document_title: Wings (1990 TV series)

question_text: who plays alex on the tv show wings

question_tokens: who plays alex on the tv show wings

text: Wings (1990 TV series)

text: Synopsis[edit]

text: This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (December 2016)

text: Two brothers, Joe and Brian Hackett, own a small airline company on Nantucket Island. Their childhood friend, Helen, runs the diner inside the airport. She has always been in love with Joe, the older brother. Helen's dream is to play the cello in an orchestra and attend auditions when not sandwich-making. Roy Biggins runs another, larger airline. Lowell Mather is the airport mechanic, who maintains the planes for both Aeromass and Sandpiper as the airport is very small. They are joined by an Italian immigrant, Antonio, who operates a taxi service. Fay runs the ticket counter. Members of the cast of Cheers would visit occasionally as the setting of the show was close to Boston and existed in the same universe

text: Main characters[edit]

text: Characters[edit]

text:
Actor
Character
Seasons

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

Tim Daly
Joe Hackett
Main

Steven Weber
Brian Hackett
Main

Crystal Bernard
Helen Chappel
Main

Thomas Haden Church
Lowell Mather
Main
Guest

David Schramm
Roy Biggins
Main

Rebecca Schull
Fay Cochran
Main

Tony Shalhoub
Antonio Scarpacci

Guest
Main

Farrah Forke
Alex Lambert

Recurring
Main
Guest

Amy Yasbeck
Casey Chappel

Main

text: Joseph Montgomery Hackett[edit]

text: Played by Tim Daly, Joe is a highly responsible, compulsively neat pilot who owns the one-plane airline Sandpiper Air on Nantucket Island. He dreamed of becoming a pilot as a child, and became the de facto patriarch of the Hackett family after their mother disappeared, causing their father to go insane and be institutionalized.

text: He had initially intended to launch Sandpiper Air with his fiancee Carol behind the ticket counter, but his brother Brian ran off with her prior to the start of the series, causing a falling out between the brothers. In the show, Joe is shown to be a big sports fan, supporting the Boston Red Sox, Boston Bruins, New England Patriots and Boston Celtics. He also grew up playing baseball and football and played on both varsity teams in high school. Joe graduated Boston College and said he pledged a fraternity, but never mentioned which one.

text: Brian Michael Hackett[edit]

text: Played by Steven Weber, Brian is the more carefree of the Hackett brothers. His irresponsibility is often a source of consternation to older brother Joe; he had a "free ride" to Princeton and dropped out, was accepted into the astronaut training program at NASA and was soon expelled because he was too unreliable, saying that he would have become an astronaut if they let him take his dates into the simulator, and has lost other lucrative opportunities due to his chronic irresponsibility.

text: Ironically, when Brian has attempted to act responsibly it has caused problems for Joe. When Brian managed to hold down a job flying charter flights on the Caribbean island of Mustique, this also embolded him to seduce Carol to run off to Mustique with him, which caused a rift between the brothers to the point that Joe cut Brian out of his life.

text: When Carol left Brian for another man and their father Donald Hackett died, Brian returned to Nantucket, and Joe was eventually persuaded not only to allow him to move into his house, but also to give Brian a job at Sandpiper Air (after some posthumous support from the father). Brian is a shameless womanizer for most of the series, but has two significant relationships: the first with helicopter pilot Alex Lambert, and then with Casey Chappel Davenport, Helen's older sister (see below).

text: While Wings was on the air, Weber reprised the role of Brian on an episode of Duckman titled "Role with It".

text: Helen Chappel Hackett[edit]

text: Played by Crystal Bernard, Helen is a petite blonde who speaks with a Texas drawl despite having lived on Nantucket for most of her life. In the series, it is explained that Helen's family moved to the island from Texas when she was ten years old. Though Helen dreams of playing the cello in a large symphony orchestra, she runs the lunch counter in the airport terminal and never really manages to get a music career off the ground until the final episode. Occasionally Helen earns money teaching the cello.

text: A running gag related to her music is that bad luck always seems to follow her when she plays. Examples of this bad luck include: Helen having to join a string quartet of neurotic individuals as that was the only group at the time who would accept her; Helen getting accepted to a state-run symphony, only to learn the state legislature eliminated the funding; the Boston Symphony Orchestra appreciating a cassette of her cello playing, but them losing the label and having no way to contact her; and when she finally gets a chance to play for the BSO, the plane crashes en route.

text: Helen battles a compulsive eating habit that caused her to be obese in her youth. Though successful at losing the weight sometime after Brian eloped with Carol, it is still a specter in her life and a blight on her self-image. She has been a lifelong friend of both Hackett brothers and dreamed of marrying Joe from a young age. Helen married Antonio to prevent him from being deported. Although Antonio won Green Card Lottery and agreed to end the marriage, when Helen tried to marry Joe she realized she could be charged with bigamy due to forgetting to submit the divorce papers. At the season finale of the sixth season, Helen is finally able to marry Joe.

text: The writers originally had a different character in mind, written for Peri Gilpin: Joe's love interest working at the lunch counter was a woman of Greek heritage. However Gilpin was unable to commit to the role, and thus the new character of Helen was created for Bernard. Gilpin, however, did star on one episode of Wings in the third season.

text: Lowell Mather[edit]

text: (Season 1–7) Played by Thomas Haden Church, Lowell is a dim-witted mechanic/handyman who works at the airport.[3] He is a "free agent" of sorts, on the payroll of both Sandpiper and its rival airline Aeromass, as well as anyone else willing to pay him for repairs. He claims that, while he is not an orphan, his brother is. He was married to a woman named Bunny with whom he had several children, but they divorced when Lowell learned that Bunny was sleeping around.

text: After Brian sank the houseboat Lowell lived on, Lowell lived with Joe and Brian for a time, where he revealed a surprising talent for cooking. After about a year, however, his eccentricities became unbearable to the Hacketts, and they kicked him out to find his own place, which coincided with the conclusion of the insurance investigation, allowing the payout to buy himself a house on land.

text: Eventually, Lowell is forced to leave Nantucket and enter the Witness Protection Program after witnessing a mob hit. Although it is hard for him to leave the people he has known all his life, Lowell decides he would rather go into hiding than let a guilty man go free to possibly kill again.

text: Lowell usually wears an orange ballcap, although he is sometimes seen without it at times when it is rude to wear hats indoors. During a later season, Lowell's orange hat goes missing. From then on he wears a red hat in its place. When Lowell leaves Nantucket, he gives the red hat to Joe and Brian to remember him by. The brothers nail the hat to the wall of the hangar in memoriam.[4]

text: Fay Evelyn Schlob Dumbly DeVay Cochran[edit]

text: Played by Rebecca Schull, Fay is Joe's only other employee besides Brian. She is a retired flight attendant who handles the ticket counter, baggage check, and flight announcements for Sandpiper Air. She grew up in Syracuse, NY (next to a chop shop), and lived in Hawaii before moving to Nantucket. She is generally sweet and motherly, though slightly batty. She looks after the younger members of their circle as her own children, although she can be sweetly manipulative.

text: Fay is thrice widowed; all three of her husbands were named George, and she jokes about a curse that if she marries a man named George, he will die prematurely. In one episode she almost marries a man named Lyle, only to learn that "Lyle" is only his middle name and his first name is George.

text: Fay has a streak in which she has touched every First Lady of the United States since Eleanor Roosevelt.

text: Roy Peterman Biggins[edit]

text: Played by David Schramm, Roy is the owner of Aeromass, the only other airline on Nantucket and, with seven planes, a larger business than Sandpiper, although Roy had been unable to break into the lucrative business of charter flights.

text: Generally competitive, arrogant and unpleasant, and morbidly obese, Roy often belittles Joe for having a small-time operation and mocks Joe's business skills. Despite this, Roy feels threatened by Joe's presence as a competitor, and makes numerous attempts to either buy Sandpiper or put it out of business.

text: Roy was married to a woman named Sylvia, played by Concetta Tomei. For several years he claimed that she had died, but it is later revealed that she left him, and is now married to a wealthy plastic surgeon and living in Boston. The couple has one son, R.J. (Roy Junior), who is a homosexual.

text: Roy is dishonest. Examples included forcing a customer who has just ordered a large meal from Helen to board the plane immediately, and then stealing both the meal and the money the customer leaves for Helen. He also established false charities including one for his "late wife" and using the proceeds for fly-fishing trips or to subscribe to the Playboy Channel.

text: Roy has an autographed picture of Richard Nixon in his office, and was once arrested for trying to force his way aboard Air Force One to have a picture taken of himself shaking hands with President George H. W. Bush.

text: Also in his office he has a poster of a woman wearing a thong bikini riding on a unicycle. He comments, "If that was Paris and she was holding a loaf of bread, they'd call it art."

text: While normally conniving and arrogant, Roy does have a sense of fun: since his birthday is February 29, 1948, a leap year, he celebrates it only once every four years as if he were only a quarter of his real age. He drives a purple El Camino, on which he claims he can disconnect the brake lights in order to engage in insurance fraud by being unintentionally rear-ended by people in luxury cars.

text: Antonio V. Scarpacci[edit]

text: (Season 3–8) Played by Tony Shalhoub, Antonio is an Italian immigrant from Apecchio, who owns and operates a taxi service to and from the airport. Antonio is mild-mannered, deferential, and hopelessly romantic; he falls head-over-heels for Helen's older sister Casey when she returns to Nantucket, although his feelings are not reciprocated. Antonio was originally a waiter, and made a guest appearance in the second season in this role before becoming an official cast member in the third season (by which time he had changed professions). Helen married him in order to save him from deportation. The marriage mistakenly lasted for three years (unbeknownst to either one of them) long after Antonio got his green card due to an error on Helen's part. He is a big fan of the Mary Pat Lee Show.

text: Alex Lambert[edit]

text: (Season 4–5) Played by Farrah Forke, Alex is a helicopter pilot who moves to Nantucket to start her own helicopter tour business. She had previously flown U.S. Army Apache helicopters in Desert Storm.[5] It is also discovered that she had posed for Playboy. Though she initially rebuffs the amorous attentions of both Hackett brothers, she eventually falls for Brian's boyish charms. She and Brian live together briefly, but after Brian spends a wild night in New York with Joe and an old friend, Alex throws him out of the apartment and leaves Nantucket for good. She returns a season later to resolve some of the bitterness in their breakup; she and Brian briefly get back together before they both decide it is best to go their separate ways.

text: Cassandra "Casey" (Davenport) Chappel[edit]

text: (Season 6–8) Played by Amy Yasbeck, Casey is Helen's older sister. She returns to Nantucket after being abandoned by her husband, Stuart Davenport (played by John Ritter, who was Yasbeck's real life partner and later husband), but despite having grown up there she has difficulty adjusting her upper crust tastes and sensibilities to a working class life on the small island. Antonio falls madly in love with Casey, but she takes little notice of him.

