A Minute With Stan Hooper: Cast Photo - Sitcoms Online Photo Galleries

A Minute with Stan Hooper aired from October until December 2003 on Fox.

Stan ( Norm MacDonald) had spent the last ten years closing episodes of the TV news magazine series Newsline with his " A Minute with Stan Hooper," homey stories of real people living normal lives away from the hustle and bustle of the big city. This despite living most of his life in Manhattan. Now he decided he wanted to live the life he had been talking about so he and his wife Molly ( Penelope Ann Miller), moved to Waterford Falls, Wisconsin, a small town they had driven through on their honeymoon 15 years earlier, to live the rural life and tape his segments from there.

Things in Waterford Falls were not as idyllic and old-fashioned as they looked from Manhattan. The house they rented for $500 a month came with Jamison ( Brian Howe), a stuffy butler who demanded to do all the chores, and Pete and Lou ( Daniel Roebuck, Garret Dillahunt), who owned the local diner , were a couple. Stan hired enthusiastic young Ryan ( Eric Lively) as his cameraman, and when Ryan's cheese-king dad , Fred ( Fred Willard) became upset that his son was dating waitress Chelsea ( Reagan Dale Neis), Ryan " temporarily" moved in with the Hoopers. Stan quickly learned that small towns have their unique ways of doing things-and he and Molly tried to adjust.

A Review from Variety

A Minute with Stan Hooper
(Series -- Fox, Wed. Oct. 29, 8:30 p.m.)
By BRIAN LOWRY

Norm Macdonald and Penelope Ann Miller play Stan and Molly Hooper, who have relocated themselves and Stan's TV segment to Waterford Falls, Wisc., in 'A Minute With Stan Hooper' on Fox.

Taped in Los Angeles by Bungalow 78 Entertainment in association with Paramount Network Television. Executive producers, Barry Kemp, Norm Macdonald, Lori Jo Hoekstra; producer, Jessie Ward; director, Kemp; writers, Kemp, Macdonald.

Stan Hooper - Norm Macdonald
Molly Hooper - Penelope Ann Miller
Fred Hawkins - Fred Willard
Gary Jamison - Brian Howe
Chelsea - Reagan Dale Neis
Ryan Hawkins - Eric Lively
Lou Petersen - Garret Dillahunt
Pete Petersen - Daniel Roebuck

Athough many fondly remember his stint anchoring "Saturday Night Live's" "Weekend Update," a few minutes of Norm Macdonald generally go a long way, as demonstrated by his eponymous ABC series. Yet that's only one problem with his new Fox comedy, a stale twist on "Green Acres" that turns small-town expectations on their head without shaking many laughs loose in the process.

Notably lacking in "Fox attitude" and thematically similar to ABC's "Married to the Kellys," "Stan Hooper" is about as mundane as a sitcom gets. Both shows, in fact, begin with a somewhat dated premise, in which the protagonists assume the world outside of Manhattan only recently learned to make fire.

Despite co-creating the show with "Coach's" Barry Kemp, Macdonald is mostly a bystander and straight-man character here. In essence, he's playing a cross between Charles Kuralt and ABC News' Robert Krulwich, a reporter who seeks out quirky stories for a popular TV news program. Determined to experience small-town life, Stan and his wife Molly (Penelope Ann Miller) return to Waterford Falls, which they passed through on their honeymoon years before.

Still, if Stan has his heart set on a place where folks drink a "cup o' Joe" instead of cappuccino, he's quickly disabused of the notion. Like many a TV town before it, this cheese-obsessed Wisconsin burg is full of quirky characters, from an unwanted butler who comes with the house (Brian Howe) to the local cheese king (Fred Willard, on autopilot) to the chipper duo (Daniel Roebuck and Garret Dillahunt) who run the local diner.

It doesn't help that Macdonald's limited range (he's one of those standups who doesn't translate well to the sitcom form) compels him to walk through the premiere with a perpetually baffled look recalling Bill Murray in "Caddyshack" -- nor that Miller doesn't register much as his wife. Yes, we're seeing this strange little world through their jaundiced eyes, but do they have to be such boring snobs?

The supporting players fare somewhat better. Roebuck delivers the one truly funny moment, and Willard's cameo is a kick, though the part is so reminiscent of similar roles -- including his recurring gig on "Everybody Loves Raymond" -- as to limit its impact.

