"Big Wave Dave's" (1993)

[TMC]

Ken Levine talks about working on this short-lived CBS sitcom:

David Isaacs and I wrote an entire half-hour sitcom episode in 45 minutes. It would have been less but our assistant couldn’t write that fast.

Yes, some background is required.

In 1993, David and I created a little show for CBS called BIG WAVE DAVE’S. You’ve all heard of it. It’s become part of popular culture.

We were given six episodes in the summer. The show premiered to excellent ratings (and should have been picked up), but CBS did give us three back up scripts in addition to the episodes we were producing. We took one and assigned the other two to our other writers. We worked out the stories with the other writers and they went off to write their episodes. Meanwhile, David and I were busy writing the last episode of production. We figured when we got the pick up for more episodes (which we stupidly thought was a slam dunk) we would produce those two scripts first, giving us time to write ours.

Then CBS canceled us. Yes, we got good numbers but they didn’t need us. In the fall they had blockbuster comedies by Bronson Pinchot, and their real ace in the hole — the hilarious Faye Dunaway. Big surprise that neither of them got the numbers we did and neither of them lasted more than 13 weeks. (Dunaway didn't even last on her own show.)

But CBS at least had to pay us for the backup scripts. We put in the payment requests. They said fine but we had to produce actual scripts. No problem for the other writers — they had finished or were in the process of finishing their drafts. But David and I had nothing.