King Of Queens (Series, The) (DVD)

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TV-land is like a giant city. There are some places you just never get to, and so for you they don't even seem to exist. "The King of Queens" was like that for me. Before I watched the third season on DVD with my wife, neither of us had heard of the show, much less watched it—though the sitcom has been around since the fall of 1998. In my defense, it was flying pretty low under the radar, not making the Nielsen Top-30 or snagging any Emmys. Along with "The Drew Carey Show," it followed on the heels of "Roseanne" and "Grace Under Fire" as part of an apparent second wave of blue-collar backlash to all those unbearably smart and hip white-collar sitcoms that had been dominating television. But if Drew Carey is played dinner-theater style, with over-the-top characters and gags, this unpretentious show delivers some pretty understated humor.

There's nothing flashy or caricaturish about this show. It's as refreshingly real as blue-collar work, with a nice balance of everyday situations and jokes that seem so natural that you don't have a sense of them being lines written by writers. The jokes seem spontaneous, and the stars—Kevin James as hefty Doug Hefferman (moo?) and the slender and sexy Leah Remini as his wife, Carrie—have great chemistry together. The supporting cast is also strong, with Jerry Stiller as the sometimes senile, sometimes lucid, but always cantankerous father-in-law who has to live in Doug's basement after he accidentally burns down his own house. It's a situation that could have been over-milked for laughs, but the writers focus on believable relationships first and jokes second. As a result, the show is engaging enough that my wife and I looked forward to watching more episodes.

Doug is a delivery-truck driver for IPS (apparently they didn't come to terms with UPS), while his wife is a legal secretary. Though shows have previously featured a mixed-race cast, "The King of Queens" offers a white couple and black couple as best friends. As normal as Doug and Carrie's relationship is, it seems just as normal that their best friends would be Doug's co-worker, Deacon (Victor Williams) and his wife, Kelly (Merrin Dungey). And while other shows get guest-star fever and go overboard with cameos, "The King of Queens" has some fun with the notion by having "Hulk" star Lou Ferrigno turn up in several episodes as Lou Ferrigno, new neighbor. When the guys are playing poker, Spence (Patton Oswalt) quips, "Watch out, you don't want to make the Hulk mad," and Ferrigno deadpans, "Good one. I haven't heard that one before." Ricki Lake also blends in as Doug's P.E. teacher sister, Stephanie.

"The King of Queens" is a comedy of character, more so than situations. None of the premises are really outlandish, and some of the funniest episodes are ones about "nothing," if you'll pardon the analogy—as when Doug is crushed when he learns that Carrie has been secretly shopping for him at the Big and Tall store for the past two years ("Oh my god, I'm fatter than the Skipper"). "Do Rico" is hilarious because an innocent imitation leads to sexual role-playing and some questions about sex after years of marriage that many couples might be too afraid to ask . . . and answer. That's the strength of the show, and a number of episodes follow the same pattern: capturing the ordinary events of ordinary lives with engaging scripts and performances and the kind of jokes that people around us make every day. When James does a spot-on impersonation of Ralph Cramden in a black-and-white dream sequence, it's clear that the young comedian has patterned many of his mannerisms after The Great One, and with relatively great success. This episode is the only really contrived one in the bunch, and some sports fans might think that making fun of Brian Piccolo's death scene in "Brian's Song" is going way too far for humor. As someone who had Bears season tickets when Sayers and Piccolo were playing, count me as one of them who thought it was in bad taste. But one clunker in the bunch isn't bad.

Here's the episode rundown for Season Three:

1) Do Rico. The season opener is also one of the funniest, with Doug and Carrie experimenting with identities and voices in order to make their bedroom antics more arousing.

2) Roast Chicken. At Carrie's suggestion Doug sucks up to his boss and ends up having to be the emcee at the honcho's roast . . . and ends up cooking his own goose in the process. Another funny episode.

3) Fatty McButterpants. Doug is momentarily traumatized when he learns that Carrie has been buying his clothes at the Big and Tall store.

4) Class Struggle. Carrie's girls' night out is ruined when her workplace buddies learn that she's not an attorney like the rest of them—only a secretary—and so she decides to go back to school.

5) Strike One. Doug pulls a bonehead play and buys an SUV on the eve of an IPS strike.

6) Strike, Too. Doug cons his sister Stephanie into vouching for him so he can pull in some income substitute teaching, and of course gets the "sub" treatment from students.