‘Almost Live!’ gets farewell it’s long deserved

It wasn’t long after I moved up this way from Northern California about three years ago.

I dozed off somewhere in the middle of “Saturday Night Live.”

When I woke up, I saw something that sort of looked like “SNL,” but with a smaller budget and with people I’d never seen before.

And, to be honest, it was a heck of a lot funnier, even if the jokes were a little dated.

I was one of the unfortunate ones who first caught “Almost Live!” only after the local late-night sketch comedy show was in reruns after its 15-year run ended in 1999.

Six years after the show ended, it returns with the hour-long “Almost Live! Reunion Special” at 8 p.m. today on KING-TV.

Because it’s facing stiff competition from the first installment of “Monday Night Football,” and because the show’s core fan base might not be fully alert that early on a Monday evening, we can only hope it will be replayed. But there are no firm plans for a repeat yet.

The mainstays from the final 10 years of the show – John Keister, Pat Cashman, Tracey Conway, Nancy Guppy, Bob Nelson, Bill Stainton, Steve Wilson, Joel McHale and Ed Wyatt – will be back. They’ll have some new material, based on developments such as the WTO riots and the recent gubernatorial race, and a string of favorite clips from episodes past.

“My goal for the show was, I wanted there to be enough new stuff, studio-based stuff that the studio audience felt like they were really watching a show instead of coming to studio and watching old clips,” executive producer Stainton said.

“Plus, this was last chance for all of us to get back together, so I wanted to play. I didn’t want it to be just a clips show.”

Bill Nye the Science Guy will also make an appearance, revisiting liquid nitrogen, the subject of his very first experiment on the show.

“It’s only fitting that the very last thing he does on the show also include liquid nitrogen, but we took it up a notch,” Stainton said. “It’s much bigger and more explosive than the original one.”

“Almost Live!” aired in a half-hour form for most of its run, bumping “SNL” to midnight in the Seattle area.

It was the top-rated show in the area in the 11:30 p.m. time slot and when it was canceled the repeats were moved to 1 a.m., after “SNL,” where it is still No. 1.

The repeats should stay on the air forever, and ought to be required viewing for any Seattle-area transplant.

I didn’t get every local reference, but in the first few weeks of watching, I knew who Dale Chihuly was, found out all about the drivers in Ballard and braced myself for the height of the hairdos I might encounter in Lynnwood.

Everett survived mostly unscathed, with the exception of its association with Boeing, as Stainton recalls.

“It was too far away and it wasn’t really a suburb of Seattle,” said Stainton, who lives in Mukilteo. “Everett was more of its own city. Although we did make fun of Tacoma pretty good. Tacoma was just funnier than Everett.”

Stainton sounds proud of what he and his old pals accomplished for tonight after finally gathering everyone in the same place for a couple of weeks to get it done. Regardless, it brought some closure to an experience that hadn’t had it. Stainton said that when the show’s 15th season ended, there was no sign it wasn’t going to return.

Early in tonight’s show the entire cast is introduced one at a time, Stainton said, prompting a standing ovation from the studio crowd that he said touched him.

“This time, what it felt like during the taping (of the special), it was like a give-and-take with studio audience,” Stainton said. “This is our chance to give the goodbye we never got to give. And when they all stood up, that was them giving the goodbye they never got to give.”

Tonight, the rest of us, newcomers and longtime fans, will get that chance.

Victor Balta’s column runs Mondays and Thursdays on the A&E page. Reach him at 425-339-3455 or vbalta@heraldnet.com.

KING-TV photo

The cast of “Almost Live!” is getting together for a reunion special tonight. The cast includes (top row left) Tracey Conway, Joel McHale, Nancy Guppy, Bob Nelson and Pat Cashman, (bottom row left) Bill Stainton, John Keister and Steve Wilson.