Whatever its shortcomings, "Stan Hooper" inherits promising real estate between "That '70s Show" and "The OC," with only ABC's "It's All Relative" vying for the comedy crowd. Auguring in its favor, too, is the better-than-expected performance of ABC's new comedies, suggesting the word "undemanding" is not currently a pejorative in the sitcom lexicon.

Nevertheless, faced with a half-hour to kill before "The West Wing" and "The Bachelor," more discriminating viewers might want to read the kids a story or treat themselves to a cup o' Joe and a big slab of cheese.

A Review from The New York Times

TELEVISION REVIEW; Heartburn in the Heartland: Cheese, Anyone?

By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN
Published: October 29, 2003

In 1997 it was rumored that Norm Macdonald was removed as anchor of the fake-news segment on ''Saturday Night Live'' because he regularly satirized O. J. Simpson, a friend of one of the show's producers. Mr. Macdonald had some swagger then, jerky, my-way power, the kind that says to being sidelined, especially being sidelined for sending up O. J.: fine.

Tonight on his new sitcom, ''A Minute With Stan Hooper,'' Mr. Macdonald appears to have undergone therapy or worse. His arrogance has deserted him, and he plays a well-behaved straight man whose dimples apparently are genuine -- not a harbinger of subterfuge, as they used to be. His character, Stan Hooper, is an Andy Rooney-type, a sage in a bow tie whose job is to supply 60 seconds of common-man jabber at the end of a news magazine show, here called ''Newsline.''

In tonight's pilot Stan and his wife, Molly (Penelope Ann Miller, whose Broadway glow is too bright here), show up in Waterford Falls, Wis., where they intend to move, though they have no house. They find a fully furnished mansion, complete with a butler, for $500 a month. There they play host to some small-town irregulars, who delight the Hoopers with their hilarious cappuccino and their hilarious Cheddar cheese.

The rights to John Cougar Mellencamp's insistent ''Small Town'' have been secured for the occasion; the show doesn't let anyone forget it. The theme song flares up at regular intervals, asking -- through Mr. Mellencamp's earnest heartland plea -- that the exhilarating smallness of small towns be taken seriously. Satire must lurk somewhere on this show among the bottle-blond waitress, the back-slapping big cheese of the local industry and the kid with dreams of getting out. But so are, if not Sherwood Anderson portraits, at least townie types whose lives seem dangerously close to poignant.

Mr. Macdonald, who ought to be counted on to call a bluff as plain as this one, takes it all straight. As the half-hour wears on, he may come to seem to fans like so many midcareer comics, another funny friend who refuses to do a simple favor: he won't call it as he sees it anymore. Instead, with an arm around his cheery redheaded wife in their russet-colored home, he contrives to improve the lives of the folk around him.

Though he's quiet and even docile during all of the rubes' broad monologues, he stands around looking especially helpless during Fred Willard's typically right-on aria as the big cheese. (When will Mr. Willard find a great role he can retire on?) Somehow Mr. Macdonald, of all people, ended up in the hassled dad persona, even though Stan and Molly have no children. Fittingly, he has that dad's complaint: ''I came here to live a simple life.''

The only hope for the season is the possibility that Mr. Macdonald still keeps a high card somewhere, and that he's just waiting to play it once suspicious sitcom audiences decide they can sympathize with him, as they so readily do with Jerry and Raymond. If the old Norm is out there somewhere, do it for comedy. Spring the unsympathetic you on your producers, on your audience and on those good common people in your new hometown.

A MINUTE WITH STAN HOOPER
Fox, tonight, at 8:30, Eastern and Pacific times; 7:30, Central time

Created by Barry Kemp and Norm Macdonald; Jessie Ward, producer. Produced by Paramount Television.

WITH: Norm Macdonald (Stan), Penelope Ann Miller (Molly), Fred Willard (Fred), Eric Lively (Ryan), Reagan Dale Neis (Chelsea), Brian Howe (Gary), Garret Dillahunt (Lou) and Daniel Roebuck (Pete).

A Review from Metro Weekly

One Minute Too Much
A Minute with Stan Hooper on Fox

by Dan Odenwald
Published on October 23, 2003

As a TV critic, you know you're in trouble when the running joke in a sitcom pilot revolves around cheese. When did cheese become funny? And is a giant cheese sculpture of Norm Macdonald's head laugh-out-loud hilarious?

