FINALLY!!!!!!

Peter Dragon: These girls want the same thing that you want.
Adam Rafkin: No, Peter, I don't believe any of these women want my mother dead.

I have been waiting for YEARS for this to come out on DVD. I've worn out my crappy VHS tape of the four episodes I taped when this originally aired. Before The Office before Entourage there was a previous best show of all time. Rent it. Watch it.

Very little over the last 15 years have gotten me to turn on the tv, and less has gotten me to change my schedule to make sure I could watch a tv show. Action was the only show I can recall that did (with the exception of My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiancee, but I am just so super-embarrassed that I became so obsessed with the show and blame Tony Hansen for the fact that I even knew it was on, just embarrasing all around).

Adam Rafkin: I wanna have sex with every person here.
Peter Dragon: Don't look at me!
Adam Rafkin: The ugliest man in this place is twice as pretty as the prettiest girl I ever slept with.

The show stars John Marshall...sorry, Jay Mohr as movie Producer Peter Dragon, the biggest prick on Earth with a mouth filled with the best prick dialogue ever. The show follows the old adage "you're only as good as your last film." And Peter's last film tanked. So now he's trying to get his next production off the ground before his reputation is completely worthless while trying to keep afloat his life of ex-wives, in-house-production-supervisor prostitutes, their pimps, a writer named Adam Rafkin, and many gay confidantes. Lot of gay jokes.

It is SO no surprise that this got cancelled. Mankind, much less network, was not ready for this.

Peter Dragon: Life is filled with things that you just can't predict. Ned Beatty goes on a rafting trip in "Deliverance," winds up getting sodomized by hillbillies. Eddie Murphy stops to give a girl a ride home, turns out she has a bigger schlong than he does. One night you go out for McDonald's and accidentally hack your ex-wife and Ron Goldman to death. These things happen. The point is that things can change 180 degrees in a split second.

The dialogue was created by God just for me, this is exactly what dialogue should sound like. I'll put Peter's monologue at the beginning of Episode 5 up against any monologue, just brilliant (probably the best episode as well). And there are some great jokes too (check out the names of the movies that beat Peter's last release, there's like a German claymation film, the WORST films beat Peter's). The IMDB has a lot of names listed as writers, but none of them have anything all that impressive on their resume except Will Forte, so I'm giving this one to him.

The show was produced by Joel Silver. Leading to my favorite exchange when Peter finds that, after his last bomb, his table is no longer available.

Maitre'd: Sorry your table is taken by Joel Silver.
Peter Dragon: That fat fuck?
Maitre'd: He produced The Matrix, it did very well.
(Peter grabs the Maitre'd by the collar and pulls him close)
Peter Dragon: He also produced Xanadu. Now give me my table.

It is clear the Joel Silver gave no oversight on the show. Everyone, the writers, the actors, directors, all act like they're getting away with this.

But the best thing about this show is the performances. Is it just me, or is EVERY PERFORMANCE BY EVERY ACTOR IN EVERY ROLE IN THIS SHOW ROCK FUCKING SOLID? How do you pull that off? And then most of these actors never went on to much of anything. You watch every single actor just NAIL their character and you wonder what gives? Shouldn't every actor in this show be known worldwide as our most cherished talents? Haven't heard of half of them. So I'll have to throw big props to Ted Demme (Blow, died in 2002) and Adam Bernstein (Scrubs, in which he gets similarly good performances) for taking the show to the next level.

The show was cancelled on FOX and went to HBO where the last four or five episodes were produced and my how the tone changes? Where does Illeana Douglas go? Where does the Pimp go? Actually he exits about episode 4. Now, come on, you put together a comic premise like a pimp in charge of a production company and don't do one casting call joke? Something's wrong. And that's the real problem with Action, the show never quite figures out what it is, it's the son of many showrunners and two networks who all thought it was something else. Despite that, it's a real lightning-in-a-bottle first season of Moonlighting experience, well worth the rental.