Photography: Courtesy of Dave Coulier and Bob Saget / Personal Publicity Co.
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Dustin Diamond played “Screech” on Good Morning Miss Bliss, Saved by the Bell, Saved by the Bell: The College Years, and Saved by the Bell: The New Class. He now performs terrible standup comedy, and I doubt he’ll stop until NBC mercifully sends the “New Class” to college or the old class to law school.
In an interview with the Centennial College student newspaper, Diamond lamented, “The biggest challenge since Saved by the Bell is everyone seeing me as that character…That’s why when they see my act and I swear or say something dirty, the audience is always like, ‘Whoa! Screech is doing that!’ Well, no, Screech isn’t doing that; he doesn’t exist. It’s Dustin doing it.” Thanks for clearing that up, Screech.
Diamond’s effort to separate himself from his alter ego is as self-delusional as it is futile. Does Diamond actually believe that a single person has ever come to see one of his performances for the jokes? People go because HE’S SCREECH, and the rhythmic chants of “Screech! Screech! Screech! Screech!” that accompany Diamond to the stage should be a dead giveaway. Audiences pay to see his standup because they used to love Saved by the Bell, and Diamond has become the show’s most accessible cast member. If Mario Lopez toured the country performing mime, people would pay to see that too.
Diamond barely mentions Saved by the Bell in his act even though it’s the only topic his audiences really want to hear about. (The one thing you’re guaranteed not to hear at one of Diamond’s shows is, “Saved by the Bell was great and all, but what I really want to hear from Dustin is his latest Rosie O’Donnell joke!”) The only Saved by the Bell-related point Diamond truly addresses is how different he is from Screech. And Diamond’s right; Screech knew to give an audience what it wanted (see episode #16: “Save that Tiger” in which Screech cheers as the Bayside mascot, episode #24: “Miss Bayside” in which Screech performs an amazing magic routine, assisted by Kevin the robot, episode #54: “Rockumentary” in which Screech plays keyboard for the Zack Attack, episode #77: “Slater’s Sister” in which Screech sings countertenor, and episode #85: “School Song” in which Screech writes and performs a ditty called “Home at our School.”)
Yes, I’m open about my Saved by the Bell obsession, but I’m also a bit ashamed of it because, well, the show was so corny that it made Full House look like the Sopran…okay, so maybe it wasn’t cornier than Full House, but it was still damn corny. Reminiscing about Saved by the Bell (I find that this usually happens on the second date), we first remember our love of the show, then the show itself, so even in retrospect we never fully come to terms with the program’s cheesiness.
Seeing Diamond’s standup act, I realized how much I had grown since my Saved by the Bell watching days; I now recognize bad comedy when I see it. One of my favorite (and often guilty) pleasures is calling a spade a spade — and Diamond’s act is a spade. Another favorite guilty pleasure of mine is seeing celebrities lose their fame. Not all of them — just the ones who deserve it. Like Screech. And I’m not alone here; this brand of schadenfreude fuels the increasingly popular “Where are they now?” segment of your favorite entertainment news program.
Hoping to further cash in on these guilty pleasures, I shelled out $42.50 for a ticket to see Bob Saget and Dave Coulier do standup comedy together in Detroit’s historic Masonic Temple. Coulier and Saget don’t usually perform together, so you could say that the show had cultural semi-significance.
Bob Saget hosted America’s Funniest Home Videos, a show that rewarded families for videotaping grown men getting hit in their crotches with various NERF products, and other obviously staged stunts.
Dave Coulier hosted America’s Funniest People, which aired after America’s Funniest Home Videos from 1990 to 1994. His co-host Tawny Kitaen would constantly (and unsuccessfully) try to dissuade him from doing one of his ‘famous’ impersonations. Kitaen referred to Coulier as “The Man of a Thousand Voices,” and I’ve compiled a comprehensive list of said voices:
• 1 through 500 = Bullwinkle • 501 through 1000 = Popeye
Most notably, Saget and Coulier starred together in the aforementioned feel-good sitcom of the decade: Full House. The show was about a single father living in San Francisco with his dead wife’s brother, his best friend, and his three daughters, the youngest of which was played by the infamous Olsen twins, who currently refuse to speak with the entire Full House cast, save Candace Cameron. (That last thing was a total lie, but there’s an unspoken rule in entertainment journalism that whenever you mention the Olsen twins, you’ve got to say something bad about them or you’ll lose your credibility).