text: After she and Brian spend the better part of a season sniping at each other, they end up having sex the night before Joe and Helen's wedding. Afterward they find themselves unable to stay away from each other, having a passionate affair; while Joe and Helen are on their honeymoon, Casey's bra lands on the hearth of the lit fireplace and leads to Helen's house burning down. Her relationship with Brian cools after that, but they maintain a friendship. When she first appears in the show, Casey goes by her married name of Davenport, but after she and Stuart divorce at the end of season seven, she reverts to Chappel.

text: Budd Bronski[edit]

text: (Season 7) Played by Brian Haley, Budd is a retired US Marine who is hired to replace Lowell. Budd is Lowell's equal as a skilled mechanic and earnest worker, but also as a quirky character. He is jumpy and insecure, and is haunted by an incident in his past when an aircraft he worked on crashed, causing him to face a court martial. Although the military cleared him of charges, Budd continues to blame himself for the incident until Brian convinces him to let it go. Occasionally Budd astonishes everyone with magic tricks, but otherwise he has difficulty interacting with others. After being introduced early in the seventh season, Budd disappears toward the end of the season and is never mentioned again.

text: Recurring characters[edit]

text: Carlton Blanchard: played by William Hickey, Carlton is an old man with a high-pitched nasal voice whose outwardly meek yet privately demanding behavior causes everyone who meets him to shudder at his coming. He is also known for asking bizarre questions such as "If you were to carpet Florida, how long would it take to vacuum it?" and "If a monkey were to bite you, what kind of drugs do you suppose they'd give you?". He annoys Joe, Brian, Lowell and Antonio when he wins a charity contest sponsored by Sandpiper and demands to be flown to Las Cruces, New Mexico, far beyond the scope of Sandpiper's routes.

text: In another episode, he tricks Helen into throwing him a birthday party and then falls down her stairs in order to force her to take care of him for a week. Though none of the regulars like Carlton, he is especially disliked by Antonio, a situation made worse when Carlton repeatedly calls him "Angelo". Hickey's casting was a nod to the film of the same name, Hickey being born in same year as its debut and the name "Carlton Blanchard" being taken from one of the film's characters.

text: Lewis Blanchard: played by Gilbert Gottfried, he is Carlton's equally irritating nephew. He is very rude and abrasive, and makes only the slightest of attempts to hide his wish for Carlton to die so he can inherit his money. He seems to have crushes on Casey, Helen, and Alex, who are all completely repulsed by his lewd remarks.

text: Donald Hackett: played by Don Murray, Joe and Brian's deceased father took it hard when his wife, and the boys' mother, walked out on the family. He was committed to a mental institution and died just prior to the beginning of the series.

text: He had a good sense of humor, and in the series premiere his will was required to be read to Brian and Joe together; it required them to reunite after their six-year estrangement. He willed them a key which opened up the lockbox to another key, then another, which had Joe and Brian go to Boston then back to Nantucket airport where they ended up finding a suitcase full of spring snakes and a photograph of them as children, encouraging them to always value their kinship.

text: After Brian and Casey burn down Joe's house, Joe is fed up with Brian's string of irresponsible behavior and fires him from Sandpiper and orders him never to speak to him again. The ghost of their father appears and uses reverse psychology to convince Joe to make peace with Brian.

text: Lou: played by Phil Leeds, Lou is a feisty old man who is introduced in Season Seven's "The Lyin' King". In that episode, Joe, in order to assuage his guilt over going to a strip club later, volunteers at the senior citizens' home, where he is assigned to spend time with Lou. After spending a moment complaining about how lousy nursing home life is, Lou manages to guilt trip Joe into taking him to the strip club with him. Though Joe is somewhat tolerant of Lou, Brian is decidedly less so, referring to him derisively as "Yoda" (due to Lou's shrivelled physical appearance). Lou, in return, makes it clear he does not care for Brian either. Lou is also prone to talking about a rift he had in the past with his brother Harry, prompting his catchphrase, "He screwed me blue!" Lou was originally intended as a one-shot appearance, but proved so popular that he was brought back in the show's final season, where we are also introduced to his brother Harry, played by Abe Vigoda.

text: Davis Lynch: played by Mark Harelik, Davis is a businessman Joe flies to Nantucket to invest in the airline. Though he rejects Joe's offer (and ends up investing the money in Roy's airline), he ends up dating Helen, and eventually proposes to her. Helen accepts, but ends up leaving him for Joe. Toward the end of the series, Helen reveals she never broke off the engagement. She had figured he was gone after he was skirted off to Burma in the wake of a coup d'etat to salvage major investments he had in the company. He was then placed under house arrest by the military junta. Upon his release, Davis returns to see Helen, but while she is trying to work up the courage to tell him she has married someone else, Davis announces that he will be unable to marry her, having fallen in love with a woman who worked for the State Department and had risked her life to secure his release.

text: Roy Biggins, Jr. (a.k.a. R.J.): played by Abraham Benrubi, Roy's only son is secretly gay. Roy had trained R.J how to do "guy stuff" such as playing football. The first time he is shown is when he is a high school student taking cello lessons from Helen as an extracurricular activity. R.J. reveals to everyone he is a homosexual. Roy does not take this news well and challenges him to a game of one-on-one basketball on the condition that if R.J. wins he is "allowed" to be gay, but if Roy wins R.J. is not. R.J. wins game after game against Roy, but Roy refuses to give up.

text: R.J. returns much later in the series after being estranged from Roy for a long time. He has since graduated from law school and plans to take the Massachusetts Bar Exam. Roy is proud of R.J and his accomplishments, but only so long as R.J.'s homosexuality isn't discussed. The issue finally comes to a head at Roy's birthday party, when he accuses R. J. of throwing his lifestyle in his face and ruining his party by bringing his boyfriend Luke (Tim Bagley). After R. J. and Luke walk out, Helen talks to Roy, reminding him that while he doesn't have to like it, he does have to accept it—because the alternative is accepting that it may be another six years, or longer, before he sees R.J. again. Roy catches up with R. J. just as he and Luke are boarding a flight and fumbles an apology. R.J. loses patience, and points out that Roy can't even say the word "gay." Desperate to stop R.J. from walking out of his life forever, Roy finally acknowledges it, and says that he wants to understand it. The two men hug.

text: Gail Scott: played by Gretchen German, she is Joe's girlfriend during the first part of Season Three. They begin dating while Helen is in New York. When Joe persuades Helen to move back to Nantucket because she is unhappy in New York, he does not tell her about his relationship with Gail because of his worry that it will prevent Helen from moving back to Nantucket.

text: Helen, convinced that she and Joe will pick up right where they left off, does come back, but soon discovers the truth about Joe and Gail. Believing that Joe intended to hurt her by not disclosing his relationship with Gail, Helen drives her jeep through Joe and Brian's office.

text: Gail is in three episodes, but is mentioned in several others, including phone conversations. She is a journalist who constantly travels. She and Helen become friends briefly, but Gail leaves Joe when she catches Joe and Helen kissing in his kitchen.

text: Sandy Cooper: played by Valerie Mahaffey, Sandy is a friend of Joe's, Brian's, and Helen's from high school. She has an insane, obsessive crush on Joe, but he is unable to convince anyone else of this because she acts completely normal except when she is alone with Joe, who gives her the nickname "Psycho Sandy". She appears on Nantucket occasionally and carefully plans her fantasy life with "Joey Bear" at moments when the two of them are alone. Her fantasies include a re-enacted high school prom in the basement of her old house, the couple's wedding and honeymoon in Helen's living room, and the birth of their first child in Joe's therapist's office. In one episode, Sandy is shown to be dating Brian, but the relationship is never pursued by the show's writers.

text: Kenny McElvey: played by Michael Manasseri, Kenny is an 18-year-old who becomes Sandpiper's backup pilot during a second season story arc where Joe is grounded for hypertension. The comedic focus of the character was his youth and relative inexperience, but he is the most qualified of the small pool of applicants to be Joe's replacement. Kenny leaves Sandpiper after Joe is cleared to fly. One episode shows Kenny also working at a fast food joint to supplement his meager income from Sandpiper.

text: Bunny Mather: played by Laura Innes, Lowell's wife flirts with nearly every man she encounters, and has sex with many of them. At one point she pursues Joe and Brian – her fantasy is to sleep with two co-workers. She once sleeps with Antonio, causing he and Lowell to come to blows. Lowell separates from her early in the series, and divorces her when he learns of her affairs. Despite their issues, Lowell and Bunny sleep together the very night they get divorced.

text: Sylvia: played by Concetta Tomei, Roy's ex-wife divorced him and married a plastic surgeon. Roy initially tells people that she is dead, but after being caught in this lie, he goes to see her, only to find out that she has a new husband and a new life. She returns to the island in season 5 to sleep with Roy in an attempt to get back at her current husband for having an affair. Roy finds out and decides not to go through with it.

text: Mary Pat Lee: played by Caroline Aaron, she is a Boston talk show host who tricks Brian onto her show in season 6 to meet up with his ex-girlfriend Alex. She returns two seasons later as Roy's new girlfriend, though Roy dumps her when she uses their relationship to get Joe and Helen on her show to ambush them about a momentary slump in their sex life. Antonio is one of her biggest fans. Her budding relationship with Roy causes Antonio to mutter, "But.....she's Mary Pat Lee....and he's.....Roy."

text: Edgar Clayton: played by Mitchell Ryan, he is a wealthy industrialist who buys Sandpiper from Joe and Brian to keep it from going under. He installs his son Cord as the new president only to see Cord fail miserably. He also fires his uncle Mike in front of his whole board of directors and has been known to give terminated employees "The Big Ugly". He is part of a three-part story arc, "Wingless", during the show's final season. Though he is identified in the closing credits as Jonathan Clayton, his name in dialogue is said to be Edgar Clayton.

text: Eleanor "Bluto" Biggins: played by Rose Marie, Roy's eccentric mother lives in a nursing home. She is a meddlesome, domineering nag and Roy feels threatened by her. Joe, however, stands up to her and calls her a "Miserable Old Gargoyle". Eleanor is also a heavy drinker and Roy once says she has to be "cut off after six boilermakers." She is frequently mentioned, but is not seen until the final season.

text: Walter: played by Ralph Bruneau, he is an air traffic controller. Though he envisions himself as cool and collected he is generally hyperactive and easily distracted. He acts overly friendly towards both Joe and Brian, both of whom find him highly irritating. In season 4, Walter gets married; though he doesn't appear on-screen anymore after that, he continues to be mentioned frequently. He takes a temporary leave of absence in Season 6 to have eye surgery to correct a double vision problem. In the final episode, he is said to be cheating on his wife.

text: Mark: played by John Hawkes, he is the waiter at the Crab Restaurant. He becomes infatuated with Helen, who later pushes him toward Alex.

