Retool-o-Rama

Oh, good. Bosom Buddies season 2 (the last season) in September.

I was worried the first season didn't sell well enough to justify the release of the second, and far superior, of the two seasons, but I guess the Hanks name was enough to carry it across the finish line. The second season will probably have irritating music cuts -- on the first season, I could deal with the replacement of the Billy Joel theme song but not with the cutting of a musical/singing sequence and, with it, my favorite line in the whole season ("I was quite the Bohemian at Vassar"). But I'll take it.

The reason the second season was much better than the first was that they essentially dropped the drag element of the show. They'd use drag only for random gags and scenes, but except for the season premiere, the plots never revolved around that. Also, they made the sensible decision to let all the other recurring characters know that Kip and Henry were the same people as "Buffy" and "Hildegarde," which meant that we no longer had to wonder why these other characters were so damned stupid. The change of workplace setting (from Kip and Henry working in an advertising firm to Kip and Henry producing commercials) worked well too, allowing for more schtick and fewer static office scenes.

And in general, Chris Thompson seemed to get to indulge in more of his slightly deranged humor, like the scene where Rita Wilson (the future Mrs. Hanks) plays a perky Satan worshipper.

So while I make no apologies for liking Bosom Buddies, it's the second season that gives a better idea of why I like it so much. It's odd, because usually this kind of re-tooling (changing the premise, changing the setting) is a sign that the show is starting to suck. But in this case, it actually worked, because the original premise wasn't very interesting: the two guys were just much funnier as themselves than as women.