then gets down on his feet and promises to marry her. She then signs the contract that Eric Idle put out and everyone wins! Wait this is a two parter right? So what the hell is going to happen there when you clearly figured everything out in this episode... Oh thats how. They get her confused about her decision that seemed pretty serious in the last episode right at the beginning of this one. Oh and so that they could do the OH MAN WE GOTTA HAVE THE WEDDING RIGHT AWAY! I'd like to see a Final Episode where the thing WAS the proposal! That would be a little bit of a different take on the Wedding Final Episode! Susan and the dipshit end up fighting in a floral shop about the job.

Oh and the gang from the office give her something new, something old, something borrowed and something blue. It's actually a very sweet scene with a few laughs. We even get in some clips from previous episodes because THAT HAS TO HAPPEN WHY NOT. So yeah Susan almost doesn't marry him because of the job but he then says he sold the house so they get married and fly off to Noo Yawk. Yeah. This show is awkwardly written and this could have been done so much better, but from what it seems like this show was awkwardly written from day one. She gets the job and everyone is happy.  Oh and her friends from the office pop back in. Except the black lady, the dumbass and Eric Idle. This is just proof Susan is racist and hates the British. Not cool!

FINAL VERDICT: This show was kinda weird and awkward. It freaks me out. I know I watched it as a kid because I would just turn in for some random episode with Hulk Hogan yet that's the only thing I remember about the show. Re-watching a few episodes shows that It's not the most memorable thing out there and that the actors really elevate the writing. It's not the jokes that are funny but how the people pull them off. I dunno. I'd still watch it over many other 90s sitcoms and totally would watch it over "Souless reboot of a 1960s/1970s/1980s/1990s/2000s movie/book/tv/comic #1,986" but then again is that really saying much? Well that's it for now.