The Best ’90s Sitcom On Fox Is Being Completely Forgotten

On paper, Get a Life probably sounds too stupid to watch. The series surrounds a 30-year-old man-child that still lives with his parents and works a paper route (on his bicycle) that he’s had since his pre-teen years.

His parents are a retired couple and forced to deal with their adult son’s seemingly low intelligence and high levels of gullibility. But seeing the scripts come to life with Elliot as the star proves that something incredibly ludicrous can be translated into terrific visual comedy.

Get a Life sees Chris Peterson become entangled in the most insane situations, making viewers question the mental well-being of the show’s writers.

He gets trapped in a submarine that he installs in his bathtub, a visit from his incarcerated pen pal lady friend leads to chaotic events, toxic waste exposure makes him a spelling bee champion, he joins a street gang, he becomes a male model–each entry as the series continues being even more absurd than the last.

Chris dies in 12 episodes in ways that are a combination of horrific and ludicrous, only to somehow be resurrected to throw his papers again.

Get a Life was the number one series on FOX during its first season in 1990/1991. The monstrous level of writing talent behind the scenes included not only Elliot, but fellow Late Night with David Letterman writer Adam Resnick and The Simpsons writer David Mirkin.

Additional pens in the writing room over the show’s 36 episodes were Bob Odenkirk and Being John Malkovich writer Charlie Kaufman.

Fox executives were reportedly disgusted by Get a Life, finding Elliot’s character to be very unlikable and totally without any redeeming qualities.

They wanted Chris Peterson to show growth over time and find his footing, instead of being a lazy and sophomoric financial sponge.

While some might view Chris Peterson as an immature adult that has failed to launch, there’s great arguments for his being an absolute psychopath. The grown paperboy has zero consideration for others and his mere presence causes so much grief and chaos in the lives of those around him that he is oblivious to or completely relishes in, depending on the situation.

One grotesque example of Chris’s insane behavior is seen in an episode that was nearly banned from airing by the censors at FOX, following the arrival of an alien.

This particular Get a Life episode, “SPEWEY and ME,” shows Chris and Gus befriending an extra-terrestrial whose spaceship has crashed in Gus’s yard. The creature is as vile as it is violent, projectile vomiting on anyone who enrages him.

Chris and Gus, of course, love him and take him back to Chris’s house. The censors lost their minds when Chris and Gus decided to eat their new alien friend, according to a Vulture interview with the show’s executive producer David Mirkin in 2012.

Mirkin was able to talk the censors into letting this one get a pass, and one of the most disturbing episodes in sitcom history was allowed to air in Get a Life‘s second season.

Finding Get a Life to watch in reruns has been difficult. The USA Network began airing them briefly in 2000 but earned the ire of Mirkin and others involved with the series.

Not wanting to pay R.E.M. for the rights to the theme song (the band’s 1989 hit song “Stand”), USA scrapped it and other music from the series for stock music. After demands were made by Mirkin to either pay the band for the rights or pull the show, USA decided to cease airing the reruns.

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Whether a viewer will enjoy Get a Life will depend on how grounded to reality they want their entertainment to be. As ludicrous as the plotlines and as inherently moronic the dialogue can be, Chris Peterson and company threw out a unique and entertaining series.

While Get a Life is unable to stream, fans can secure the entire series on DVD complete with the original theme song by R.E.M. and the rest of the show’s original music.

Sources: Vulture