The creators of Fox's new sitcom A Minute With Stan Hooper apparently think so. For viewers, Stan Hooper's minute -- 22 of them actually -- is best left doing something else. Like scrubbing your toilet.

The show focuses on a big-city newscaster (played by Saturday Night Live veteran Macdonald), who's created the most popular minute on TV as an Andy Rooney-styled gadfly on "Newsline." In his wholesome, 60-second vignettes, Hooper shares the stories of everyday people living their ordinary lives.

After years of reporting on places where folks enjoy the simple pleasures, Hooper decides to chuck his Manhattan digs and head to a town where no one's ever heard of cappuccino.

So he's off to Waterford Falls, Wisconsin, a sleepy town he and his wife drove through on their honeymoon 15 years ago. In Waterford Falls, the cheese capital of the world (cue the laugh track), Stan hopes to find the simplicity of everyday life in the heartland.

Of course, that's the last thing Stan and Molly (Penelope Ann Miller) discover. Instead, they encounter a cast of misfits -- a slightly deranged cheese mogul, his goofy son, the bubbly blonde girlfriend and the gay couple who own the local diner. Fox Entertainment Publicity would love for me to describe these "lovable lunkheads" as "whacky and zany." They're actually boring and clichéd. And definitely not funny.

Here's the part of the review where I'd insert some funny dialogue that made me giggle enough to pause the VHS and write down what was said. But that didn't happen. In fact, I found myself watching the counter on my VCR, willing the magic numerals 22:00:00 to appear. Then I'd be finished and could switch back to Nightline.

I think I get the idea behind Stan Hooper. The clash of urban vs. rural. The obvious futility of wishing for times gone by. The modern sensibility foisted upon small-town America. To be sure, those can be the staples of a hit comedy. But Stan Hooper fails to deliver in a major way. The characters, rather than quirky and endearing, are annoying and shallow. When Stan and Molly rent a house (deserted by the town rich guy, who's serving 5 to 10 in the state pen), they inherit his humorless, weird butler, Gary, who reminds me of those similarly humorless and weird Daryl brothers from Newhart. Not surprisingly, Stan Hooper springs from the imagination of Newhart creator Barry Kemp.

The enormously talented and often wonderful Fred Willard plays the cheese mogul, but the script is so ill-inspired and lifeless that he's forced into playing a caricature of himself.

Eric Lively, who plays the mogul's goofball son, and Reagan Dale Neis, who plays his bimbo girlfriend, give overacting a bad name, their hyped-up performances straight out of the "There's No Such Thing as Too Much" acting school.

The one moment of levity in Stan Hooper comes at the very end of the pilot (Note to Fox execs: People have remote controls and use them). In a live segment for "Newsline," Stan interviews Pete and Lou, the fellows who own the diner. Except Stan doesn't know they're gay -- he thinks they're brothers -- and, well, I won't spoil the fun for you. But it's mildly amusing. Or maybe it wasn't, and I just needed to laugh at something, and by then the writers had mercifully run out of cheese jokes.

A Review from entertainyourbrain.com

"A Minute with Stan Hooper" Review

By Shawn McKenzie 12/07/2003

�Newhart� was one of my favorite sitcoms of the �80s. Even today, when I catch a rerun of it, the show makes me chuckle. I suppose in the right circumstances, it is okay to rip-off the basic formula of a hit show. FOX�s �A Minute with Stan Hooper� does that from �Newhart,� and it mostly works.

Stan Hooper (Norm Macdonald) is an Andy Rooney/Charles Kuralt-like commentator on �Newsline,� America�s highest rated newsmagazine. For ten years, he has been doing a segment called �A Minute with Stan Hooper� which closes each episode, and in the segment, he tells real stories of real people that make up the fabric of America. Stan has never thought the segment was honest enough, since he just does it from a folksy-looking set in a studio in New York City. He decides to move to a place that more accurately resembles what he talks about in the segment. Stan and his wife Molly (Penelope Ann Miller) pack up and move to Waterford Falls, Wisconsin, a small town they passed through on their honeymoon fifteen years ago, and it represents the subjects of his �Minute� reports. Little do they know how weird the town actually is when it�s looked at more closely. The house that Stan and Molly rent is only $500 a month, but it comes with a sarcastic butler named Gary (Brian Howe.) Their realtor, Pete Peterson (Daniel Roebuck), owns the local diner with his husband, Lou Peterson (Garret Dillahunt), a man he married in Hawaii. Not long after they move in do they have to deal with Ryan Hawkins (Eric Lively), the son of the local cheese mogul, Fred Hawkins (Fred Willard), moving in with them because Fred objects to Ryan having ambitions of being a filmmaker (Stan had given Ryan the job as his cameraman on his �Minute� segment.) Ryan is dating a waitress named Chelsea (Reagan Dale Neis), who works a the Petersons� diner. Stan begins to wonder why he ever left the big city.

