Andy Richter Controls the Universe is a series from the mind of Andy Richter and Victor Fresco. The show made its debut on the Fox television network and was promptly cancelled after the second season, but the for the life of my I don’t really know why.

I have to say that my initial reviews of the show were terrible. The plot was bleh, and the cast seemed like they had guns to their heads to be funny. The slightest move one way or the other would end it all.

But the more that I watch the show the more I realize, “Aw cripes! This is the type of show I would write.” Well, then, I guess I have to give it a good review, don’t I? Yes, yes I do.

The show centers around Richter’s fairly boring office lifestyle as a writer of instruction manuals for one of the largest corporations in the country. It infuses the lingering question “What if?” into every scenario you could think of pertaining to an office. It’s a fairly easy question to answer, but throughout the series you can imagine the writers sitting in a room going “What if we throw a Kangaroo into this episode?” And then everyone knocked off for the afternoon and ate some cake.

Bad professionalism aside, you can write some barebones scripts when you have a cast that melds together so well. I’ll never say that any of these actors will win an Emmy for their performance on the show, although the show was nominated. But they work.

They’re meant to be caricatures of everyday life. It’s like if you take someone from accounting and throw a brightly colored shirt on them, then you’ll get something like the characters on this show: bright and he or she would stand out in a crowd. And since you didn’t change anything with the person’s brain, then they’re still very functional, realistic and you can still relate to them…although why you would want to is beyond my comprehension.

Which brings me to my favorite character in the show: the dead guy. He’s might be the best cast person in the entire show. He’s the crotchety old man who owns the firm the show takes place in. You meet him in the pilot episode, and he make a stunning comeback throughout the series delivering fun one-liners and just being an evil bastard and at points it catches you off guard to throw that nice little funny surprise at you.

Imagine if Dilbert was actually funny and Mike Judge was working with him to produce something equally disturbing, but with less drugs and alcohol. That is some of the hilarity you get in this show. It’s off the wall, yet subtle, quiet yet bland at some points. It stumbles on itself like a pirate with a wooden leg trying to snowboard.

And although this show will never be as good as “Scrubs,” per se; it does have that wonderful use of hyperbole and flash back/forward sequencing that everyone including your mum seems to be using in scripts these days. But for the time it was fairly groundbreaking.

The story plots all seem a bit standard. There is your usual character wants girl, but can’t have girl. And then there’s a whole ‘nother relationship plot thingy that appears from time to time, but since the show was cancelled there is no real conclusion to any of it.

The episode-to-episode situations are all pretty standard as well, but they do put twists on them that keep you interested, something many show just can’t do for me. And they make the best of Andy’s friendship with Conan O’Brien, who makes a very hilarious cameo on the show.

Frankly, I wish this show was not on Fox, for many reasons. The most blatant is that Fox has a bad habit of canceling their better shows (i.e. when they cancelled “Family Guy" only to have to utter the words “our bad” and bring it back several months later). The other is that it’s on broadcast television with all the fun FCC rules and responsibilities hitherto esteemed.

I wish they would bring this show back and put it on something like Showtime or HBO or something where a little more edge could come to the characters, or at least a cuss word or two.  You can see it on the character’s faces sometimes when they’re delivering lines. You can see that “If I could just throw an f-bomb here this scene would be that much funnier.”

And, of course, you’ll all say, “but it doesn’t need foul language to be funny.” And then I would slap you and tell you you’re wrong.

You see, it’s all very childish in the delivery, and that’s what I think makes it so endearing to the many people in the Andy Richter cult who are still cutting themselves because of the show’s cancellation. There are scenes in here that really hit close to home; like how I want to take a wastebasket and put it over my co-worker’s head and beat it with a telephone. And that’s the type of stuff boys think about when trying to find conflict resolution while we were wee little tykes playing in the sandbox. And that’s perfectly fine for this show; it’s what it’s billed as. And if you don’t believe me, watch the special features; they spell it out for you.

Speaking of, special features on the DVD are put together rather well. There is a fairly lengthy interview montage with the entire cast and director, which really let’s you see a lot of what they were thinking in playing the different roles. It reads more like a high school reunion at times, though. At some points I just want to say, “We get it, you guys liked each other during the making of the show. You had a good time. Great for you.” But those little annoyances are few and far between...and the rest are filled with ogling Irene Molloy.

Overall, though, I would say this show was a bit ahead of its time. It might have lived longer in today’s market. And I don’t like giving grades for this type of thing, but since I’m pressed from Collider to do such a thing I would give it a B .  The writing is done well, but sometimes drags too much. The characters serve their purpose well, but sometimes get lost in the shuffle. And the series takes a bit to develop, but really starts to get good, something most viewers rarely have enough patience for.