It's Throwback Thursday on Stay Tuned and we've decided to take a look back at a show that premiered 10 years ago at the end of summer/beginning of fall. Out of the vaults we have unearthed the one-season, mostly forgotten sitcom Whoopi, starring who else but Whoopi Goldberg.
Whoopi hit the airwaves in September 2003 on NBC's ratings-challenged Tuesday nights. There was a lot of hype and promotion due to Whoopi Goldberg's star power, even though her movie career had been dwindling for several years. Goldberg was an executive producer on the show so she pretty much ran things on-screen and off, but the lack of chemistry in one of the weirdest cast ensembles didn't help the flat sitcom one bit.
Goldberg played Mavis Rae, a one-hit wonder songstress who used her earnings to purchase a hotel in downtown Manhattan. Mavis was a cigarette smoking, boozy, loudmouth who had no filter when it came to voicing her opinions, especially to her close circle of friends and family. Mavis' brother Courtney was the complete opposite of the hotelier -- conservative, politically correct, and a practical bore. The only thing that made him interesting was his white girlfriend Rita, who spoke jive and portrayed every black stereotype in the books. Rounding out the cast was Nasim and Jadwiga, hotel workers that assisted Mavis and were just about as one-dimensional as the cheap wallpaper on the set.
Most of the sitcom's plots were driven by the tension between Mavis and Rita, which became stale after a couple of episodes. To boost Whoopi's ratings and spark interest, the show began to utilize stunt casting and have special guest stars for several episodes. Patrick Swayze, Diahann Carroll, Celeste Holm, and Rue McClanahan were just a handful of the film and television stars brought on during the run of the show.
The episode we have found in the vault includes special guest star Patrick Swayze. In the episode, Swayze portrays Mavis' former choreographer Tony. Hmmm, a dancer...sound familiar? The show harkened back to Swayze's Dirty Dancing era, as well as the actors' Ghost days when planning this episode. Despite the blatant use of stunt casting, it cannot be denied that Goldberg and Swayze had chemistry on-screen. And their previous work history only increased the comfort level on the half-hour episode.
So relax and rewind to 2003 (Ok, technically 2004 but this show had slim pickings on decent episodes) for this episode of Whoopi.
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