Carell’s bad review

Published 9:00 pm Sunday, July 23, 2006

Steve Carell, star of NBC’s sitcom “The Office,” got some much-needed healing Sunday night when the TV Critics Association gave him its annual award for Individual Achievement in Comedy. He’s also nominated for an Emmy for his role as Michael Scott in “The Office.”

Carell, pulling out what he said was a review from nearly a decade ago for a sitcom he appeared in called “Over the Top,” said his award from the critics was especially nice, “in light of the following.”

“It’s an excerpt from a review of a little-seen, but little-loved television show called ‘Over the Top,’ which ran from October 1997 to October 1997,” he said, pulling out the sheet of paper and reading from it. I found out later, by reading my Washington Post Company colleague Lisa de Moraes’ blog (http://blog.washingtonpost.com/tvblog/) that this was a real review, written by a critic named Peter Ko for the Web site teevee.org. You find it here: http://www.teevee.org/archive/1997/10/27/index.html

“Steve Carell’s performance as what appeared to be a deaf-mute, European chef, should cause anyone watching with a modicum of taste to start tearing their hair, while screaming, ‘Get it off my TV. Get it off my TV. Take it away. Oh, God, what have they done to the kids?

“I can’t say that Carell is bad, because that would imply that I have some frame of reference to judge it against. I’ve never seen anything like what I saw last Tuesday. I have stood in a freezer full of dead people at the morgue. I have seen a man’s scalp pulled back over his nose. I’ve even seen 35 minutes of Ellen Degeneres’ ‘Mr. Wrong.’ But I can honestly say that until Steve Carell’s turn in the premiere of ‘Over the Top,’ I have never known true horror.”