text: Locale[edit]

text: The series takes place primarily at the fictional Nantucket airport Tom Nevers Field. Until 1976, the real-life island was the site of the United States Navy's Tom Nevers Naval Facility, later the home of the Nantucket Hunting Association. The Club Car (a real restaurant on Nantucket) is also often featured on the show.[6]

text: The airplane for the show was a 1981 Cessna 402C one of which was C/N 402C0507, N121PB, owned and operated by Express Air, Owned and operated by Mike Josefek and Richard Sevigny. The pilot during the filming was Austin Carey. The aircraft was eventually sold to Cape Air where it is still flying;[7] in the pilot episode (as well as a few other episodes) the airplane fuselage shown in the hangar was C/N 4110069, N121PP (which was destroyed).[8]

text: Cheers tie-ins[edit]

text: This article or section possibly contains synthesis of material which does not verifiably mention or relate to the main topic. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. (October 2014) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

text: Although not a spin-off, Wings takes place in the same universe as Cheers, and by extension, its spin-off Frasier. Several episodes had tie-ins with Cheers; Kelsey Grammer (who was nominated for an Emmy for his guest appearance), Bebe Neuwirth, George Wendt, John Ratzenberger, and Kirstie Alley all appeared on Wings playing their Cheers characters.

text:
Cliff Clavin and Norm Peterson visit Nantucket in the season two episode "The Story of Joe". Their goal is ostensibly to go fishing, but the two never seem to get any farther than the island's drinking establishments.
Frasier and Lilith Crane were the focus of the season three episode, "Planes, Trains, & Visiting Cranes." In the episode, Frasier and a skeptical Lilith come to Nantucket to put on a motivational seminar, but run into opposition from Helen Chappel, a dissatisfied former customer of Frasier's program. In the Cheers episode "License to Hill", which aired the same night as that particular Wings episode, Frasier even mentions that he and Lilith are going to Nantucket, foreshadowing their crossover appearance. (An additional note: Nine years later, at the beginning of the Frasier episode "Bla-Z Boy", Niles plays the Wings theme on the piano.)
Rebecca Howe has a cameo appearance in the season four episode "I Love Brian", whose plot revolves around Brian's attempt to infiltrate a post-concert party in Clint Black's hotel room. As Rebecca is seen being asked to leave by Black's bouncer, she begs Black to come to the bar in Boston where she works so she can prove to the others there that she knows him. Black responds, "Maybe next year," causing Rebecca to exclaim right before she is kicked out of the party, "But none of you know where we're going to be next year!", a reference to how Cheers was in its final season on television.
Roz Doyle's character is named as a tribute to a producer of the television series Wings (having the same creators as Frasier), who died from breast cancer in 1991.[9]

text: Episodes[edit]

text:
Season
Episodes
Originally aired
Nielsen ratings[10]

First aired
Last aired
Rank
Rating

1
6
April 19, 1990 (1990-04-19)
May 24, 1990 (1990-05-24)
N/A
N/A

2
22
September 28, 1990 (1990-09-28)
March 28, 1991 (1991-03-28)
42
12.2[11]

3
22
September 19, 1991 (1991-09-19)
May 7, 1992 (1992-05-07)
18
15.1[12]

4
22
September 24, 1992 (1992-09-24)
May 13, 1993 (1993-05-13)
30
13.0

5
24
September 16, 1993 (1993-09-16)
May 12, 1994 (1994-05-12)
18
14.1[13]

6
26
September 20, 1994 (1994-09-20)
May 23, 1995 (1995-05-23)
30
11.9[14]

7
26
September 19, 1995 (1995-09-19)
May 23, 1996 (1996-05-23)
35
11.0[15]

8
24
September 18, 1996 (1996-09-18)
May 21, 1997 (1997-05-21)
76[16]
7.6[17]

text: Broadcast history[edit]

text: In the United Kingdom, the series aired on Sky One and Paramount Comedy Channel from 1991 to 1997.

text: Reruns of the show aired regularly on the USA Network from September 13, 1993, to June 16, 2000, and then sporadically after that, and again on Nick at Nite from January 2004 to June 2006 along with airings on TV Land from 2001-2004. It can currently be seen on Antenna TV, Hulu Plus, Netflix (DVD only) and Comedy Gold.

text: Awards and nominations[edit]

text:
Year
Award
Category
Recipient
Result

1992
Emmy Award
Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series
Tyne Daly†
Nominated

1992
Emmy Award
Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series
Kelsey Grammer†
Nominated

1992
BMI Film & TV Awards
BMI TV Music Award
Bruce Miller
Won

1994
BMI Film & TV Awards
BMI TV Music Award
Bruce Miller
Won

1995
American Cinema Editors
Best Edited Half-Hour Series for Television
Darryl Bates
Nominated

1996
Emmy Award
Outstanding Makeup for a Series
Tommy Cole, Ken Wensevic
Nominated

1997
GLAAD Media Award
Outstanding TV – Individual Episode

Nominated

2005
TV Land Award
Favorite Airborne Character(s)
Tim Daly, Steven Weber
Won

(Source: IMDb.com)

text: † Nominated for guest performance, prior to the creation of Guest Actress and Guest Actor categories, respectively

text: Home media releases[edit]

text: DVD releases[edit]

text: Paramount Home Entertainment and CBS DVD have released the entire series on DVD in Region 1.

text: On September 6, 2013, it was announced that Mill Creek Entertainment had acquired the rights to the series. They have subsequently re-released the first four seasons.[18][19]

text: On July 3, 2014, it was announced that Mill Creek Entertainment will release a complete series set on DVD on November 11, 2014.[20]

text:
DVD name
No. of
episodes
Release date

The Complete First and Second Seasons
28
May 23, 2006
October 1, 2013 (re-release)

The Complete Third Season
22
October 24, 2006
January 21, 2014 (re-release)

The Complete Fourth Season
22
May 15, 2007
January 21, 2014 (re-release)

The Complete Fifth Season
24
November 6, 2007

The Complete Sixth Season
26
March 25, 2008

The Complete Seventh Season
26
September 9, 2008

The Complete Eighth and Final Season
24
April 14, 2009

The Complete Series
172
November 11, 2014

text: Streaming[edit]

text: The series was made available through streaming services such as Netflix, however some seasons are incomplete.[21]

text: Music, opening sequence and closing credits[edit]

text: The theme was a short version of a Franz Schubert piece, Piano sonata No. 20 in A Major, D. 959, IV. Rondo. Allegretto. Schubert received screen credit as the theme composer in every episode.

text: The opening theme heard during the first two and a half seasons was a fairly straightforward arrangement with piano and strings, accompanied by the plane taking its flight to Nantucket in the opening sequence, which started out with a shot of Brant Point Lighthouse with seagulls heard in the background followed by the plane about to take flight, in which the title card was shown afterward, then showed the cast members (which included Daly being credited as "Timothy Daly" in its first two seasons before his billing was shortened to "Tim Daly" in season 3) as the plane was flying over various places, including birds flying in the air, churches, and finally, into Nantucket, which the plane landed onto the lot of Nantucket Memorial Airport after which the Nantucket Airport control tower was seen with a reflection of the plane landing in the window with the creators of the show seen onscreen. The slow opening theme was dropped in January 1992 as episodes began using a cold open, with simply the title card being seen and the cast members followed by the creators, in the now-customized fashion as the show's logo, during the teaser scene, though it returned for the series finale in 1997. The new opening scene would show a brief shot of cumulus clouds, save for the season 4 finale when the cold open was brusquely interrupted to show the plane caught in a violent thunder and lightning storm in contrast to the clear skies often shown.

text: The closing sequence used in seasons 1-5 was accompanied by the plane flying over Nantucket Sound in a sunrise setting. A jazzed-up version of the theme was heard during the closing credits for the first two seasons, followed by a more up-tempo version with a piano lead from season 3 onward. The closing credits were changed in season 6 with the tag scene accompanied by the closing credits (for NBC's original airings, the generic credits were used when NBC started doing this in the 1994-1995 season as well), though some episodes from seasons 6-8, including the series finale, used the standard closing sequence from seasons 1-5 (but with a slightly different font).


document_title: Furious 7

question_text: who dies in the beginning of fast and furious 7

root

text: Furious 7

text: Plot[edit]

text: After defeating Owen Shaw and his crew and securing amnesty for their past crimes, Dominic "Dom" Toretto, Brian O'Conner and the rest of their team have returned to the United States to live normal lives again. Brian begins to accustom himself to life as a father, while Dom tries to help Letty Ortiz regain her memory. Meanwhile, Owen's older brother, Deckard Shaw, breaks into the secure hospital that the comatose Owen is being held in and swears vengeance against Dom and his team, before breaking into Luke Hobbs' Diplomatic Security Service (DSS) office to extract profiles of Dom's crew. After revealing his identity, Shaw engages Hobbs in a fight, and escapes when he detonates a bomb that severely injures Hobbs. Dom later learns from his sister Mia that she is pregnant again and convinces her to tell Brian. However, a bomb, disguised in a package sent from Tokyo, explodes and destroys the Toretto house just seconds after Han, a member of Dom's team, is killed by Shaw in Tokyo. Dom later visits Hobbs in a hospital, where he learns that Shaw is a rogue special forces assassin seeking to avenge his brother. Dom then travels to Tokyo to claim Han's body, and meets and races Sean Boswell, a friend of Han's who gives him personal items found at Han's crash site.

tag: p

text: Back at Han's funeral in Los Angeles, Dom notices a car observing them, and after a chase, confronts its driver, who is revealed to be Shaw. Both prepare to fight, but Shaw flees when a covert ops team arrives and opens fire, led by Mr. Nobody. Nobody says that he will assist Dom in stopping Shaw if he helps him obtain God's Eye, a computer program that uses digital devices to track down a person, and save its creator, a hacker named Ramsey, from a mercenary named Mose Jakande. Dom, Brian, Letty, Roman Pearce, and Tej Parker then airdrop their cars over the Caucasus Mountains in Azerbaijan, ambush Jakande's convoy, and rescue Ramsey. The team then heads to Abu Dhabi, where a billionaire has acquired the flash drive containing God's Eye, and manages to steal it from the owner. With God's Eye near telecommunications repeaters, the team tracks down Shaw, who is waiting at a remote factory. Dom, Brian, Nobody and his team attempt to capture Shaw, but are ambushed by Jakande and his men and forced to flee while Jakande obtains God's Eye. At his own request, the injured Nobody is left behind to be evacuated by helicopter while Brian and Dom continue without him. To reduce their disadvantage, the crew returns to Los Angeles to fight Shaw, Jakande and his men. Meanwhile, Brian promises Mia that once they deal with Shaw, he will retire and fully dedicate himself to their family.

text: While Jakande pursues Brian and the rest of the team with a stealth helicopter and an aerial drone, Ramsey attempts to hack into God's Eye. Hobbs, seeing the team in trouble, leaves the hospital and destroys the drone with an ambulance. Brian engages Jakande's henchman Kiet and throws him down an elevator shaft, allowing Ramsey to regain control of God's Eye and shut it down. Dom and Shaw engage in a one-on-one brawl on top of a public parking garage, before Jakande intervenes and attacks them both. Shaw is defeated when part of the parking garage collapses beneath him. Dom then launches his vehicle at Jakande's helicopter, tossing Shaw's bag of grenades onto its skids, before injuring himself when his car lands and crashes. Hobbs then shoots the bag of grenades from ground level, destroying the helicopter and killing Jakande. Dom is pulled from the wreckage of his car, believed to be dead. As Letty cradles Dom's body in her arms, she reveals that she has regained her memories, and that she remembers their wedding. Dom regains consciousness soon after, remarking, "It's about time".

text: Shaw is taken into custody by Hobbs and locked away in a secret, high-security prison. At a beach, Brian and Mia play with their son while Dom, Letty, Roman, Tej, and Ramsey observe, acknowledging that Brian is better off retired with his family. Dom silently leaves, Ramsey asks if he's gonna say goodbye. Dom says, "It's never goodbye." He drives away, but Brian catches up with him at a crossroad. As Dom remembers the times that he had with Brian, they bid each other farewell and drive off in separate directions, as the screen fades to "For Paul" written on a white title screen.

text: Cast[edit]

text:
Vin Diesel as Dominic Toretto, a former criminal and professional street racer who has retired and settled down with his wife, Letty.
Paul Walker as Brian O'Conner, a former FBI agent turned criminal and professional street racer who has retired and settled down with his partner, Mia, and their son, Jack. This was Walker's last role in a film before his death in November 2013.

Caleb and Cody Walker, Paul's younger brothers, were used among others as stand-ins to complete his remaining scenes following their brother's death in a single-vehicle crash on November 30, 2013.[6]

Dwayne Johnson as Luke Hobbs, a DSS agent who allied with Dom and his team after their outings in Rio de Janeiro and Europe. Johnson initially said that if Universal Pictures pursued the accelerated development of a seventh film beginning in the summer, he would be unable to participate due to scheduling conflicts with filming on Hercules.[8] However, as production for the film would commence in September, he confirmed his return for the film, as Hercules would complete production in time to enable him to film a significant part.[9]
Michelle Rodriguez as Letty Ortiz, Dom's wife and a professional street racer, who was revealed to have suffered from amnesia after being presumed dead in Fast & Furious.
Tyrese Gibson as Roman Pearce, a former criminal and childhood friend of Brian from Barstow, and a member of Dom's team.
Chris "Ludacris" Bridges as Tej Parker, a mechanic from Miami and a member of Dom's team.
Jordana Brewster as Mia Toretto, Dom's younger sister and a former member of his team who has settled down with her partner, Brian, and their son, Jack.
Djimon Hounsou as Mose Jakande, a Somali mercenary and terrorist who leads a private military company that allies with Shaw and uses the God's Eye to track its creator and use her to track down his enemies.[10]
Tony Jaa as Kiet, a member of Jakande's team who possesses great agility, athleticism and fighting prowess. Thai martial arts actor Jaa was confirmed to have joined the cast in August 2013, making his Hollywood debut.[11][12]
Ronda Rousey as Kara, the Head of Security for an Abu Dhabi billionaire. Rousey's involvement was confirmed in August 2013. Having committed to The Expendables 3 at the same time (along with Russell, who later pulled out, and Statham), Rousey was forced to shoot both films back-to-back in order to allow herself 45 days to focus on training for her UFC championship rematch against Miesha Tate. Her participation in the film was similar to that of Gina Carano making the transition from mixed martial arts fighting to acting, following Carano's involvement in Fast & Furious 6.[13]
Nathalie Emmanuel as Ramsey, a British computer hacktivist and the creator of the God's Eye, who allies with Dom and his team after being saved from Jakande and helps them to regain control of her program.[10]
Kurt Russell as Mr. Nobody, the leader of a covert ops team who agrees to help Dom stop Shaw if he can help him prevent Jakande from obtaining a computer program called the God's Eye.
Jason Statham as Deckard Shaw, a rogue special forces assassin seeking to avenge his comatose younger brother after his hospitalization at the hands of Dom and his team in Spain.
Sung Kang as Han Seoul-Oh, a member in Dominic's crew, appearing in archive footage.
Gal Gadot as Gisele, a member in Dominic's crew, appearing in archive footage.
Lucas Black as Sean Boswell, an American street racer who lives in Tokyo whom Dom meets when he travels to Tokyo to claim the body of Han, a mutual friend of theirs killed by Shaw. In September, it was confirmed that Black had signed on to reprise his role as Boswell for Furious 7 and two more installments.[14][15]
Elsa Pataky as Elena Neves, a DSS agent and former Rio police officer who moved to the United States to become Hobbs' new partner at the DSS.
Noel Gugliemi as Hector, a street race organizer, reprising his role from the first film.
John Brotherton as Sheppard, Mr. Nobody's right-hand man.[10][16][17][18]
Ali Fazal plays Safar, a friend of Ramsey to whom she sent the God's Eye for safekeeping. Fazal described his role as a cameo.[19]
Luke Evans briefly reprises his role from the previous film as Owen Shaw, the comatose younger brother of the film's primary antagonist.[20]
Australian rapper Iggy Azalea makes a cameo appearance as a Race Wars fan and a female racer; she contributed to the soundtrack.[21][22][23] American singer-rapper T-Pain appears as himself as he DJs a party in Abu Dhabi.[24][25] Klement Tinaj cameos as a Race Wars Racer.[26]
Bow Wow and Nathalie Kelley appear in archive footage from The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift as Twinkie and Neela, respectively.
Tego Calderón and Don Omar appear as Leo and Santos, respectively, in archive footage from Fast Five.

tag: ul

text: Production[edit]

text: Development[edit]

text: On October 21, 2011, the Los Angeles Times reported that Universal Studios was considering filming two sequels—Fast Six and Fast Seven—back-to-back with a single storyline running through both films. Both would be written by Chris Morgan and directed by Justin Lin, who had been the franchise's writer and director, respectively, since The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006).[27] On December 20, 2011, following the release of Fast Five, Vin Diesel stated that Fast Six would be split into two parts, with writing for the two films occurring simultaneously. On the decision, Diesel said:[28]

text: We have to pay off this story, we have to service all of these character relationships, and when we started mapping all that out it just went beyond 110 pages ... The studio said, 'You can't fit all that story in one damn movie!'[28]

text: However, in an interview on February 15, 2012, Dwayne Johnson stated that the two intended sequels would no longer be filmed simultaneously because of weather issues in filming locations, and that production on Fast Seven would only begin after the completion of Fast Six.[29]

text: In April 2013, during post-production of the retitled Fast & Furious 6, Lin announced that he would not return to direct a seventh film, as the studio wanted to produce the film on an accelerated schedule for release in summer 2014. This would have required Lin to begin pre-production on the sequel while performing post-production on Fast & Furious 6, which he considered would affect the quality of the final product. Despite the usual two-year gap between the previous installments, Universal chose to pursue a sequel quicker due to having fewer reliable franchises than its competitor studios.[30] However, subsequent interviews with Lin have suggested that the sixth film was always intended to be the final installment under his direction.[31]

text: In April 2013, Australian director James Wan, predominantly known for horror films, was announced as the sequel's director, with Neal H. Moritz and Michael Fottrell returning to produce and Morgan returning to write the script, his fifth in the franchise. On April 16, 2013, Diesel announced that the sequel would be released on July 11, 2014.[32] In May 2013, Diesel said that the sequel would feature Los Angeles, Tokyo, and the Middle East as locations.[33][34]

text: Filming[edit]

text: Principal photography began in early September 2013 in Atlanta, Georgia, with a casting call issued.[35][36] Abu Dhabi was also a filming location;[37] the production crew chose it over Dubai, as they would benefit from the Emirate's 30% rebate scheme.[38] Pikes Peak Highway in Colorado was closed in September to film some driving sequences.[39]

text: On September 16, the production filmed with Paul Walker and the Kimsey twins, playing his son, Jack,[40] in front of an Atlanta elementary school.[41] Han's funeral scene was filmed at Oakland Cemetery,[42] with extras needed for the scene being "hot, hip and trendy cool types of all ethnicities between the ages of 18 and 45".[43] On the evening of September 19, Lucas Black joined the production[44] for his sole scene with Diesel, in an Atlanta parking garage. Separate scenes with Walker also shot in the same location on the same night,[45] including one half of a phone conversation between his character and Jordana Brewster's. The day after, Diesel posted a picture from the night shoot with Black on his Facebook page.[46]

text: On October 24, over a month into the film's production, Johnson tweeted he had started shooting for the film after wrapping up on Hercules.[47] Five days later, Diesel posted the first photo of Johnson on the set, in the hospital scene.[48]

text: On November 30, 2013, while on a break for the Thanksgiving holiday, Walker, who portrayed Brian O'Conner, died in a single-vehicle accident.[49][50] The next day, Universal announced that production would continue after a delay that would allow the filmmakers to rework the film.[51] On December 4, 2013, Universal put production on hold indefinitely.[52] Wan later confirmed that the film had not been cancelled.[53][54][55] On December 22, 2013, Diesel announced on his Facebook page that the film would be released on April 10, 2015.[56] On February 27, 2014, The Hollywood Reporter reported that filming would resume on April 1, and that the cast and crew had headed to Atlanta to prepare for about eight more weeks of shooting.[57] Principal photography ended on July 10, 2014.[4]

text: Stunts[edit]

text: The "air drop" sequence was conceived by stunt coordinator, Spiro Razatos, who also supervised on the franchise's two previous installments; Fast Five and Fast & Furious 6.[61][62] Razatos told Business Insider that he wanted to rely more on real stunts rather than CGI because he wanted the whole sequence to "feel real" and fulfill audience's expectations.[61] The stunt took months of prep-solving problems. Cameras needed to be mounted onto cars in a way that they would not be destroyed when the cars landed, and the crew had to figure out a safe way to get the cars out of the plane. They performed a dry run with a single car falling out of a plane[61] and did this six times.[62] Cars were dropped from a Lockheed C-130 Hercules high above the Arizona desert, but close up shots that show the cars landing on a mountain road were filmed in Colorado.[62] There were two airplanes, flying at a height of 12,000 feet, each dropping two cars apiece.[61] BRS parachutes enabled with GPS were secured to each of the cars before dropping off the C-130 plane. At about 5,000 feet, the parachutes deployed.[62] Over 10 cameras were used for the sequence. In addition to cameras on the ground, there were cameras remotely operated inside the plane and another three mounted outside each car. Additional cameras were on a helicopter, where Razatos was stationed watching monitors. Three skydivers used in the shoot wore helmet cameras to help shoot the sequence from multiple angles. Sky divers would either jump out before cars or after them.[61] While all the cars landed on their drop zones, 70% landed perfectly and 30% didn't.[62] For the close-up scenes which show the actors inside their cars, a giant gimbal with a 360-degree range of movement were attached to each of the cars and was filmed against a green screen to reproduce their tumble through the sky.[63] The last part of the scene, which shows the cars hitting the road was shot separately. To get that right, the team set up a pulley system that had cars six to ten feet above the ground. When they were dropped from the cranes, the stuntmen who were sitting in the driver's seats raced their engines at about 35 to 40 miles per hour and slid to the ground at full speed. Those cranes were then later removed from the film with computers.[62][63] Razatos admits that the air drop sequence was "all real" and that it would be "hard to top".[61][62]

text: The scene featuring Brian jumping off a bus off a cliff was performed by a stuntman and was all done without any computer graphics.[64] The shooting for this particular sequence along with the scene in which Dom and his team are pursuing to rescue Ramsey almost didn't happen due to the absence of tax break in Colorado.[64] The studio originally wanted to shoot the sequence in Georgia which provides tax breaks for film productions, and then they'd add woods in the background later in post production to which Razatos denied saying, "the audience is going to know [it's CGI] and aren't going to feel good about it."[64] Shooting finally took place in Colorado.[64]

text: A total of 340 cars were used in the film,[63] and more than 230 cars were destroyed in the making of the film, including several black Mercedes-Benzes, a Ford Crown Victoria, and a Mitsubishi Montero.[65] The film featured the most expensive car destroyed in the franchise so far: a Lykan HyperSport by W Motors, valued at $3.4 million.[66] The mountain-highway chase scene on Colorado's Monarch Pass proved to be the most damaging sequence with over 40 vehicles being destroyed.[65][67] Only 10 percent of the action sequences in the film were computer-generated, and even then, much of the CGI was employed simply to erase the wires and other contraptions that were used to film real cars and drivers or to add a background.[63] It took more than 3,500 man-days to complete the various stunts of the film.[63] For safety reasons, stunt coordinator, Joel Kramer said that he doesn't let his drivers go above 50 miles per hour.[68]

text: Redevelopment of Walker's character[edit]

text:
"When I first heard the news, I was shell-shocked like everyone, and it took me days to come to terms with it. And then after that, heartbreaks started sinking in and we realized that Paul [Walker] wasn’t going to be around with us anymore moving forward, and it was a really hard one. And finishing the movie was the last thing on my mind at that point. It was more the idea of... picking up the pieces, going back on set, rallying the team, the cast, and the crew, and as the director, having to put on the brave face and champion and push everyone along. The idea of that was very daunting for me, but it became very apparent to all of us that we needed to finish this movie to honour Paul's legacy and to basically honour his memories... it was about making this movie for Paul."

—James Wan, director of Furious 7[69]

tag: div

text: In January 2014, Time reported that Walker's character, Brian O'Conner, would be retired instead of killed, and that new scenes would be developed in order to allow the franchise to continue without him.[70] To recreate Walker's likeness, the filmmakers hired Peter Jackson's Weta Digital visual effects house (which had previously produced the imagery of Gollum in The Lord of the Rings franchise and Caesar in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes).[71] Initially, what Weta could do was severely constrained by the quality of the reference materials available for Walker's physical appearance.[71] In April 2014, it was reported that Walker's brothers Caleb and Cody had been hired as stand-ins.[72] Their cooperation, along with their strong resemblance to their late brother, enabled the filmmakers to use Walker's likeness throughout the finished film.[71] That is, Weta Digital no longer needed to recreate Walker's entire body from scratch, and could focus on accurately modeling his face.[71] The final film showed Walker's face superimposed over the bodies of his brothers or actor John Brotherton in 350 visual effects shots.[71] 260 used a computer-generated face, while 90 repurposed actual footage of Walker's face borrowed from outtakes or older footage.[71]

text: Music[edit]

text: The musical score was composed by Brian Tyler, who scored the third, fourth, and fifth installments of the series.[73] "There's an emotional component to Fast & Furious 7 that is unique", said Tyler about his experience scoring. "I think people are really going to be amazed by it."[74] A soundtrack album to the film was released by Atlantic Records on March 17, 2015.[75]

text: Songs featured in the film include:

text:
"Go Hard or Go Home" (Wiz Khalifa & Iggy Azalea)[76]
"Ride Out" (Kid Ink, Tyga, Wale, YG & Rich Homie Quan)[77]
"See You Again" (Wiz Khalifa and Charlie Puth)
"My Angel" (Prince Royce)
"Hamdulillah" (Narcy feat. Shadia Mansour)
"Get Low" (Dillon Francis and DJ Snake)
"Ay Vamos" (J Balvin feat. Nicky Jam and French Montana)
"Tempest" (Deftones)
"Meneo" (Fito Blanko)

text: Release[edit]

text: The film, which began principal photography in September 2013, was originally designed as a Summer 2014 release. It was put on hold following the fatal car crash that claimed Paul Walker's life on November 30, 2013. The production resumed in April 2014. In October 2014, Universal revealed that the film was officially titled Furious 7,[78] and that the debut trailer would be released during an interactive fan event over social media. In the days leading up to the event, seven-second, behind-the-scenes videos were released, titled "7 Seconds of 7".[78] On February 1, 2015, a new trailer featuring all-new footage debuted during Super Bowl XLIX.

text: The film was originally scheduled for release on April 10, 2015, but it was announced that the film's release date had been brought forward a week to April 3, 2015. The official announcement in change of date was made in July 2014.[79] Fast and Furious 7 premiered at the SXSW Film Festival at 12:07 a.m. at Austin's Paramount Theatre on March 16, 2015.[80] On March 27, 2015, a free standalone expansion for the video game Forza Horizon 2, titled Forza Horizon 2 Presents Fast & Furious, was released to help promote the film.[81] For its global premiere at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles on April 1, 2015, IMAX Corporation installed a new laser projection which was the first such installation in the U.S. and the second worldwide, following The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, which opened at Scotiabank Theatre in Toronto in December 2014.[82]

text: Unauthorized distribution[edit]

text: According to infringement tracking site Excipio, the film was downloaded illegally 2.59 million times in four days (April 2–6) through various torrent sites with India being the top country for the illegal downloading with 578,000 downloads followed by Pakistan (321,000), China (289,000), the U.S. (251,000) and the UK (101,000).[83] A survey revealed that most Indians tended to resort to copyright violation due to lack of availability, pricing concerns, soaring internet costs and censorship.[84] It was illegally downloaded 44,794,877 times in 2015, making it the most pirated film released that year and the second most pirated film overall, behind Interstellar which saw over 46.7 million illegal downloads the same year.[85]

text: Home media[edit]

text: Furious 7 was released on 7 September 2015 in the UK and was released via DVD and Blu-ray on September 15, 2015 in other countries. The Blu-ray edition features an all new extended edition, deleted scenes, stunts, behind-the-scenes, and the music video for Wiz Khalifa and Charlie Puth's "See You Again". The Blu-ray and DVD version include behind-the-scene footage of the "Race Wars" scene including rapper Iggy Azalea and making of the cars featured in the film.[86] In the U.S. and Canada, it sold roughly 2.5 million units on Blu-ray and DVD in its first week of release, making it the highest-selling home entertainment live-action film of 2015.[87] This record was later surpassed by Jurassic World the following month,[88] which in turn was surpassed by Star Wars: The Force Awakens by the end of the year.

text: Reception[edit]

text: Box office[edit]

text: Furious 7 made $353 million in the United States and Canada and $1.163 billion in other countries, for a worldwide total of $1.516 billion, against its $190 million production budget.[3] Worldwide, it is the sixth highest-grossing film of all time,[89] the third highest-grossing film of 2015,[90] the highest-grossing film in The Fast and the Furious franchise and the second highest-grossing Universal Pictures film.[91] It was also the fastest film to reach the $1 billion mark at the time, doing so in 17 days;[92][93][94] It is also the 20th film to gross over $1 billion. It also became the first film to pass 1 million in 4DX admissions worldwide.[95] Deadline.com calculated the net profit of the film to be $354.03 million, when factoring together all expenses and revenues for the film.[96]

text: Worldwide, Furious 7 was released across 810 IMAX theaters, which was the largest worldwide rollout in IMAX's history,[97][98] Its worldwide opening of $397.6 million was the fifth-highest opening of all time.[99] The film had an IMAX opening weekend total of $20.8 million.[100] Furious 7 also became the first film distributed by Universal Pictures to earn more than $1 billion in its original run.

text: North America[edit]

text: Predictions for the opening weekend of Furious 7 in the United States and Canada were continuously revised upwards, starting from $115 million to $150 million.[101][102] It opened on Friday, April 3, 2015, across 4,004 theaters, including 365 IMAX theaters, which made it the widest opening for a Fast and Furious film and Universal's widest opening release ever (until first surpassed by Jurassic World).[103][104][105] and earned $67.3 million, marking the tenth-biggest opening day.[106][107] The film's Friday gross included a $15.8 million late-night run (which began at 7 p.m.), from 3,069 theaters, marking Universal's highest late-night run, of which $2.2 million came from IMAX showings, marking the third largest IMAX preview gross ever.[108][109] Based on pure Friday gross (with the omission of revenues from Thursday shows), it earned $51.5 million, marking the fifth-biggest of all time.[110][111] Through Sunday, April 5, it had an opening weekend total of $147.1 million, breaking the record for the biggest April opening,[112] the biggest opening in the Fast & Furious franchise, the biggest Easter opening (the record was broken a year later by Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice's opening gross of $166 million),[113] the third-biggest opening of 2015, the third biggest pre-summer opening ever,[114] and the thirteenth-biggest opening of all time.[115] It earned an IMAX opening weekend total of $13.3 million, marking the second-biggest of all time for a 2D movie.[116][117] Premium large format comprised 8% ($11.5 million) of the total opening gross from 400 PLF screens, which is the biggest 2D PLF opening.[118] It was Universal's fastest film to reach the $200 million mark at the time, doing so in eight days.[119][120]

text: In its second weekend, the film expanded to 4,022 theaters, thereby breaking its own record of being the widest Universal Pictures release ever, and earned an estimated $59.6 million, declining by 60%, which is the third best second weekend holdover for a pre-summer film release.[121][122] It became the highest-grossing film in the Fast & Furious franchise, doing so only in ten days (the previous record which was held by Fast & Furious 6 took fifteen weeks to reach its entire lifetime gross of $238.67 million).[121][123] It also set the record for the biggest second-weekend April gross.[124] It topped the box office for four consecutive weekends,[125] becoming the first film to top the box office for four consecutive weekends since The Hunger Games in March 2012 and one of only 29 films since 1985 to have had four straight box office wins during their theatrical runs, although this highly depends on many factors, including the release time and the competition around.[126][127] It ended its theatrical run on July 24, 2015, playing in theaters for a total of 112 days[3] and became the thirty-first highest-grossing film of all time,[128] the fifth highest-grossing film of 2015,[129] the highest-grossing film in The Fast and the Furious franchise,[130] the second highest-grossing Universal film of 2015 (behind Jurassic World),[131] and the fifth highest-grossing film distributed by Universal.[131]

text: Outside North America[edit]

text: Outside the US and Canada, the film became the third highest-grossing film,[132] the highest-grossing Universal distributed film,[132] and the highest-grossing 2015 film.[133] On April 26, 2015, it became the third film in cinematic history to earn over $1 billion overseas.[134] It opened on Wednesday, April 1, 2015, in 12 countries, earning $16.9 million (including previews from 22 countries).[135] It opened in 33 more countries on Thursday, April 2, for a total of 45 countries, earning $43 million from 8,407 screens, marking Universal Pictures overseas' highest-grossing Thursday ever, and for a two-day total of $60 million.[136] It added 20 more countries on Friday, April 3, earning $59.2 million from 9,935 screens in 63 countries, for a three-day total of $120.6 million.[137][138] The film set all-time opening-day records in 15 countries including Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, India, Indonesia, the Middle East and Thailand,[136][139][140][141][142] and opening day records for Universal Pictures in 40 countries including Australia, Brazil, Germany, Italy and Mexico.[137] Through Sunday, April 5, it earned a 4-day opening weekend total of $250.4 million from 10,683 screens in 64 countries, which is the fourth-highest international opening ever, in all which it reached first place at the box office[100][116][143][144] It earned an IMAX opening weekend total of $7.5 million from 175 IMAX screens, breaking the record for the biggest April IMAX gross, previously held by The Winter Soldier ($6.43 million).[100] It set opening weekend records in 29 countries including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Egypt, Malaysia, Mexico, Middle East, Romania, Taiwan, Thailand, Venezuela and Vietnam.[100][143] In its second weekend, it held the top spot and fell gradually by 20.4% to $198.7 million (including China's opening day gross) from 18,374 screens in 66 territories as a result of minor competition, and remaining at number one in all 63 territories where it was released the previous week. It added three new countries in its second weekend; China, Russia and Poland.[145] Earning $167.9 million in its third weekend, it topped the box office outside of North America for three consecutive weekends,[146] until surpassed by Avengers: Age of Ultron in its fourth weekend.[147]

text: The film was a massive box office hit in China. It opened there on April 12 and set an all-time midnight run record with $8.05 million[145][148] and an opening day record with $68.8 million.[145][149] Its opening day included a record breaking $5 million from IMAX run (also breaking Transformers 4's former record of $3.4 million).[145] Through its opening week (April 12–19), it earned $245.9 million.[146][150] For the weekend alone, it took in $88.7 million from 5,454 screens (Friday to Sunday) and $182.4 million (Monday to Sunday) at the Chinese box office. It grossed CN¥1 billion in five days—the fastest time in which that has been achieved—and soon became the highest-grossing foreign film ever in China.[146][150][151] In 15 days, its gross in China surpassed those in Canada and the United States[152] and became the first film in China to make more than 2 billion renminbi.[153] Its success has been credited to China Film Group Corporation, the state-owned film distributor, which had invested considerably in the film, reportedly taking a 10% stake.[154]

text: The largest openings outside North America and China occurred in Mexico ($21.5 million), the UK, Ireland and Malta ($18.7 million), Germany ($15.9 million), Russia and the CIS ($15.9 million), Brazil ($11.4 million), France ($11.4 million), Australia ($11.3 million), Taiwan ($10.3 million), Argentina ($9.3 millon), Korea ($8.9 million), India ($8.7 million), Italy ($8.2 million), Malaysia ($7.3 million), Spain ($6.3 million), Venezuela ($6 million), Thailand ($6 million), and Colombia ($5.2 million).[143][145] In the UAE, where parts of the film was shot, it opened with $4.8 million.[143] Out of the 68 countries it was released in, the only country not to open at number one was Japan (locally released with the title, Wild Speed: Skymission) where it earned $6.2 million in its opening weekend, behind Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection 'F' ($7.6 million).[146] and Detective Conan: Sunflowers of Inferno ($7.4 million).[155] It became the highest-grossing film of all time in Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Indonesia, Malaysia, South Africa, the UAE, Uruguay, Trinidad and Vietnam and Universal Pictures' highest-grossing film of all time in 29 countries including Argentina, China, Ecuador, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Lebanon, Malaysia, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Thailand, Turkey, UAE and Vietnam.[146] In Latin America, it became the second highest-grossing film ($200 million), the first time Universal has reached the milestone and the second film in history to earn more than $200 million after The Avengers.[156] In total earnings, the largest countries outside the U.S. and Canada are China ($391.2 million), the UK, Ireland and Malta ($60 million), Mexico ($50.9 million), Brazil, ($46.5 million) and Germany ($40.3 million).[157][158][159] It grossed a total of $39 million in IMAX ticket sales in China, the biggest ever in the market.[160]

text: Critical response[edit]

text: Furious 7 received very positive reviews, with critics praising the film's action set piece and its poignant tribute to Walker.[161] Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reports an 80% rating based on 239 reviews, and an average rating of 6.6/10. The site's consensus reads, "Serving up a fresh round of over-the-top thrills while adding unexpected dramatic heft, Furious 7 keeps the franchise moving in more ways than one."[162] On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating, the film has a score of 67 out of 100, based on 44 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[163] In CinemaScore polls conducted during the opening weekend, cinema audiences gave Furious 7 an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.[164]

text: The film received highly positive reviews upon release at a secret screening at the 2015 SXSW Film Festival on March 16, 2015. Ramin Setoodeh of Variety noted that fans started lining up outside four hours before the film was scheduled to start. The film closed with a tribute to Walker, which left many in the theater "holding back tears".[165] Critic Dave Palmer gave the film 7/10, saying, "Furious 7 is the type of movie Michael Bay has spent his entire career trying to make: filled with shots of scantily clad women, fast cars, and clever one liners".[166]

text: A.O. Scott of The New York Times gave the film two and a half stars out of five and said, "Furious 7 extends its predecessors’ inclusive, stereotype-resistant ethic. Compared to almost any other large-scale, big-studio enterprise, the Furious brand practices a slick, no-big-deal multiculturalism, and nods to both feminism and domestic traditionalism."[167]

text: John DeFore of The Hollywood Reporter criticized the film however, describing it as "stupidly diverting", saying the running time was "overinflated"; he compared watching the film to a morbid game, in addition to criticizing the screenplay.[168]

text: Accolades[edit]

text:
Year
Award / Film Festival
Category
Recipient(s)
Result
Ref(s)

2015
Teen Choice Awards
Choice Movie: Action

Won
[169]

Choice Movie Actor: Action
Vin Diesel
Nominated

Paul Walker
Won

Choice Movie Actress: Action
Michelle Rodriguez
Nominated

Jordana Brewster
Nominated

Choice Movie: Villain
Jason Statham
Nominated

Choice Movie: Chemistry
Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Dwayne Johnson, Ludacris
Nominated

Choice Music: Song from a Movie or TV Show
"See You Again" by Wiz Khalifa ft. Charlie Puth
Won

2016
People's Choice Awards
Favorite Movie

Won
[170]

Favorite Action Movie

Won

Favorite Action Movie Actor
Vin Diesel
Nominated

Favorite Action Movie Actress
Michelle Rodriguez
Nominated

Critics' Choice Awards
Best Original Song
"See You Again"
Won
[171]

Best Action Movie

Nominated

Golden Globe Awards
Best Original Song
"See You Again"
Nominated
[172]

Houston Film Critics Society
Best Original Song
"See You Again"
Nominated
[173]

Screen Actors Guild Awards
Outstanding Performance by a Stunt Ensemble in a Motion Picture

Nominated
[174][175]

Las Vegas Film Critics Society
Best Original Song
"See You Again"
Won
[176]

MTV Movie Awards
Best Action Performance
Vin Diesel
Nominated
[177]

Ensemble Cast

Nominated

Satellite Awards
Best Original Song
"See You Again"
Nominated
[178]

Saturn Award
Best Action or Adventure Film

Won
[179]

Best Editing
Christian Wagner, Dylan Highsmith, Kirk Morri, and Leigh Folsom Boyd
Nominated

Best DVD or Blu-ray Special Edition Release
Furious 7 (Extended Edition)
Nominated

St. Louis Gateway Film Critics Association
Best Original Song
"See You Again"
Runner-up
[180]

Visual Effects Society
Outstanding Visual Effects in a Photoreal Feature
Mike Wassel, Karen Murphy, Martin Hill, Kevin McIlwain, Dan Sudick
Nominated
[181]

tag: table

text: Sequel[edit]

text: Regarding a possible sequel, Vin Diesel said:

text: I was trying to keep it close to the vest throughout the release. Paul Walker used to say that [an eighth film] was guaranteed. And in some ways, when your brother guarantees something, you sometimes feel like you have to make sure it comes to pass... so if fate has it, then you’ll get this when you hear about it. [Furious 7] was for Paul, [the eighth film] is from Paul.[182]

text: Diesel further hinted at an eighth film on Jimmy Kimmel Live! when he stated that Kurt Russell's character would span multiple films. He also stated that the film would take place in New York City.[183] Chris Morgan wrote his sixth script in the franchise, while Neal H. Moritz returned to produce. Moritz later stated, "[The story] is going to have to be something enticing for all of us... it has to be as good as or better [than Furious 7]".[184]

text: At the 2015 CinemaCon in Las Vegas, Diesel announced the film for an April 14, 2017 release date.[185][186] On August 16, 2015, at the 2015 Teen Choice Awards (where Furious 7 received the award for Choice Movie – Action and Walker received the award for Choice Movie Actor – Action), Diesel gave the film the initial title Fast 8.[187] In September 2015, Diesel stated that the script had almost been completed,[188] and expressed interest in Rob Cohen, who directed the first film, to direct the eighth installment.[189] On October 14, 2015, Diesel announced on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon that Straight Outta Compton director F. Gary Gray would direct the film.[190][191]

text: In July 2015, Moritz said that Walker's character, Brian O'Conner, would not appear in the film, following the use of CGI in the previous film after Walker died in a single-vehicle accident on November 30, 2013, with Moritz stating that his character had "moved on".[192] It had previously been reported that Paul's younger brother, Cody Walker, would either join the cast in a new role,[193] or replace his older brother in the role of O'Conner;[194] however, it was later announced that the character will not return to the franchise.[195] Moritz also said that the film would shift the focus of the franchise from a series of heist films to a spy caper, following a similar change in focus from street racing in Fast Five (2011).[196] In December 2016, the film was retitled The Fate of the Furious.[197]


document_title: If I Loved You

question_text: who sings if i loved you from carousel

question_tokens: who sings if i loved you from carousel

text: If I Loved You

text:
"If I Loved You"

Song from Carousel

Published
1945

Songwriter(s)
Oscar Hammerstein II

Composer(s)
Richard Rodgers

text: "If I Loved You" is a show tune from the 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel.

text: The song was introduced by John Raitt as "Billy Bigelow" and Jan Clayton as "Julie" in the original Broadway production.

text: The song was performed in the 1956 film version Carousel by Gordon MacRae and Shirley Jones.

text: In the show, the characters of Billy Bigelow and Julie Jordan sing this song as they hesitantly declare their love for one another, yet are too shy to express their true feelings.

text: The song was in turn inspired by lines of dialogue from Ferenc Molnár's original Liliom, the source material for the musical.

text: There were four hit versions of the song in 1945 by Perry Como (#3), Frank Sinatra (#7), Bing Crosby (#8) and Harry James (8).[1]

text: Recorded versions[edit]

text: This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (June 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

text: There are many recordings of "If I Loved You" including by:

text:
Ronnie Aldrich
Thomas Allen
Ernie Andrews
Julie Andrews (1994) - Broadway: The Music of Richard Rodgers[2]
Richard Anthony (1964)- Single If I loved you, More than words can say Columbia / Pathé Marconi / EMI n° DB 7235 UK
Dave Apollon
Michael Ballam
Jimmy Beaumont
Isabel Bigley
Paul Bley
Alfie Boe
Sarah Brightman
Bob Brookmeyer
Ray Brown Trio
Artie Butler
José Carreras
Benny Carter
Carmen Cavallaro
Chad & Jeremy
Charlotte Church (2001) - Enchantment
Victoria Clark
Richard Clayderman
Jan Clayton and John Raitt (1945) for the Carousel Original Broadway Cast Recording[3]
Perry Como
Ray Conniff
Barbara Cook and Samuel Ramey on the 1987 studio cast recording.[4]
Michael Crawford
Henri Crolla
Bing Crosby - recorded April 18, 1945 and December 24, 1947.[5]
Sammy Davis, Jr.
Eileen Farrell
Sergio Franchi recorded on his 1965 RCA Victor Red Seal album Broadway, I love You.[6]
Art Garfunkel - Some Enchanted Evening (2007)
Annie Haslam
Michael Hayden and Sally Murphy on the 1994 Broadway Revival Cast Recording[7]
Fred Hersch
Roger Ingram on his album Skylark (2015)
Harry James
Rahsaan Roland Kirk
Mario Lanza
Amel Larrieux
Jeff Lynne on his album Long Wave (2012)
Jeanette MacDonald (1946)
Gordon MacRae and Shirley Jones on the 1956 film soundtrack[8]
Elvis Presley
P. J. Proby (1965)
Renato Russo - from The Stonewall Celebration Concert
Frank Sinatra
Karel Gott (1974)
The Skyliners
Jo Stafford - Autumn in New York (1950)
Barbra Streisand (1985) The Broadway Album[9]
Renata Tebaldi
Bryn Terfel (1996) - Something Wonderful: Bryn Terfel Sings Rodgers and Hammerstein
Aaron Tveit
Mark Vincent
The Vogues
Dinah Washington
Andy Williams on his album, Andy Williams Sings Rodgers and Hammerstein
Sierra Boggess


document_title: The King of Queens

question_text: who played deacon's wife on king of queens

question_tokens: who played deacon 's wife on king of queens

text: The King of Queens

text: Plot[edit]

text: Doug and Carrie Heffernan are a working class couple living at "3121 Aberdeen Street" in Rego Park, Queens, New York,[3] along with Carrie's eccentric father, Arthur Spooner.[4] Doug works for the fictional International Parcel Service (IPS) as a delivery driver, while Carrie works as a secretary in Manhattan, first for a law firm and later for a real estate firm. Their lives are complicated by the demands of Arthur, so much so that they eventually hire Holly, a professional dog walker, to spend time with him as she walks dogs in the park.

text: Also featured on the show are Doug's friends Deacon Palmer, Spence Olchin and Richie Iannucci, as well as Doug's cousin Danny Heffernan. Deacon's wife Kelly is Carrie's best friend.

text: Most scenes take place in the Heffernans' home, but other common locations include Doug and Carrie's workplaces, the restaurant "Cooper's" and the residences of friends and family. While locations seen during the theme-song were filmed in areas surrounding New York, the series was filmed in California.

text: The show begins after Doug and Carrie have already married, and how they met is slightly unclear due to continuity issues. In one flashback episode, "Meet By-Product", Doug meets Carrie when he is a bouncer at a nightclub that Carrie attends. However, in another episode, "Road Rayge", Carrie reflects on a song that she says Doug asked her to dance to when they were in junior high school. In a later episode, it was implied that they all went to high school together, as Kelly and Carrie were said to have slept with the same guy neither husband knew of until the day of the guy's wedding.

text: Characters[edit]

text: Main[edit]

text:
Doug Heffernan (played by Kevin James) is an average parcel delivery man with a smart-aleck personality. Doug never hesitates to protest his grievances intensely. Doug's birth date is February 9, 1965. He was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada (unbeknownst to him until the season 5 episode "Dog Shelter"). Some of his misadventures are fueled by his love of food. These basic desires sometimes cause him to think of strange, intricate schemes in order to get what he wants, although they usually fall through in the end, causing constant arguments between Doug and Carrie. Doug's tendency to give in to his temptations, despite promising Carrie otherwise, is another common cause of disagreements. He generally enjoys the simple pleasures of watching sports and playing poker with his friends.
Carrie Heffernan (played by Leah Remini) is Doug's sardonic wife. She has a quick-temper and is occasionally physically abusive to Doug. She has been characterized as scary by Holly and Doug, particularly when she is angry. During a flashback, Carrie concludes that she is happier (she describes herself as never being truly happy) when others are miserable. She never finished college and is employed as a hard-working legal secretary. Her constant attempts to make her relationship with Doug more romantic and meaningful cause Doug frustration, as he prefers a simple life with as few restrictions as possible. The more quick-witted and adventurous of the couple, Carrie often pushes Doug to make more of himself and improve his morals, but she can be just as immoral as he is. Although Carrie scolds Doug for his selfish behavior, she has proven to be selfish as well at times, with little patience for others' problems or tolerance for their quirks. Carrie's best friend is Deacon's wife, Kelly Palmer.
Arthur Spooner (played by Jerry Stiller) is Carrie's widowed father, who has been married three times. His fourth marriage is to Spence's mother (played by Anne Meara, Stiller's real-life wife) during the final season. Arthur is the classic oddball of the family. He lives in the basement of the Heffernan house because he accidentally set fire to his own uninsured home, burning it to the ground in the pilot episode. Very volatile, Arthur is mostly known for his incoherent, irascible outbursts. He tells a lot of questionable stories of what he claims he has been through in his past. Arthur regularly causes chaos in the Heffernan household and gets on Doug's and Carrie's nerves. They sometimes have trouble finding time alone because Arthur tends to get in the way. Arthur also tries to cause trouble with Doug's friends. He especially bullies Spence but also (unsuccessfully) tries it on Deacon, who often refers to him as "the old man".

text:
Deacon John Palmer (played by Victor Williams) is Doug's best friend and co-worker. Towering in height and very athletic, Deacon is a year and a few weeks younger than Doug, but the more mature of the two, in addition to being the classic "family man". Deacon and his wife Kelly have two sons, named Major and Kirby. He is often seen hanging out with Doug, whether it is on their lunch break, over the weekend, or for a family gathering. Although he often experiences relationship problems, Deacon always has time to relax and have fun. He will often help Doug plan elaborate schemes to fool Carrie, but he rarely likes to get involved in the scheme himself. Deacon attended St. John's University in Queens, where he received two bachelor's degrees, one in art history and one in music.[citation needed] In the first-season episode "Best Man", Deacon mentions having served in the National Guard. He also volunteers as a big brother.
Spencer "Spence" Olchin (played by Patton Oswalt) is another friend of Doug's and the nerd of the group. He tends to be paranoid with fragile health and takes an interest in science fiction, fantasy movies, and comic book conventions—interests that his friends do not share. Spence's birthday is February 14. He is of Albanian heritage, and works as a subway token booth clerk. He moved to the New York area from rural West Virginia. In one episode, he is a "house boy" for Deacon and Kelly. His character is based largely on the actor who plays him, Patton Oswalt. Spence demonstrates intelligence and competence in a variety of pursuits, but he is haunted by his family history, his intimidating and troubled mother, and his inability to protect himself. Numerous episodes mention that Spence is asthmatic (a burden he shares with Danny) and allergic to peanuts (however, in the episode "Richie's Song" he is seen eating Peanut M&M's out of Doug's vehicle). In the season eight episode "Hartford Wailer", Spence is said to be from Ottawa. In the series' penultimate episode, "Single Spaced", Spence shows interest in romancing Carrie when it appears she and Doug will divorce.
Richard "Richie" Iannucci (seasons 1–3; played by Larry Romano) is one of Doug's closest friends. He and Doug were roommates before Doug married Carrie (shown in the episode "Meet By-Product"). He was quietly written out of the show in season three so Romano could work on another sitcom (Kristin). During that season, he only appeared in one episode, called "Paint Misbehavin". He mostly addressed Doug as "Moose". Richie was known as the ladies' man among Doug's friends, even admitting to sleeping with Doug's sister. Richie is an FDNY firefighter. He is also somewhat of a con artist. His last appearance on the show was in the episode "Paint Misbehavin'", in which he has sex (offscreen) with Doug's sister Stephanie (Ricki Lake) and afterwards she promises to call him, although she has no intention to. He was also briefly seen in a few clips during the flashback montage at the end of the series finale.
Daniel "Danny" Heffernan (played by Gary Valentine) is Doug's cousin, and he is also seen hanging out with Doug, Deacon and Spence. In the show's early seasons Doug has a negative view of Danny bordering on hate due to the latter's overeagerness to spend time with the former, but at the end of "S'no Job", they become friends and co-workers and regularly hang out along with Deacon and Spence. Danny even becomes Spence's roommate in a small apartment. The two fight like a married couple, and many of the jokes revolve around what looks to their friends like a romantic relationship. At one point, they legally marry in order to get a free TV from a sales pitch for which only married couples are eligible. Danny also used to own a pizza place, and he is divorced from a woman named Eva. He once had the nickname "Stumpy", which was given to him by Doug. Episodes "Silent Mite" and "Paint Misbehavin'" reveal that Danny has asthma and uses an inhaler. Gary Valentine and Kevin James are brothers in real life. They both created last names for acting. Valentine is their father's middle name.
Holly Shumpert (seasons 3–9; played by Nicole Sullivan) is a polite, yet timid dog-walker who along with the Heffernans lives in Queens, where she was hired by Doug and Carrie to walk Arthur. She is often seen arriving at the Heffernan house to pick up Arthur but is also a family friend of the Heffernans. She is often viewed as strange because of her habits, the men she dates and her habit of overdrinking, to which she openly confesses. Holly is a gentle soul, especially as she puts up with Arthur's antics, and is kind to Carrie despite the fact that Carrie often mistreats her. Holly was written out of the series at the beginning of season eight, but she later returned, pregnant, for one last appearance in the series finale ("China Syndrome"). Sullivan appeared as a different character in the season 3 episode "Pregnant Pause".
Sara Spooner (season 1; played by Lisa Rieffel) is Carrie's younger half-sister, an irresponsible aspiring actress. She appears in only five of the first six episodes. She was only mentioned one other time (although not by name) in episode 52 ("Roast Chicken") by Doug as an excuse to his boss to get out of performing a roast. After the show became more popular, Kevin James was asked to explain what happened to Sara during an interview. According to James, the producers could not think of any storylines to develop Rieffel's character, so she was discontinued. During the pilot she was on camera for roughly half the episode. However, in the other episodes in which she was included, her character did not have much to say or do. Subsequent dialogue suggests that Sara Spooner never existed, and that Carrie is an only child. (The disappearance of her character, coupled with the show's subsequent contention that the character never existed, is an example of the "Chuck Cunningham Syndrome".)

text: Recurring[edit]

text:
Kelly Palmer, Deacon's wife (played by Merrin Dungey) is Carrie's best friend. She has two children with Deacon. Kelly and Deacon experience some serious relationship problems, much more serious than the petty arguments between Doug and Carrie. On one occasion, Deacon mentions being hit in the head with a frying pan. She was absent from the show in 2002 because she needed to take a break from the series; during this period, her character was estranged from Deacon and engaged in a brief affair.
Lou Ferrigno (seasons 3–9; himself) is the actor known for his role as The Incredible Hulk. Ferrigno and his wife are neighbors of the Heffernans. A running gag on the series is that the neighbors (including the Heffernans) are fascinated by him and it gets on his nerves. Lou does not like people telling him Hulk jokes. Other characters often make reference to his previous role as the Hulk. For example, at one point Doug is angry and Lou tries to calm him down; Doug retorts with the famous line from the Hulk series "Don't make me angry; you wouldn't like me when I am angry". Also, in the episode "Gym Neighbors", it is revealed that he has a video game addiction.
Supervisor Patrick O'Boyle (seasons 3–9; played by Sam McMurray) is section supervisor for the fictional International Parcel Service. He is Doug's boss and friend throughout most of the show, whom he mostly refers to as "Heffernan". He is in most IPS scenes throughout the show. He is also a recovering alcoholic and gambling addict. A character named Supervisor Jack O'Boyle (played by John F. O'Donohue) appears in an episode from season one ("White Collar", 1999).
Raymond "Ray" Barone (seasons 1, 2 & 8; 5 episodes; played by Ray Romano) is Doug's Long Island friend. Romano and James appearing on each other's shows was part of a network program crossover, as CBS aired both Everybody Loves Raymond and The King of Queens. Romano's appearance was successful enough to warrant all other lead characters (Patricia Heaton, Brad Garrett, Doris Roberts, and Peter Boyle) to appear as their respective characters as well. Appropriately, the four episodes featuring Romano contained "Ray" in their titles ("Road Rayge", "Rayny Day", "Dire Strayts", and "Raygin' Bulls").
Doug Pruzan (season 2–6; played by Alex Skuby) is Carrie's boss and a lawyer at a Manhattan law firm.
Veronica Olchin (season 1; played by Grace Zabriskie, seasons 5–9 played by Anne Meara) Spence's mother. She is portrayed by Zabriske in her first appearance in "S'aint Valentines", but portrayed by Meara for the rest of the series. Veronica has an on-again/off-again relationship with Arthur, who is portrayed by Meara's real-life husband, Jerry Stiller. Meara had previously appeared in "S'aint Valentines" as a woman who flirts with Arthur. Arthur and Veronica marry in the series finale, but divorced a year later.

text: Series background[edit]

text: Based on the lives of blue-collar couple Doug and Carrie Heffernan, The King of Queens debuted on CBS on September 21, 1998. During its run, it brought in solid ratings (usually ranking in the Top 40) for the most part and was a Monday night staple, competing with shows such as the long-running drama 7th Heaven. In 2003, when scheduled against The West Wing and Nanny 911, it began to drop in the ratings. The final episode aired on May 14, 2007. The series was shot at Sony Pictures Studios' Stage 28 in Culver City, California.[5] The character of Arthur was conceived with Jerry Stiller in mind, but he initially turned down the role. Veteran comedian Jack Carter was then cast and a pilot was shot. Soon afterward, Stiller changed his mind and took the part, which required re-shooting of scenes featuring Carter.[6]

text: The King of Queens was partly inspired by the classic television sitcom The Honeymooners, as the characters of Doug and Carrie are based on the Kramden couple, with similar mannerisms and deadpan expressions. In a 2001 episode of the show ("Inner Tube"), the show pays homage to The Honeymooners, as a distraught Doug dreams that he is Ralph Kramden, his wife Carrie is Alice Kramden, and his friend Deacon is Ed Norton. The sequence was filmed in black-and-white and the audio quality (including the audience) matches a 1950s style.[7]

text: The show is currently in syndication worldwide and airs on TBS and TV Land in the United States.[8][9] and on TVTropolis and OMNI in Canada. In Sweden, Germany, Ireland, Romania, Denmark, the UK and Poland it runs on the ComedyCentral network. In April 2014, the show began running weekdays on Channel 4 at 7:35am in the UK and Ireland.[10]. In 2017, it began running again in Austria on Puls4, weekdays from about 1 P.M.-2P.M.

text: Theme song and opening sequences[edit]

text: The season one main opening was a simple eight-second sequence which showed the window of a subway train with moving through and quickly stopping at the original show logo, which then peeled off to reveal the names of the show's creators.

text: Starting with season two, the show added a new theme song called "Baby All My Life I Will Be Driving Home to You", which was written by series writers Josh Goldsmith and Cathy Yuspa, composed by Jonathan Wolff and Scott Clausen, and performed by Billy Vera and the Beaters. An instrumental version was used as the closing theme during season two, but was replaced in season three with a new closing theme composed by Kurt Farquhar.

text: The opening credits from seasons two through nine featured an opening shot of Doug getting into an IPS truck, which then cuts to a long shot of an elevated subway station, (Which is the 111 Street Station on the IRT Flushing Line which is on the 7 Line of the New York City Subway) where he drives under the subway station onto which the show's logo is digitally placed, as if it's a street sign. It then cuts to scenes of Doug, Carrie and Arthur spending time around Queens. In the season two sequence, Kevin James' starring credit was placed over a shot of the Brooklyn Bridge with the Manhattan skyline, but was re-edited after the September 11 attacks that felled the World Trade Center. Two short versions of the sequence exist: in original airings where the opening was shortened due to time constraints and in some syndicated airings, the opening featured the shot of the IPS truck going under the bridge, then to the final shot of the credits where Doug and Carrie get ices at the Lemon Ice King of Corona on 108th St in Queens. The second version used in U.S. syndicated airings since 2007 simply features the first eight seconds of the full sequence with the opening establishing shots of Queens placed before the truck scene. In syndicated airings of season one episodes that have aired in the U.S. since the fall of 2007, this version replaced the standard season one sequence in all episodes for unknown reasons.

text: Episodes[edit]

text:
Season
Episodes
Originally aired
Nielsen ratings[11]

First aired
Last aired
Rank
Rating

1
25
September 21, 1998 (1998-09-21)
May 17, 1999 (1999-05-17)
N/A
N/A

2
25
September 20, 1999 (1999-09-20)
May 22, 2000 (2000-05-22)
N/A
N/A

3
25
October 2, 2000 (2000-10-02)
May 28, 2001 (2001-05-28)
27
8.9

4
25
September 24, 2001 (2001-09-24)
May 20, 2002 (2002-05-20)
19
8.9

5
25
September 23, 2002 (2002-09-23)
May 19, 2003 (2003-05-19)
25
8.5

6
24
October 1, 2003 (2003-10-01)
May 19, 2004 (2004-05-19)
30
7.3
(Tied with Frasier)

7
22
October 27, 2004 (2004-10-27)
May 18, 2005 (2005-05-18)
N/A
N/A

8
23
September 19, 2005 (2005-09-19)
May 22, 2006 (2006-05-22)
N/A
N/A

9
13
December 6, 2006 (2006-12-06)
May 14, 2007 (2007-05-14)
30
7.3
(Tied with Brothers & Sisters and Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?)

text: Reception[edit]

text: Critical response[edit]

text: During the first season, The King of Queens, on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the series was critiqued by two critics, with an approval rating of 50%, based on the 2 reviews, with an average rating of 7.4/10. Maryann Johnson of Flick Filospher critiqued, "Obvious and distasteful, King of Queens relies too heavily on class and gender stereotypes to elicit laughs in the same way that one pulls teeth." Clint Morris of FilmThreat lauded the series, praising star Kevin James as "one of the funniest guys to grace the TV tube since Bill Cosby."[12] On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating, the series has a score 51 out of 100, based on 22 critics, indicating "generally mixed reviews".[13]

text: Awards and nominations[edit]

text: Emmy Awards[edit]

text: In 2006, Kevin James received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for his portrayal of Doug Heffernan.

text:
TV Season
Award
Category
Nominee
Episode
Result

2005–2006
Emmy Award
Best Lead Actor in a Comedy Series
Kevin James
"Pole Lox"
Nominated

text: The Emmy was won by Tony Shalhoub for his performance on Monk.

text: BMI Awards[edit]

text: In addition, The King of Queens received several BMI Awards during its prime-time run. The series won BMI Awards in the "TV Music Award" category in 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004. These awards were presented to Kurt Farquhar, Josh Goldsmith, Andrew Gross, and Cathy Yuspa.

text: Nominations[edit]

text: The King of Queens was additionally nominated for the 2007 and 2008 People's Choice Awards 'Favorite TV Comedy' award during its final two seasons. In 2004 Scott Heineman and Mark Waters (director) were nominated by the Art Directors Guild for the 'Excellence in Production Design Award'. Victor Williams was nominated in 2007 for 'Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series' by the NAACP Image Awards.[14]

text: Home media releases[edit]

text:
In Region 1, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has released all nine seasons of The King of Queens on DVD in the USA and Canada.
In Region 2, Paramount Home Entertainment has released all nine seasons on DVD in the UK.[15] The series has also been released in Germany by Koch Media, all nine seasons have been released.
In Region 4, Paramount Home Entertainment has released all nine seasons on DVD in Australia.[16]

text:
DVD Name
Ep #
Release Dates

Region 1 (US)
Region 1 (CAN)
Region 2 (UK)
Region 2 (Germany)
Region 4 (Australia)

The Complete First Season
25
(3 discs)
November 18, 2003
August 11, 2009
January 29, 2007
November 26, 2004
January 11, 2007

The Complete Second Season
25
(3 discs)
April 20, 2004
August 11, 2009
July 9, 2007
March 31, 2005
July 12, 2007

The Complete Third Season
25
(3 discs)
February 22, 2005
August 11, 2009
September 15, 2008
September 2, 2005
July 31, 2008

The Complete Fourth Season
25
(3 discs)
June 14, 2005
January 5, 2010
February 9, 2009
December 2, 2005
January 15, 2009

The Complete Fifth Season
25
(3 discs)
June 20, 2006
January 5, 2010
May 18, 2009
May 26, 2006
May 7, 2009

The Complete Sixth Season
24
(3 discs)
September 19, 2006
January 5, 2010
July 13, 2009
November 24, 2006
August 6, 2009[17]

The Complete Seventh Season
22
(3 discs)
January 16, 2007
November 9, 2010[18]
March 22, 2010
March 9, 2007
April 1, 2010

The Complete Eighth Season
23
(3 discs)
May 1, 2007
November 9, 2010[19]
June 21, 2010
August 24, 2007
June 3, 2010

The Complete Ninth Season
13
(2 discs)
September 25, 2007
November 9, 2010[20]
September 20, 2010
October 19, 2007
September 16, 2010

The Complete Series Box Set
207
(27 discs)
November 6, 2007
TBA
May 7, 2012
March 7, 2008[21]
TBA

text: Blu-ray releases[edit]

text: Seasons two[22] and three[23] were released on Blu-ray Disc by Koch Media on November 21, 2008. They are presented with 1080i/25fps VC-1 video, 2.0 DTS audio tracks in both English and German with German subtitles optional. They include the same extras as the DVD releases from Koch Media. Even though they are only released in Germany and Austria, they are not region locked.

text: On March 26, 2015, Koch Media released the whole series on Blu-ray in HD.[24] The complete box set is distributed for Region B/2.[25]