Dave’s World: The Second Season

Welcome back to Dave's World, an amiable Baby Boomer sitcom that takes a more laid-back approach to life and parenting. In the season finale, "Tommy Doesn't Live Here Anymore," Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Dave Barry (Harry Anderson) is told that his 10-year-old son, angry that he is forbidden to see an age-inappropriate horror movie, has run away and shown up on the doorstep of Dave's editor and best friend. "That's something we should have noticed, right?" he asks his wife, Beth (DeLane Matthews). As with the first season, season two takes its inspiration from Barry's books, Dave Barry's Greatest Hits and Dave Barry Turns 40. The best episodes stay closest to home, with Barry grappling with "decisions in life that really count," such as whether to get a vasectomy, coping with the after-effects of a hurricane, or reflecting on getting older and being a responsible parent. Everything in Dave's life is "grist for his comedy mill," but the writers opted this season to up the wacky quotient, as in "The Joint Venture," in which Dave and Beth's investment property literally goes to pot, and "The Country Girl," in which a French exchange student cooks the family rabbit. The Barry TV family was that prime time rarity, a happily, albeit at times chaotically, functional nuclear family. David and Beth's stable married life is in comic contrast to the messy personal lives of their single best friends, the "impossibly stupid" shallow aging playboy, Ken (Shadoe Stevens) and pathetic divorcee Shel (Meshach Taylor). More welcome company is J.C. Wendel as charming screwball Mia, who quits the newspaper to become Dave's assistant. Memorable guest stars include Mel Torme as God in "Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word," Florence Henderson, Audrey Meadows and Stella Stevens in the poignant Mother's Day episode, "The Mommies," and John Ritter as a fun-loving former college friend in "The Accidental Tourists." Patrick Warburton joined the ensemble in a recurring role as Eric, a handyman who becomes Mia's new boyfriend. There is a special place in TV heaven for unassuming shows like Dave's World that fly comfortably under the radar during their modest runs, never generating any buzz, earning critics' plaudits, or taking home awards. This is the opposite of edge, and what the show lacks in snark, it more than makes up for in viewer goodwill. --Donald Liebenson