Watched the uncut version last night (thanks, APPLEI) and still came to the same conclusion- it is not one of my favorite episodes.

The fantasy sequences aren't particularly funny. Though I like the idea of the episode, I thought that maybe each dream was slight and lacked humor due to the fact they had to make 7 of them.

And why would Venus envision himself as a stand-up comic?

my favorite scene in daydreams is the scene that was cut!
bailey daydreaming that she was president and married to johnny fever.
i agree that the scene where venus is dreaming that he is a standup comic does'nt make sense.
but venus is a complicated character!
a former member of a band(a commerical break)
an army deserter(who is gordon sims?)
a minor league baseball player(sparky)
a school teacher(venus and the man)
total class act(venus rising)remember he saved herbs job!

True, they never really got Venus completely straight.
But I love the character, so I'll go with you and just say he is very complex.

Venus Rising is one of my favorite episodes.

i think daydreams would've worked better if it had
been a one hour episode.
more time for each character.

An hour would have worked better, but that would have made Carlson's speech even more long winded!

I think Taxi did a 2 parter where the cabbies told about their fantasies and that worked fairly well.

The Daydreams episode is extremely low-key and gentle -- I think they were trying for something a little different from most such episodes. In style and tone (not to mention the lack of a studio audience) it's a lot like certain episodes of SCTV, which isn't a big surprise considering that the writer of this episode, Peter Torokvei, was from the Toronto Second City. NewsRadio did a very similar episode (with the same title), but I think it worked better because it had a bigger budget, which allowed them to do special effects and stuff like that. This one I think shows the perils of trying to do a fantasy episode on the cheap. Les's dream -- in the uncut version where he talks about the coming postwar Russian threat -- is the best.

Venus's standup comedy dream makes sense if you consider that he's not all that fond of the hip deejay persona and never considered himself very good at teaching. And part of the joke of the dream is that he dreams not of being a Richard Pryor type (which is the stereotype of black standup comedians), instead he dreams of doing the blandest, corniest, least ethnic standup comedy imaginable -- a further entry in the running joke that Venus is the "whitest" black guy in the world.