Detroit’s Masonic Temple has 4,404 seats, and roughly 175 people showed up to see Saget and Coulier. I wondered, do Saget and Coulier suck that much?
As it turns out: no, they don’t. They’re not just surprisingly funny; they’re unbelievably funny. They didn’t just exceed my expectations; they put on the best standup comedy show I’ve ever seen.
Coulier went first, and when he mounted the stage, looked out at the crowd, and saw just how few people there were, he said, “So everybody’s in Charlevoix [a Michigan getaway] this weekend? Yeah, I was gonna go too…but I had this stupid show.” Before that facetious comment, everybody was feeling a little guilty and a lot uncomfortable about how few people there were in attendance, but Coulier dismantled this collective tension that could have brought down the entire night.
Coulier began with his Michael Jackson bit, and then moved into his Denny’s bit. After mentioning the restaurant’s “little sausages,” somebody from the audience shouted, “There’s a Michael Jackson punch line somewhere in there,” and then the room fell silent. Again breaking the tension, Coulier said, “Everybody, please give a round of applause to my writer.” From that point on, every time one of Coulier’s jokes bombed, he wondered, “Did I miss another Michael Jackson punch line?”
Did Coulier talk about Full house? Hell yes. And so did Saget. In fact, within the first minute of Saget’s act, the former TV star told us that he “f**ked Kimmy Gibbler.” I’m sure he was joking, but he sure didn’t say so. But then again, there weren’t any apologies or explanations in Saget’s act. When one of Saget’s fans said that she grew up on him, he fired back, “And now you’ll go down on me,” and then he moved on with the next dirty joke, never missing a beat. It was like that for an hour, and it was great.
When an audience member yelled something about “uncle Jesse,” Saget asked us all, “Do you guys want to call uncle Jesse?” Of course we wanted to call uncle Jesse (the Full House character portrayed by John Stamos). Saget scrolled through his cell phone directory, mumbling, “‘J’ for Jesse,” and then, sure enough, he called John Stamos and let the audience talk to him. Saget even got Coulier on stage for a mini-reunion.
Coulier and Saget didn’t just mention Full House, they actually talked about it. They didn’t need to point out that in real life, they were very different from their television personas. Unlike Diamond, they understood this to be a ‘show; don’t tell’ situation.
Whereas Diamond refuses to acknowledge that he is Screech, Coulier and Saget don’t deny that they are uncle Joey and Danny Tanner; they transcend it. They understand that when an actor is fortunate enough to star in a long-running sitcom, he has a tacit responsibility to the public. He must acknowledge the character we’ve come to understand him as, and he must appreciate the time and love we’ve given this character over the years.
The more Diamond tries to convince us of how different he is from Screech, the less we want to listen, because we don’t like being condescended to. I’m clearly joking when I say that Dustin Diamond IS Screech, but apparently Diamond thinks the public truly can’t differentiate. Apparently he doesn’t think the public understands that actors pretend to be other people.
Coulier and Saget’s understanding of and appreciation for the winning cards they’ve been dealt in their acting careers allows their standup audiences to move past Full House nostalgia and get on with the comedy. It’s hard to focus on Diamond’s latest Rosie O’Donnell joke with the nerdy elephant in the room.
But Saget didn’t just have a television persona to overcome; he was working with two additional strikes against him: first, as mentioned, the Masonic Temple was practically empty, and second, there were two hecklers who just wouldn’t shut up.
Patrons heckle comedians because they want to be part of the show. Relative to the performer, patrons see themselves in a submissive position: the comedian gets to talk; the patrons don’t, the comedian stands on a stage; the patrons sit at floor level. But instead of just shooting the two hecklers down, Saget incorporated them into his act. In fact, he pretty much devoted the second half of the show to talking with these people. And he made it work. He made everything work. I remember few moments when I wasn’t laughing. Saget had me in the palm of his hand.
In surrendering to Saget’s wit, I was really surrendering to Danny Tanner’s paternal authority, as Michelle, Stephanie, and DJ would at the end of every Full House episode (cue the inspirational music). Where Diamond’s act brings out the cynical old fogie in me, Coulier and Saget’s show brought me back to a childhood state of surrender and amusement. I definitely got my $42.50’s worth. Though, I’d probably pay twice that to see Mario Lopez perform mime.
