ONE SEASON WONDERS: The Crew

On Wednesdays, I take a look at shows that lasted one season or less. Here's a look at 1995's The Crew!

THE CREW

August 31, 1995 - June 30, 1996
21 episodes
FOX

Starring: Rose Jackson, Kristin Bauer, David Burke, Charles Esten, Dondre T. Whitfield, with Christine Estabrook and Lane Davies

Created by: Jamie Wooten, Marc Cherry, John Pardee & Joey Murphy

Plot: The lives and loves of a group of flight attendants living in Miami Beach, Florida. The crew includes Roommates Jess (Jackson) and Maggie (Bauer) along with openly gay Paul (Burke) and womanizing Randy (Esten). They are supervised by former flight attendant Lenora (Estabrook) and Captain Rex Parker (Davies). Rounding out the main cast is a bartender named MacArthur (Whtifield).

Brief Pilot Review:

I like airplane themed shows - Wings is underrated as far as I'm concerned, LA to Vegas was a short-lived charmer on FOX and of course I've enjoyed The Flight Attendant. So I was predisposed to like this one and there were things I certainly did like about it. It was very clearly set in 1995 with some seriously cringeworthy lines about Paul's sexuality. But there was also a genuine camaraderie among the four main friends in the show. They had an easy chemistry with each other that is not always easy to have in a pilot of a sitcom. And despite the script at times, it was a pretty forward thinking show with the cast of four main friends including a gay man and a black woman. In its own 1995 way, it was trying to be more inclusive.

I thought the show had a nice mix of its different settings with some scenes on the plane, some scenes in the bar and some home life scenes. This was a pilot that let some its exposition get out of the way through the story. It wasn't as blatantly expositional as many sitcoms then and now are. Charles Esten, Kristin Bauer and Dondre Whitfield have all gone on to have regular TV work but the standout of the pilot to me was Rose Jackson. She was the most natural character and she wasn't trying too hard at playing a type. I'm surprised she wasn't more of a breakout star from this. This wasn't a show that I felt like I had to keep watching after the pilot now because it is dated now but I think I would have liked it if I was the age I am now in 1995.

What Went Wrong:

In the Fall of 1995, there was an insane number of knockoffs of Friends among the new shows. When Friends became a breakout hit in the 1994-95 season, every single network tried to get their own Friends. FOX had their own Friends already in Living Single, which had started a year earlier and has been in the news in more recent years as basically being Friends before Friends. But in 1995, FOX decided to get a little more obvious about a Friends knockoff - meaning, let's be serious, they wanted a show with white friends. So there was The Crew, a show that did have more diversity than Friends but more white people than the other FOX sitcoms at the time, including its lead-in on Thursday night, Living Single.

Thursday nights belonged to NBC but every network was still trying in 1995-96. FOX seemed to go most directly after the NBC demographics and launched their lineup a few weeks early, at the end of August. The Crew revamped its pilot, calling the first episode "The New Pilot, Literally." Critics were not kind to The Crew. The Los Angeles Times called it "dull, yet vacuous." The Crew lasted until January when it was, ahem, grounded and replaced by Martin on Thursday nights. It resurfaced briefly in the summer but was not renewed for a second season. Most of the networks abandoned the constant Friends clones after so many failed and FOX certainly seemed to not keep trying to emulate NBC's hit show.

Tomorrow: A look at Season 7 (Part 2) of Happy Days!

Next Wednesday: A One Season Wonder look at Aliens in the Family!