Television
A quiet farewell for 'Drew Carey'

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For all the attention given to this week's "Friends" finale, another long-running comedy taped its final episode a few weeks ago — and few people knew of it.

The finale of "The Drew Carey Show" is expected to air on ABC sometime this summer.

That the show still exists at all for its ninth season is mostly due to a bad business deal.

A blue-collar comedy set in Cleveland, the show once was one of ABC's crown jewels. In the 1996-97 season, it averaged 17 million viewers.

Its popularity was fading in 2001, but ABC reached a deal to keep it on the air through 2004. Then the bottom fell out.

It's not clear whether viewers simply tired of the amiable, bespectacled comedian. Or they may simply have tired of trying to find "The Drew Carey Show." The program premiered on Wednesday nights, an evening where it has inhabited four separate time slots. It's also been shown regularly on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Mondays.

ABC didn't even bother putting it on this season. New episodes premiere on June 2, with two first-run episodes airing each week during the summer — the TV equivalent of an afterthought.

Fans will enjoy watching the journey taken by some of the characters during the final season. Carey must decide whether to marry his pregnant girlfriend in the show's finale.

— The Associated Press

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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