Steven Helmer Publications

People who know me know I'm really not that big on nostalgia. However, there are exceptions to that, including my tendency to re-watch some of my favorite shows from when I was a kid (and some from before I was a kid). This includes Night Court , which I've watched in re-runs more times than I can count, including as recent as this morning. One thing I've noticed as I once again rewatched the series that ran from 1984 until 1992 is, while the outstanding ensemble of main characters is obviously what people remember, the show also got a nice boost from what I like to refer to as part-time employees. These are characters that were only on the show for a short time, either for certain storylines as a fill in for when one of the main cast members was absent or left the series. They may not have been there long or received top billing, but they kept Night Court rolling. Here are my five favorites:  Court Clerk Mavis Tuttle (Alice Drummond) - I won't go into details about th...

Even though the jury is still out regarding the Melissa Rauch -led Night Court reboot I do think the fledgling series has shown potential by modernizing the stories while still honoring the original that went off the air in 1992. So far, the show has focused solely on Abby Stone's (Rauch) relationship with her deceased father, Harry ( Harry Anderson ) and a now-elderly Dan Fielding ( John Larroquette ) and it still needs to give the supporting cast a little more depth. However, there is an opportunity for the reboot to bring closure to a few storylines from the original series: What happened to Bob and June Wheeler? Bob and June ( Brent Spiner and Annie O'Donnell ) were frequent and popular guest characters on the series and their hard-luck stories were some of the funniest moments on the show. Their last appearance was in Season 4, when they purchased the courthouse concession stand for $250,000 only to watch it fail because they had to raise the prices to obscene amounts. Th...