In the second episode (the first episode is all just set-up for the show), Stan finds out that the town�s mayor, Bud Griffin (Max Wright), has run undefeated for five terms in a row. He wants to give the town a choice, so he runs against Bud in the latest election. He also wants a bandstand for the town, where there will maybe be a band someday. Molly wants Stan to win, because the current law on the books is that the women of the town are not allowed to vote. He has a bunch of people support him, but since they were all set in their ways, Stan receives only two votes. It is ironic that Fred is the second vote (besides Stan�s own vote), because Bud has been in his pocket for years.

In the third episode, Stan is looking for a boy�s night out. He agrees to play a fun game of billiards for �nickels and dimes� with Pete and Lou. He thinks he is bad at the game, but they are so much worse. He wins two dimes and a nickel, which turns out actually to be $2,500. He tries to let them win it back, but they keep losing it and owing him more. They end up owing Stan $10,000, and they pay him with money that had been left on their doorstep (Stan had left it there.) Lou had put up flyers for the money, and a drifter had claimed it. Stan agrees to take the money to the drifter, and trades the money that the guys still owed him for free meals in the diner.

In the fourth episode, Stan and Molly have their first Thanksgiving in Waterford Falls. Stan is excited to go hunting for a turkey with Fred, Ryan, Pete, Lou, and Gary. He is looking forward to a nice Thanksgiving dinner cooked by the Petersons, because Molly is a horrible cook who experiments too much. Stan assigns Chelsea to keep Molly from cooking the side dishes while they are hunting, which she does by locking her in a cupboard, and then getting her drunk. Once the guys are out in the field, Stan sees a turkey, but he wimps out when it comes to shooting it. He accidentally stuns it with a rock, and they attempt to save it, but Fred shoots it once Stan releases it. The turkey ends up okay though, by being on dialysis while everyone eats dinner.

There is a very good reason why this show is so similar to �Newhart.� Barry Kemp, the man who created that New England-based sitcom also co-created this one with McDonald. I have a few questions about it though. Why are Pete and Lou a married gay couple, yet they don�t act like one? Why haven�t we seen Stan do a �Minute� segment since the first episode? Finally�Norm McDonald as Bob Newhart? I could see McDonald playing himself encountering the absurdity of this town, but he is trying to play a Newhart-like character here. It doesn�t come across as believable all the time.

Most of the supporting cast is great. Roebuck and Dillahunt are funny together, despite my not believing that they are a couple. This isn�t Willard�s funniest role ever, but it�s not bad here. Neis was on one of my favorite WB sitcoms, �Maybe It�s Me,� and she is good on this show, though she�s horribly underused. Miller doesn�t exactly channel the late Mary Frann, but McDonald isn�t exactly Newhart, so I suppose it fits. I�m glad they didn�t make Howe a Tom Poston-like lovable goofball, because this show has to differ in some ways.

I read another reviewer of �A Minute with Stan Hooper� who thought that this show wasn�t edgy enough for FOX. I somewhat agree with that, but I�m just glad it is funny. FOX can�t have all edgy sitcoms, because, as we�ve seen with �Andy Richter Controls the Universe� and the ratings-challenged �Arrested Development,� edgy equals low ratings. Even though I think McDonald is out of place on this show (and not in the right way), I still like it. If this show lasts for years, will McDonald wake up next to Nikki Cox in the last episode? (You see�Cox was his love interest on his previous ABC sitcom �Norm,� so�oh never mind.)

For another review go to http://www.popmatters.com/tv/reviews/m/minute-with-stan-hooper.shtml

For a Website dedicated to Penelope Ann Miller go to http://www.janeek.com/penelope.htm

For a Website dedicated to Penelope Ann Miler go to http://www.geocities.com/penelopeannmiller2/

For a Website dedicated to Reagan Dale Neis go to http://www.reagandaleneis.net/

For a Website dedicated to Fred Willard go to http://www.fredwillard.com/