Retro Television Review: Veronica’s Video 1.1 “Pilot”

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Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Thursdays, I will be reviewing Veronica’s Video, which was produced by UPN in 1998. The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!

I sacrificed my eyesight to review this show.

Episode 1.1 “Pilot”

(Dir by Don Scardino, originally aired on …. well, we’ll get to that.)

Aspiring filmmaker Gary Gluckin (Matt Champagne) needs a day job so he walks into a trashy, nearly deserted video store and tells the owner, Nick (Cobin Bernsen), that he wants to work for him. Nick is an angry man who chain smokes and rolls around in a wheelchair because his wife ran him over while she was leaving him. Nick is also Gary’s father.

Nick is only willing to hire on a Gary probationary basis and he explains that Gary will be competing for a full time job with Chandra (Shishir Kurup), a Sikh who is an expert on Indian films. Gary and Nick make fun of Chandra’s ethnicity, religion, and name. Chandra, meanwhile, enforces a strict policy of only allowing 21 year-olds into the porn section of the video store. He kicks out a 51 year-old. That’s the type of show this was.

Occasionally dropping by the video store is Mary Sue Henderson (Julie Benz) who works for her grandmother and who wears an Alice In Wonderland costume that Gary is constantly looking down. Mary Sue is always bright and cheerful. When she talks to Gary, Gary goes all mush-mouthed because Gary is a loser. Gary also thinks that he may have seen Mary Sue’s picture on the cover of one of the porn videos that is in the store.

Nick eventually tortures Gary by forcing him to stand outside in 116-degree heat. At one point, Greg gets beaten up by someone who is played by Greg Grunberg. Frustrated, Gary announces that he doesn’t need the job and he’ll just move in with his mother. Nick replies that Gary’s mother wants nothing to do with him. Wow, what a fun comedy.

This is, without a doubt, one of the worst shows that I’ve ever watched. This show was so bad that the pilot didn’t even get a pity showing. UPN, which was famous for being the home for terrible and misguided shows, didn’t even want to mess with this thing. Why is this show so bad? The humor is not particularly funny, the laugh track in intrusive, and the video store itself is so dirty and ugly that it’s hard to believe that it has ever had a customer. Corbin Bernsen, being a veteran actor, at least manages to suggest that there’s a heart underneath Nick’s rough exterior. The rest of the cast is just bland.

I should also admit that I watched this on YouTube and the upload was one of the worst that I’ve ever seen. I’m surprised I still have my eyesight after being confronted with this:


And this:


I had 20/60 eyesight when I started this show. I’m worried about what it is now.

Anyway, needless to say, only one episode of Veronica’s Video was produced. And that episode probably should have been left in a landfill somewhere, rather than uploaded to YouTube.