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Fans of Chris Elliott's short-lived 1990 twit-com "Get a Life" -- the adventures of a 30-year-old paperboy living at home -- will be happy to hear that Rhino has just released 4 of the show's 35 episodes on home video. But two of the series' creators, Elliott and fellow "Late Night with David Letterman" alum Adam Resnick, aren't so pleased: They're speaking out against the project because they think Rhino, which only consulted with co-creator and executive producer David Mirkin, should have picked better episodes, especially since there probably won't be any more volumes coming. "I can't imagine a public outcry for more of these tapes," jokes Resnick, "unless it's 'Get a Life: Too Hot for TV.'"
To hear Resnick tell it, the videos are just the latest in a series of screwings that "Get a Life" has received since it premiered nine years ago. "Fox hated it from the first frame to the last," he tells EW Online. "They didn't get it. They'd say, 'This Chris character is such a loser.' And we'd say, 'That's kind of what the idea is.'" Scripts were occasionally nixed, sometimes because Fox found them too surreal, sometimes for more noncreative reasons, such as when the network forbade a story line in which Chris tries to finagle free cable...because it might offend cable companies. "They said, 'We air a show like that, we're gonna be f---ing channel 67 for the rest of the network's history,'" Resnick says. "They were really shocked that we would even imply that there was something funny about stealing cable, when to them that was the highest felony imaginable."
The show might not have gotten the respect from its owners that it deserves, but some critics remember it fondly. In this week's TV Guide, the "Zoo Animals on Wheels" episode -- a parody of Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals -- was included in the magazine's list of the 50 funniest TV moments of all time. And many tribute pages have popped up on the Web, including the "Get a Life" script collection. "Years later it seems a small, strong handful of people really like the show," says Resnick. "But back then, you really got the sense that everyone's just laughing at you behind your back for this ridiculous, retarded show."
