There was a weird time in television history when they took a load of famous sitcom characters and made this huge crossover series where they all ran a department store together. I guess it was the turn of the century and…I don’t know, they were feeling confident? So you had characters from Pals, No One Likes Rayford, Queen of Kings, Decker, Sign-Field and a few others, and the select characters formed cast of the show, which tanked after one season.
I guess there’s not much fun when you take someone out of their comfort zone and have them try to sell perfume or do tax returns. Melbourne ratings were highest, because…I don’t know, people here really love tax returns? I think because of Australia’s tax rates, people just naturally take a stronger interest…and after all, the entire first episode was just all of them coming together and trying to work out the finances of running a department store. It was wacky, there was a lot of canned laughter and people mixed up numbers in a way that was probably supposed to be funny. Maybe watching them utterly fail at a tax return was funnier to an Australian audience because we know exactly how it’s SUPPOSED to be done? It’s a weak excuse at humour, and since the writers are supposed to be American it doesn’t make much sense that they’d base all the jokes around that. Like when the really stupid one from Pals, Zoey, turns to Terry from Sign-Field and asks if they have any deductible assets. And then the audience laughs. Uh, it’s actually really simple.
Anyway, I imagine it’s a classic among people in Melbourne, business tax returns are super important after all. It’s not like sitcoms tackle the subject all that often. And for good reason, but…whatever makes you happy.
-Annette