Watched some episodes recently -- turned out to be the Season 9 finale. Boy, that show lost steam and they should have pulled the plug maybe around Season 5. It is a rare show that can stay funny and relevant any longer than that.
Drew Carey got "show biz-itis" by maybe Season 5 or 6 anyways -- lost weight, changed his hair and look, got Lasik, etc. I think he really lost touch with his Cleveland past. I should mention, I grew up in Cleveland and therefore, know what parts of the show are authentic and which are fake-y. Let's just say, Drew Carey has been a Hollywood guy a lot longer than he ever was a Clevelander -- he has a few memories, I guess, but they are out of touch.
1990s Cleveland -- I worked downtown then -- was NOT mired in the 1950s and full of Polish bars. (It has some, but less than you would think based on the show.) The Halle Co. department store ("Winfred-Louder" in the show) went out of business in the very early 80s. By 2004, Cleveland had lost EVERY downtown department store, just like most cities. Therefore, Drew's "job" makes little sense.
The real Drew Carey lived in Old Brooklyn, on Cleveland's west side.....so it is very odd they choose to represent his house with one on the EAST side in Cleveland Heights, an extremely different milieu (younger, more liberal, a lot of college students, etc.). Having seen both homes, the one pictured looks NOTHING like the real house the real Carey lived in (and bought with his first series' paycheck apparently and remodeled!). In fact, in an odd twist of fate....I worked with the woman who owned the house shown on the series. I was in it many times, even the day her husband painted the window frames hot pink (and I told him "you are ruining the value of the house!" -- making me about the wrongest person in human history). In fact, the house was CHOSEN for the crazy hot pink trim! and the money from the rights to the images of the house paid off the mortgage for my coworker (several times over).
Interestingly....the real interior of the house is nothing like the show's set, not even close. It has a big front porch you can see clearly in the photos, which you have to walk through to get in the front door, but you never see the characters doing so. ALSO, when they show the back of the house....it is beige and not navy blue with hot pink trim as the front is (???). So is the garage. The real house has a backyard slanted so severely, you can hardly stand on it, let alone put a pool table. Since the real house has nothing to do with the set....it just comes back to the crazy hot pink trim. That paint paid for itself 10,000 times over!
Anyhow: the show stopped being fresh and got really repetitive, and by the end, dropped many of the classic characters. Drew, Oswald, Lewis go from about age 35 to 45 and nothing ever changes. I also felt the show was negative and downbeat about Cleveland at the very time it was having a sort of Renaissance downtown and in the Flats. The sad fact is that a lot of people all over the US and abroad have formed their OPINION of Cleveland from THIS TV show and little else (how many other TV shows have ever been set here?), and probably actually believed a lot of it was factual and not fantasy.
In conclusion: funny enough at first, then went stale and downhill long before someone mercifully pulled the plug. Enough episodes to run endlessly in syndication, unfortunately.
Drew Carey got "show biz-itis" by maybe Season 5 or 6 anyways -- lost weight, changed his hair and look, got Lasik, etc. I think he really lost touch with his Cleveland past. I should mention, I grew up in Cleveland and therefore, know what parts of the show are authentic and which are fake-y. Let's just say, Drew Carey has been a Hollywood guy a lot longer than he ever was a Clevelander -- he has a few memories, I guess, but they are out of touch.
1990s Cleveland -- I worked downtown then -- was NOT mired in the 1950s and full of Polish bars. (It has some, but less than you would think based on the show.) The Halle Co. department store ("Winfred-Louder" in the show) went out of business in the very early 80s. By 2004, Cleveland had lost EVERY downtown department store, just like most cities. Therefore, Drew's "job" makes little sense.
The real Drew Carey lived in Old Brooklyn, on Cleveland's west side.....so it is very odd they choose to represent his house with one on the EAST side in Cleveland Heights, an extremely different milieu (younger, more liberal, a lot of college students, etc.). Having seen both homes, the one pictured looks NOTHING like the real house the real Carey lived in (and bought with his first series' paycheck apparently and remodeled!). In fact, in an odd twist of fate....I worked with the woman who owned the house shown on the series. I was in it many times, even the day her husband painted the window frames hot pink (and I told him "you are ruining the value of the house!" -- making me about the wrongest person in human history). In fact, the house was CHOSEN for the crazy hot pink trim! and the money from the rights to the images of the house paid off the mortgage for my coworker (several times over).
Interestingly....the real interior of the house is nothing like the show's set, not even close. It has a big front porch you can see clearly in the photos, which you have to walk through to get in the front door, but you never see the characters doing so. ALSO, when they show the back of the house....it is beige and not navy blue with hot pink trim as the front is (???). So is the garage. The real house has a backyard slanted so severely, you can hardly stand on it, let alone put a pool table. Since the real house has nothing to do with the set....it just comes back to the crazy hot pink trim. That paint paid for itself 10,000 times over!
Anyhow: the show stopped being fresh and got really repetitive, and by the end, dropped many of the classic characters. Drew, Oswald, Lewis go from about age 35 to 45 and nothing ever changes. I also felt the show was negative and downbeat about Cleveland at the very time it was having a sort of Renaissance downtown and in the Flats. The sad fact is that a lot of people all over the US and abroad have formed their OPINION of Cleveland from THIS TV show and little else (how many other TV shows have ever been set here?), and probably actually believed a lot of it was factual and not fantasy.
In conclusion: funny enough at first, then went stale and downhill long before someone mercifully pulled the plug. Enough episodes to run endlessly in syndication, unfortunately.