The Drew Carey Show: Season 04 (1998)

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Whatever connection The Drew Carey Show ever had with "real life" during its first three seasons is utterly scattered to the winds in Season Four with the bizarre, surrealistic episode "High Road to China"--which, incidentally, was also the first American sitcom episode ever to be filmed in Mainland China (that's the actual "Great Wall" upon which a befuddled Drew Carey [playing himself] awakens in the opening scene!) Almost as wacked out is the episode "DrugCo", a vivid Apocalypse Now lampoon featuring a giant talking cockroach and a mutant "monkopotamus". In comparison, the season's second annual "What's Wrong With This Episode?" entry, wherein viewers were invited to spot the nearly fifty deliberate errors spotted throughout the proceedings, is an exercise in normality! This is the season in which Drew and his pals Oswald (Diedrich Bader) and Lewis (Ryan Stiles0 briefly ascend the heights of rock-music stardom by reorganizing their high school band "The Horndogs", with a little help from their new friends Joe Walsh, Jimmy Fox and Dale Peters of The James Gang--and with some unsual input from Drew's self-appointed "groupie" Darcy (Pauley Perrette). This is the season in which Drew launches a May-December romance with a 61-year-old woman named Celia (Shirley Jones), just before entering into a "menage a quartre" with Oswald, Drew and sexy sci-fi freak Tracy (Diane Farr)--which in turn leads to the Pirandellian episode "Tracy Bowl, with sportscasters Bob Costas, Lynn Swann and Kenny Mayne providing play-by-play coverage of the four-way romance. This is the season in which Drew's house is neatly cut in half by crooked realtors, and in which he begins his ardent pursuit of gorgeous handywoman Sharon (Jenica Bergere). This is the season in which Oswald, still smarting from being jilted at the altar by Kate (Christa Miller) picks up some extra cash by acting as guinea pig for DrugCo's new "man boobs". And this is the season in which the series' resident "cosmetic nightmare" Mimi (Kathy Kinney becomes engaged to Drew's transvestite older brother Steve (John Carroll Lynch. Guest stars this season include pro wrestler Triple-H, Charles Nelson Reilly, and Hal Linden, the latter a key players in the series' elaborate "Brotherhood of Man" season finale. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi