This is one of my favorite episodes of all the ones David and I wrote. It was only shown once, never to air again. It was the final episode (we didn't know it at the time) of BIG WAVE DAVE'S, a series we created for CBS in 1993. You can see the pilot here.
The premise: Three middle aged guys in the throes of a midlife crisis move to Hawaii to run a surf shop. It starred Adam Arkin as Marshall (a disgruntled lawyer fired by his own father's firm), David Morse as Dave (a stockbroker who dreams of being an adventurer), Patrick Breen at Richie (going along because he has no other friends), Jane Kaczmarek as Marshall's wife Karen (Wendy to the Lost Boys), and Kurtwood Smith as expatriot Jack Lord.
Karen is pregnant. Marshall is nervous about being there for the delivery. We were looking for a novel way to get him on board. This is what we came up with.
A couple of notes: The captain was played brilliantly by Brad Sullivan. Andy Ackerman, later of SEINFELD directed. And we shot this entire episode on the stage in front of a studio audience.
So here, for the first time since eight people saw it in September, 1993 is our favorite BIG WAVE DAVE'S episode. Aloha.
I looked up Brad Sullivan on IMDB and found a few things I remembered him from (NYPD Blue, I'll Fly Away) but there was no credit for this episode of Big Wave Dave's. Anyone know how to fix this?
ReplyDeleteWV: licio, Latin "to lick"
Maybe he already did fix it? :)
ReplyDeleteI am planning to write a book (fictional) which involves certain incidents and the people involved from my own life (names changed - sort of) and was wondering if you had any advice when it comes to including such things - in particular the kind of people who like to stir shit if they even think they're mentioned in a book in a negative way.
ReplyDeleteI had a Big Dave marathon and watched both episodes and am now a Big Dave fan. They just don't write them like that anymore!Cheers.
ReplyDeleteAdding a credit to a listing at IMDb is as simple as registering (free) and following the steps, starting with the button at the bottom of the episode's page. Easier than getting Ken to spell "expatriate" right.
ReplyDeleteMake it nine people, I enjoyed Big Wave Dave and was perplexed when it disappeared.
ReplyDeleteI watched this show too - and I liked it. I think Brad Sullivan is very good and recall him from those Dramas mentioned by DaveMB above. He was also great as Nick Nolte's father in The Prince of Tides.
ReplyDeleteVery enjoyable, Ken. Hey, I also watched all of AfterMASH. I like your style, I guess!
I might have said this before, but I was always amazed that they cast Kurtwood Smith on "That 70's Show", since he was primarily known to me for playing crazy evil guys. Even more amazed that he was friggin' hysterical. And sure enough, he's great in this as well.
ReplyDeleteI don't really have anything here. I just want to make sure more people respond to the blog than watched the show in '93.
ReplyDeleteMen acting like boys, with a surrogate mother (or as Ken puts it, "Wendy")to take care of them. I wanted to like it, I really did. After all, hundreds of students are looking for that "lost" TV show about which to write their college thesis, and maybe I could have pointed the way to "Big Wave Dave's" to one or two of them... But, sorry, big yawn here. I think, Ken, that you did much better as a writer when you had a template laid out for you by other writers. That was your talent--at least from this observer. Hey, maybe there's a thesis here after all.
ReplyDelete"Brigadude" - Dude who appears for one day every hundred years, just to insult Ken.
ReplyDeleteWas that an insult? Really? I thought it was a fair comment about a guy who had a great career writing other people's characters, but who, more often than he should, stops to say "Look over here. I did this, too!" about a couple of projects ("Big Wave Dave's", "Volunteers" and the Nancy Travis show) that don't measure up. They all suffer from the same problem: they try too hard. I can see the sweat on the set-ups and the jokes. There was another one too, a script fragment about a family with kids who were obnoxiously intellectual or something. Forgettable. My point is, I don't see this problem with Ken's other work. You can argue that none of the projects mentioned above got a fair shake or were the victims of (fill in the blank with your favorite Hollywood conspiracy), but you can't argue that they were embraced by the public. Which kind of proves my point. See you in a hundred years, jbryant.
ReplyDeleteI love how "The Big Kahuna", RON JACOBS was your 'technical advisor'...
ReplyDeleteAloha
P.S. 'ooteri' means Teri hit the right spot!