There’s little I love more than having the chance to attend the first taping of the season, so naturally, I was quite excited about this Drew Carey Show taping. It was the first taping of Season 8.

I arrived at the studio at about 5:45 for the 7:00 show. I wanted to get there earlier for fear of the line snaking around the entire block, but got distracted by a nice turkey sandwich on the way over. Whoops. As I suspected, the line was quite long by the time I got there, even longer than I expected, in fact. Luckily, I found Michelle already in line, so I didn’t have to wait in the back of the line after all! Thanks, Michelle! After we waited for a while, they shuttled us over to another place where we got to wait some more. Great fun. Finally, we got ushered into the studio where we got seats on the far right side. We could only see a few of the sets from there; we had to watch the rest on the monitors.

They introduced the cast of the show the same way as last time, with all of them running out from behind the white screen. However, I noticed that the cast seemed smaller. This episode did not include Christa Miller (Kate), Craig Ferguson (Mr. Wick), or John Carol Lynch (Steve). However, there were some new characters...but I’ll get to them later.

First, they showed us what I believe was the final episode of Season 7, basically as a background of why Nikki was living with Drew and the changes (or nonexistence) of Winfred Louder. Then they shot the first scene, during which Drew comes home with a girl named Tina. She tells him that she doesn’t usually come over to guys’ houses on a first date. Drew tells her that she is smart in doing so, as many men would just try to load her with alcohol. Then he offers her a seat...and a beer. He plays some music for her, but she turns it off and tells him that she would really just prefer to make out. As they kiss, Nikki comes downstairs and pops up between them, completely destroying the mood, introducing herself as “Nikki, Drew’s medically obese house guest”. She asks Drew if he ate her cheesecake from under the couch, tells Tina of Drew’s failed double marriage, and just generally embarrasses him. Drew attempts to apologize to Tina, but forgets her name. Naturally, she leaves, and Drew gets upset with Nikki. Nikki decides that she will turn her life around. She says that she will finish her cheesecake, and then go upstairs and do some jumping jacks. After she leaves the room, Drew makes a comment about making sure that his house is up to code. They shot this scene twice.

Next they shot a scene with Lewis and Oswald at night out by the porch (a set which neither Michelle nor I had seen previously). It starts with them trying to flip their skateboards, of course unsuccessfully. Drew comes outside, and Lewis and Oswald explain that they have to go skateboarding at night so that the kids don’t make fun of them, since the kids don’t understand that they only hold one another’s hands to steady themselves. They get to talking about Drew’s life, and as a basic sum up, Oswald comes to the conclusion that “Man, your life sucks!” They decide to take him somewhere for a good time. Drew asks, “You mean like miniature golf?” Lewis responds, “Close.” In the next scene, they take him to a strip club. There, he meets a girl named Kelly with whom he attended high school. She tells the sob story of her life and how she ended up at a strip club. Drew takes pity and offers her a room in his house. After all, as Drew puts it, “If I was about to strip, you’d stop me right?” Kelly responds, “In a heartbeat!”

Drew comes home to find Nikki attempting to revamp her life by throwing away all of her junk food, after finding that three jumping jacks per day really wasn’t enough. Drew responds that he is extremely happy for her because he cares for her very much and by the way there will be a stripper living in this house. Nikki is not pleased, especially after she sees Kelly. She says, “We’ll be best friends! We’ll do everything together! I’ll protect you from predators, and you can eat the parasites off my back!” and she runs into the kitchen to resume eating her junk food. As Kelly goes upstairs, she apologizes because she doesn’t think that she will make a very good houseguest since she didn’t have much experience in the world. “After all, I’ve only been a housewife. All I know how to do is cook and have sex!” Lewis says that he has a new idea for a theme restaurant.

In the next scene, Drew talks to Lewis and Oswald in the living room about getting a job. Lewis suggests going back to his old store which was hiring. Drew said that he would have liked to, but Mimi informed him that there were no openings. Oswald asks, “Wait...who told you that?” Then realization sweeps over Drew’s face as he says, “Mimi! What’s the use of having an archenemy if you’re going to believe everything she says??”

