Forgotten TV shows I still like. Let’s hit the beach and get our surf on with 1993’s Big Wave Dave’s.

It’s winter in New York City. Lawyer Marshall (Adam Arkin) has just been laid off from his firm. His childhood friends, stockbroker Dave (David Morse) and middle school typing teacher Richie (Patrick Breen) decide now is the time to live out their livelong dream of moving to Hawaii and starting their own surf shop. They think Marshall’s wife Karen (Jane Kaczmarek) will be against it, but she agrees. She sees the change in locale as just what Marshall needs, and she eventually takes charge running the shop. A Hawaiian local, improbably named Jack Lord (Kurtwood Smith) is on hand to mock the New Yorkers for thinking they can survive the surfing lifestyle. Can these hapless buddies hang ten, or will they wipeout?

The show is light and breezy, with the three guys’ big-city neuroses and/or midlife crises butting up against the laid-back Hawaii vibes. Will the buttoned-up Marshall give in and wear a flowery shirt? Will Dave become the surf god he’d always dreamed of? Will Richie break through his nerdiness and find romance with a local girl? These are the situations we find ourselves in. Big Wave Dave’s doesn’t have the deeper character development we saw in The Marshall Chronicles and Double Rush, but the sense of ‘90s sitcom familiarity wins you over.

Big Wave Dave’s had the easy-to-sell premise – Chicagoans are fish out of water in Hawaii – and tons of talent. In addition to the big-name cast listed above, the show was co-produced by Ken Levine, who worked on M.A.S.H., The Simpsons, Frasier, and many others. (Also The Marshall Chronicles, which I covered previously on this blog series.) With all this talent involved, I have no idea why the show lasted only six episodes. Low ratings would seem to be the cause, but I wonder if costs might have something to do with it. The running joke throughout these six episodes is how Marshall and wife keep moving into a new house/apartment, only for some disaster to befall it. This meant a new bedroom set in almost every episode.

Other observations:

• In addition to everything else, Marshall and Karen learn they’re going to have a baby. The pregnancy is barely dealt with in these six episodes. I assume the season one finale would have been the birth, but we’ll never know.

• The show feels a little claustrophobic at times, mostly stuck inside the surf shop. In episodes five and six, things open up some more with visits to a Hawaiian restaurant and then a fishing trip out on the ocean.

• Is it politically incorrect to have three white guys trying and failing to fit in with another culture? I feel Marshall and co. are good people at heart, and their buffoonish is their own undoing. I’m not an expert on these things.

There we have it. Big Wave Dave’s is very much a ‘90s sitcom 101. It’s basic and by the numbers, but still enjoyable for what it is. I don’t know if it would do well on Paramount Plus, except for fans of these actors wanting to see them in more stuff. But sitcom aficionados could do worse.

As of this writing, all six episodes of Big Wave Dave’s are on YouTube.

Next: Ignition!

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Want more? Check out my novel MOM, I’M BULLETPROOF. It’s a comedic/romantic/dramatic superhero epic! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08XPXBK14.