Sometimes, getting fired can be the absolute best thing that can ever happen to you.
Just ask Norm Macdonald, who a year ago was dropped as the anchor of the "Weekend Update" segment on "Saturday Night Live" -- at the specific instructions of NBC's chief programmer. Now he's the star of his own ABC sitcom, "The Norm Show," which debuts Wednesday at 8:30 p.m. on Ch. 4."Well, I mean, I don't want to be maudlin or anything, but my dad, when I was a young boy, told me that life would not always be easy. And he had hard times. And he said that in times of trouble, you should drink a lot of whiskey," Macdonald said. "I hope I can fail upward all the way."
What made Macdonald's firing all the more bizarre is that it came at the insistence of NBC West Coast President Don Ohlmeyer -- and over the objections of "SNL" executive producer Lorne Michaels. It became a bigger controversy when Macdonald appeared on the "Late Show" and David Letterman -- himself no fan of Ohlmeyer -- led him into some bashing of the NBC exec.
And it took a decidedly strange twist when the rather, well, egomaniacal Ohlmeyer even canceled bought-and-paid-for advertising for a movie ("Dirty Work") Macdonald was starring in.
"I never had anything against Don Ohlmeyer because I always felt he owned the cameras and he had the call to make," Macdonald said. "And the people that think I'm not funny are correct. And the people who think I'm funny are correct. It's unfortunate that your boss is one of the people that think you're not funny.
"But I don't care. I mean, they said Charles Rocket wasn't funny and look at him," he added, pointing to a former "Weekend Update" anchor who, well, pretty much disappeared.
And, at this point, Macdonald doesn't have anything bad to say about his former boss. At least not much bad to say about him.
"I know very little about Don Ohlmeyer. I only met the man once," he said. "I think a big problem I had at 'Saturday Night Live' was, because I had never done anything on television and a lot of dudes would hang out there . . . around the hallway -- I thought they were pages, but it turned out they were, like, very powerful show business people. And they wouldn't get me coffee when I asked them."
There have been suggestions that Ohlmeyer fired Macdonald because of the many rather pointed "Weekend Update" jokes made at the expense of O.J. Simpson -- who is a close personal friend of Ohlmeyer's. But Macdonald doesn't think it was "the O.J. thing," although he doesn't exactly buy Ohlmeyer's frequent reminders that Jay Leno still has a job at NBC even though he did plenty of O.J. jokes.
"He'd always bring up, 'Hey, what about the (expletive) dancing Itos,' which wasn't the harshest comment you can make on O.J.," Macdonald said. "But I don't think it was the O.J. thing at all. In all fairness to him, my 'Update' that I did was not an audience-pleasing, warm kind of thing. I did jokes that I knew weren't going to get bigger reactions than I could have gotten."
And he suffered from comparisons Ohlmeyer made with Leno.
"His thinking to me was always, like, 'Hey, Jay goes out there every night and kills with his monologues and they applaud constantly.' " And Macdonald wasn't getting the same sort of reaction from his studio audience, "even though you only have to do it once a week."
"I saw his point. But I wasn't trying to please the audience, you know? So I can understand from a businessman -- why the (expletive) would you want some dude not trying to please the audience."
And it is a bit odd to hear an entertainer say he isn't trying to please the audience. So what, exactly, is Macdonald trying to do?
"I just try to please my buddies and myself," he said. "I don't know how to (please the audience). I know that you can do certain jokes, like I know on 'Update' oftentimes people would offer jokes, the idea of them being, like, Newt Gingrich being a Nazi or something. And I knew that the audience would all applaud that, but I never thought Newt Gingrich was a Nazi. I hate doing jokes when people applaud because they're not laughing, you know what I mean?"
So, what about his new sitcom, in which he plays a former professional hockey player (really!) who got in trouble for tax evasion and is forced to take a job as a social worker to pay off his debt to society? Is he trying to please the audience he needs to attract so that the ratings will be high enough for the show to stay on the air?
"Well, I hope the audience is pleased, but I don't know how to write for an audience," Macdonald said. "I only know how to write what I think is funny."
UNHAPPY ENDING: The perfect ending to Macdonald's show-business fairy tale would be if "The Norm Show" turned out to be both a great show and a big hit.
Well, it's not the former. And the chances of it being the latter are slim indeed. It's awful.
Macdonald is no actor, which doesn't preclude becoming a sitcom star. But the material here is so weak even Olivier couldn't make it look good.
Even Laurie Metcalf, who won a couple of Emmys for her supporting role on "Roseanne," looks bad with writing this bad. (She plays one of Norm's fellow social workers.)
This new show may be from the executive producer of "Drew Carey" (Bruce Helford), but it's not in the same league. It's not even in the same universe.
"The Norm Show" is about as unfunny a half hour as could be imagined. Lame doesn't even begin to describe it. And a high percentage of the alleged jokes involve vulgarity and sexual innuendo. If this lasts for more than a few weeks, it will be a miracle.