In 1991, the creative team of Matt Williams, David McFadzean, and Carmen Finestra - who had worked on shows like
Roseanne and
The Cosby Show - moved from Carsey-Werner over to Touchstone Television, and created the sitcom classic
Home Improvement. Five years later, while Tim Allen was still riding high as Tim "The Toolman" Taylor, the same creative team attempted to put together a new series, called "
Buddies," co-starring a comedian by the name of Dave Chappelle.
Those of you who have seen him in
Chappelle's Show (and we know there are a lot of you, since the DVDs have sold so well) may recall his jokes in the early episodes about all his failed TV series.
Buddies was probably among the "most successful" of those, even though only 13 episodes were produced, and ABC only aired 5 of them. Chappelle's character is named, well, "Dave," and Christopher Gartin (from the cast of
M.A.N.T.I.S.) played "John," who is best friends with Dave, and they go into business together in the film industry. John's wife "Lorraine" was played by Paula Cale (co-star of
Providence), and Dave's dad was played by none other than
Shaft himself, Richard Roundtree!
Best Buy, the national retail chain that recognized early on what a hot genre TV-on-DVD would become, has managed to get the rights to sell
Buddies on DVD exclusively through their stores. The information comes to us through one of our readers, "Bob," who tips us off to
an online ad promoting the release, which is scheduled for
May 17th. Here's the text from that ad:
Best Buy Exclusive!
Release date: 5/17/05
Get 10 episodes of Buddies, the 1996 sitcom starring Dave Chappelle, including 8 that never aired!
Dave Carlisle (Chappelle) and John Bailey are best friends and partners in a struggling video production business named Hi-Intensity.
However, there are a few twists in this setup. Dave is black and John is white. They live in the same building, so their lives are totally intertwined. John is a newlywed, struggling to have a successful marriage with Lorraine, while Dave is struggling to remain a successful bachelor (despite the attempts of his girlfriend, Phyllis).
Now, there are some confusing things in that text, so let's mention them here: They say that there will be "10 episodes" on this release, but it's easy to find episode lists (TVTome.com for example) which demonstate that there were 13 episodes produced. Is this a typo in Best Buys' ad? We hope so, because it makes no sense to deliver just 77% of such a short-lived series!
The other confusing thing is that the character of "John" is referred to with the last name of "Bailey," whereas TVTome says the character's last name is "Butler. Heading to the Internet Movie DataBase (IMDB.com) doesn't clear things up: it says the character name is "Chris" (we're sure that's due to some confusion with the actor's name, Christopher Gartin).
Well, we're sure this confusion will be cleared up on May 17th, when Best Buy makes this release available. The cost I see for the DVD is $14.99, and we've got the box art below as well. The wording on the cover proclaims this as "The Show Dave Chappelle Doesn't Want You To See!" Whatever...former Miss America Vanessa L. Williams appears in one episode, and NBA Hall-of-Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar shows up in one of the unaired episodes; just try to keep us away!
