Mr. Bill’s Real Life Adventures (1986)

Mr. Bill’s Real Life Adventures (1986)

Directed by: Jim Drake

Starring: Peter Scolari, Christopher Burton, Shelley Duvall

Wow. This thing… it’s one of those bizarre treasures you never expect to find. Apparently, they thought a live-action standard sitcom based on the Saturday Night Live character made of Play-Doh, Mr. Bill. Yeah…

This tape has the pilot for this (thankfully) failed show, wherein Mr. Bill and his family (which he now has, for some reason) deal with some fake boy scout organization for his son. Afterwards is a “making of” sequence with the producer, Shelley Duvall, as she explains every single boring effect from the entire episode. This is just about as long as the episode itself was.

The whole premise behind the show is confusing and weird. They’re played by real people, but they’re very tiny, but there are other people who are normal size compared to them and others that are significantly bigger, and some of the stuff in their house is bigger than normal, but others are sized correctly for them… And that’s just the basic questions about what’s going on, completely ignoring the fact that they turned a segment from SNL about dismembering a little clay man into a shitty sitcom with a terrible laugh track that’s almost completely different. I guess this is where all of Shelley’s Popeye money went to.