Nicole Sullivan on Fired Up

Version 1.0

A test of the Emergency Broadcast System

I was not amused when I saw this while playing back the video.

"I should not have worn this dress." - Nicole Sullivan (as Debbie) on Fired Up

I missed the episode of Fired Up in which Nicole Sullivan appeared when it originally aired on November 10, 1997, and when the show was pulled from NBC's schedule in February 1998, I assumed my chances of ever seeing the episode were slim to none. If it hasn't been on the air for at least four seasons, I rationalized, there isn't really a market for it in syndication. I was, of course, wrong. The USA Network has added Fired Up to its morning lineup (the show currently in on USA at 10:30 AM EST), and the episode in which Nicole Sullivan appeared was shown on January 27, 2000.

[In case you're wondering about the image to the left of this text, apparently USA decided to do a test of the Emergency Broadcast System in the middle of this episode. This pre-empted at least two minutes of the show, including one scene in which Nicole Sullivan appeared. This left yours truly more than a little irate.]

If this episode is representative of the show as a whole, then Fired Up was obviously not the greatest sitcom that ever was. Compared to shows like Drew Carey and Seinfeld, which have challenged the bounds of the sitcom format, Fired Up is a prosaic, though competent, attempt at comedy. The premise behind the show is that a creative executive, Gwen (Sharon Lawrence) and her longtime assistant Terry (Leah Remini) are fired. Three months later, Gwen shows up at Terry's apartment; she is broke but she talks Terry into going into business with her as equal partners. They live together in an apartment over the restaurant in which Gwen's brother works (the restaurant owner is played by none other than Wiseguy's Jonathan Banks). Much of the humor derives from the awkwardness of Gwen and Terry trying to adjust to this new situation, and from Gwen brooding over the loss of her cushy job and attendant power. The humor is a little pedestrian, but the cast is excellent; Banks as always is a pro and with Remini and Lawrence, the show could claim to have one of the best-looking casts on television at the time.

The premise behind this episode ("The Baby-Sitter's Club") is standard sitcom fare. Entirely by chance, Terry (Remini) meets her high school friend Debbie (Nicole Sullivan) at the restaurant. Debbie asks Terry if there is any chance that they and some other friends could get together Saturday night. Terry is initially reluctant because she has work to do, but Gwen persuades her to go by agreeing to do all the work. Debbie and her friends have kids, so they need a babysitter; Terry tries to get someone in her building to do it, but she cancels at the last minute, and Gwen winds up babysitting the kids. There is a typical cathartic moment when Gwen talks to one of Debbie's kids (who in a fit of pique, locked herself in the bathroom), and we also get to see Terry, Debbie and the others clubbing at an old hangout called The Tank.

Nicole Sullivan and Leah Remini

Debbie (Nicole Sullivan) encounters old friend Terry (Leah Remini).

As with her appearance on The Drew Carey Show (which also aired in 1997), Ms. Sullivan's guest starring role is a substantial one. In "Drew Gets Married," it is clear that she is the main guest star, appearing in almost every scene. She gets less airtime in "The Baby-Sitters Club," but she still gets more airtime than the other guest stars. Her performance here is good, but it was by no means the tour-de-force that the Drew Carey appearance represented, but to a large extent this was inevitable since her role on this episode of Fired Up was much more limited. "Drew Gets Married" was largely about her character's custody battle; she is the "woman of action" and Carey reluctantly goes along with her plan. In this show, Sullivan gets some good lines (though not as good as the ones she got on Drew Carey), but the episode is clearly about Terry and Gwen and Remini/Lawrence never retreat from center stage. The most notable facet of Ms. Sullivan's performance is the fact that she affects a thick New York (New Yawk) accent (not unlike Remini's) for purposes of the episode. Her mimicking the accent is interesting in itself because Sullivan is a native New Yorker, but as a resident of Manhattan she is the proverbial uptown girl. Thus she has had ample opportunity to observe the accent up close, but with the cool detachment of an outsider. The result is a variation of the accent she used in the "Debra and Debbie" sketch in MD-103, but whereas the "Debra and Debbie" accent was more of a caricature, on Fired Up, Sullivan's New York accent is less pronounced and surprisingly realistic (compare her voice to Remini's in this episode if you need further proof). In fact, Sullivan gets so immersed in the character that very little of the real Nicole Sullivan seeps through, which in itself is a good sign.

Overall the plot and dialogue were a little too prosaic for me. For example, when Debbie (Sullivan) recalls a mechanic for whom she had a crush, she states "[h]e was like God - if God worked in a muffler shop." There are more good laughs in the first five minutes of the average Drew Carey episode than there were in thirty minutes of this show. Still, Sullivan goes through the motions like a pro, injecting life into this relatively mediocre storyline. And while I would not have had occasion to watch this show if Ms. Sullivan were not in it, I have to admit that Remini is good, too, and just as Artie Lange's recent appearance on Mad TV prompted me to start watching Norm on a regular basis (at least until they moved it from the 9:30 PM time slot on Wednesdays), seeing this show may cause me to tune into her current sitcom project, King of Queens (starring Jerry Stiller). Sadly, we will never know whether or not Fired Up could have in time developed into a more solidly-written show, since it was cancelled after only ten months, a victim of bad scheduling and limited network support. [NBC, which seemingly went out of its way to save favorite son Seinfeld both in 1990 when it initially encountered low ratings and in 1992-93 when it moved the show from Tuesdays, where it was getting clobbered by Home Improvement to Thursdays after Cheers was apparently willing to do little to save this show.] Still, this episode was a good fix for die-hard Nicole Sullivan fans.