The Drew Carey Show: Season 01  (1995)

Theatrical Release Information:
The Drew Carey Show: Season 01

Cleveland's favorite son Drew Carey stars as Cleveland's favorite son Drew Carey in the first season of the popular ABC sitcom bearing his name. Of course, Carey does not really play "himself", a successful standup comedian: The TV version of Drew Carey is the long-suffering, overworked and underpaid assistant personnel director at Cleveland's fictional Winfred-Louder department store. Given the choice, Drew would rather spend all his time at home or at the Warsaw Tavern with his lifelong best friends: hoydenish, perennially unemployed Kate O'Brien (Christa Miller), geekish DrugCo janitor and sci-fi aficionado Lewis Kiniski (Ryan Stiles), and erstwhile deejay Oswald Harvey (Diedrich Bader), who in the course of the first season launches a lengthy if unrewarding job at Global Parcel Service. These are the "regulars" in the first episode, soon to be joined by Kathy Kinney as Drew's mortal enemy, the garishly outfitted and cosmetically challenged Mimi Bombeck. Originally, Mimi was to have been a one-shot character, but proved so popular with test audiences that she was signed for a permanent post as a secretary at Winfred-Louder, giving her ample opportunity to make Drew's life Hell. Contributing to Drew's woes is his never-seen boss Mr. Bell (voiced by Kevin Pollak), whose sojourn at Winfred-Louder will last only until the season finale, thanks to the whims of the store founder's barracudalike widow Mrs. Louder (Nan Martin), whose first name is "Dottie" herein but will later be "Fran". Other prominent Season One contributors are Katey Selverstone as store employee Lisa Robbins, with whom Drew has a covert romance; Jane Morris as Nora O'Dougherty, another of Drew's coworkers, whose lawsuit against Drew for creating a "hostile workplace" (translation: for having a typically male sense of humor) provides the show with its first significant story arc; Robert Torti as Drew's old pal Jay Clemens, who has a fling with Kate; Ian Gomez as Larry Almada, Winfred-Louder's laziest employee and Mrs. Louder's current boy-toy; Stanley Anderson) as Drew's irksome dad George; and Susan Saint James as Kate's hyperjudgmental mom Lynn. Generally avoiding the surrealism prevalent in later years, Season One still has a tenuous connection with what passes for "real life", though there are glimmers of the zaniness to come in the season finale, wherein Drew, Oswald and Lewis establish their own micro-brewery for the purposes of creative a coffee-flavored beer, naming their product "Buzz" (what else?) ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide