Get a Life - Volume One (1990) [VHS]
Whenever a new network gets a start, some weird things make it onto the air. That's the only possible explanation forGet a Life, Chris Elliott's short-lived series in which he starred as a thirtysomething paperboy, Chris Peterson, who still lived at home with his folks. (His dad, strangely enough, was played by Chris's real-life father, Bob Elliott, a respected comedian in his own right.)The two episodes onVolume 1exemplify whatGet a Lifewas all about: a straight-faced spoof of sitcom conventions that managed to avoid all of the conventions that spoofs usually observe. That it wasn't laugh-out-loud funny is beside the point; Elliott's fans know that his brand of humor is often diametrically opposed to conventional humor.Though the plots are fairly conventional--in "The Prettiest Week of My Life," Peterson enrolls in the Handsome Boy Modeling School, where he competes with another student, Sapphire; "Bored Straight" finds Peterson trying to rehabilitate a gang of teens--the shows themselves are anything but.--Randy Silver