So Drew goes back to his old office, which was completely revamped. They kept the office hidden from the audience up until this point, so it was even funnier to see it for the first time. The new store was www.NeverEndingStore.com. It was the stereotypical parody of any dot-com store, with the lax dress code and general laziness and empty headed-ness. Drew has a talk with the owners, Adam and Scott, one of whom was played by Jonathan Mangum from the Wayne Brady Show! I was quite surprised, and quite happy, to see him. Drew tells them that they should watch out because the employees were keeping the coffee cups too close to the keyboard, and if someone were to spill, it would be an electrocution hazard and then they would have to file a bunch of workman comp forms and K-19 forms, etc. Adam and Scott decide that they need to hire Drew because they needed someone like him to worry about the stuff they don’t understand. They tell him that he would be a great store manager. They leave, and then Mimi enters behind him. Before Drew even turns around, he looks up, sniffs the air, and just “senses” her presence. Mimi gets upset that Drew might have gotten the job that she wanted because Steve had lost his job at the prison for falling asleep in the lethal injection table. Mimi says that if she can’t have the job, “could you at least lend me 50 bucks...please.” Drew takes pity on her, gives her the money, and she falls into his arms. Drew responds, “Wow, this is kind of like when the dragon fell for the donkey in Shrek.”

In the next scene, Drew is sitting in the kitchen eating pizza. Oswald and Lewis walk in and ask about the job interview. Drew says that he got the job…and gave it to Mimi. Lewis doesn’t understand why he gave away the job since he needed it, but Drew assures him it’s okay and offers them pizza which they accept. Lewis looks into the livingroom which seems empty. He asks Drew, “What happened to your couch?” to which he responds, “You’re eating it.” Drew checks his answering machine where there is a message from Kate, urgently telling him to call her ASAP. Drew decides that it’s probably not that important and says he will call her when he has some free weekend minutes. The next scene was shown on the monitors (it was already taped). It showed Kate trying on a wedding dress and saying to the saleswoman, “It’s perfect! I’ll take it.”

In the next scene, Drew, Lewis, and Oswald are eating pizza in the couch-less living room. Drew and Oswald are on the floor, while Lewis is relaxing in the chair. Oswald announces that all this time he thought it was Drew that smelled, when really it was just the couch. Lewis states that Drew can’t just let people keep walking all over him. Drew asks if he could sit in the chair, and Lewis says sure…after he finishes his point. He points out the fates of other men who let people walk all over them: “Abraham Lincoln: shot! Mahatma Gandhi: shot! Andy Griffith: shot!” Oswald says, “Andy Griffith wasn’t shot,” to which Lewis responds, “You know why? Because he’s a monster!” During the second take, he said it was because he was a bastard instead, but the censors didn’t like that one as much. Kelly enters and says that she has been having trouble sleeping, what with the noises of the house...you know, the house settling...floorboards creaking from Nikki pacing back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, moaning and crying. Nikki walks in and is very upset, and apologizes sarcastically for her tree trunk legs. Drew says that Kelly can sleep in his bed, and he would move downstairs. Nikki warns Kelly not to touch the cans of frosting in the linnen closet, as they were hers, and she knew exactly how many were in there. Oswald warns Drew about becoming another Lincoln or Gandhi, which Drew shouts isn’t true. Drew gets up and annoucnes with determination that he will get a job at NeverEndingStore.com. He marches out of the house with new determination. After the door closes, Lewis commentss that he sure has a lot of enthusiasm for such a crappy little job.

In the next scene, Mimi is working at neverendingstore.com. She brings Trailor (not Taylor, but Trailor), some red vines and dry cleaning. Mimi tells her she is tired of doing chores for her, and Trailor explains that she was the talent and Mimi was the support staff, so Mimi’s job was to keep her happy. Mimi then informs Trailor that the red vines she was eating had been up her nose. [Note: This scene was taped on this day for this episode, but it appeared in another episode instead]

Drwe goes to Neverendingstore.com to find Adam and Scott competing on one of those Dance Dance Revolution machines. Drew explains that he had worked at Winfred Louder for 20 years and got screwed, but came back for more. They decide that he will be easier to control than Mimi, so they hire him as their internal expiditing analyst, since he claimed that he knew a lot about computer technology.

In the next scene, Drew, Oswald, and Lewis are sitting at the Warsaw talking about his new job. He admits that he has no idea what his job entailed. Oswald suggested that he go up to his boss and say, “I know what I do, but I bet you $5 that you don’t know what I do.” Then Drew manages to get Kellie hired as a waitress.

The final scene was pretaped. Kate entered through the front door of Drew's house and told Drew she'd been trying to get a hold of him. She told him that she was getting married the next day. The scene froze, and it said to be continued on the bottom of the screen. Then it started again. Kate asked Drew if it was Thursday, and he said yes. So she said, “Oh, no sorry, I’m getting married the day after tomorrow.” Then it froze again with “to be continued” on the bottom of the screen. That was probably my favourite part of the episode.