In Living Color DVD Dish
As the theme song goes, "You can do what you wanna do, In Living Color." Now that includes buying the recently released DVD of the Fox sketchcom's first season. Among the highlights are memorable early skits of "Men on Film" and "Homey the Clown." (Don't look for J.Lo, though. She didn't join the Fly Girls and start shaking her bootyliciousness until Season 3.) Jim Carrey fans can also check out his vintage work.
"You can see Jim Carrey was getting ready to be a big star," castmate Tommy Davidson tells TV Guide Online. "In our first sketch together, he does his Jerry Lewis thing with Jerry's Kids and I play the Jheri Curl Guy. It's just really, really cool.
"That's one thing that just pops out at me," he continues, "because you can see two hungry, hungry, hungry comedians just getting ready to take off. Besides the Wayans family, the show was our shot for all of us individually as actors and comedians. All of a sudden, there was a revolutionary alternative to Saturday Night Live."
While several members of Color's cast have achieved A-list careers, some haven't hit as big in Hollywood. Is anyone envious of Carrey's success? "The show was competitive, just like SNL," Davidson concedes, "but Jim's a great guy. It's just like Sting with the Police, Genesis with Phil Collins or the Commodores with Lionel Richie. When someone is that good — and the broader audience picks that person as the one they gravitate towards — I think the healthy response is to be happy for him. My response is to be happy for him. I can't speak for the other individuals."
As for Davidson himself, he's been enjoying a decent career in TV, films and stand-up comedy, but admits "it hasn't been the same since" the end of Color's 1990-94 run. "For me," he says, "this DVD is a really good opportunity for people to see my work again. They see me do stand-up and movies, but they forget my part in the show. The Wayans presence was so strong, and Jim and Jennifer's success has been so amplified, that you may have a tendency to forget the other brothers that were on In Living Color."
