Cast

For the last few months, a lot of people have been linking to the famous “First Black President” sketch from The Richard Pryor Show, his network TV show that produced some good sketches, a lot of censor battles, and only four episodes. Seeing the sketch again, one thing that jumps out at you is that for a show that bombed, this show had a lot of then-unknown people who went on to successful careers: among the writer-performers on the show were Robin Williams — before Mork, before anything — Marsha Warfield, Tim Reid, Sandra Bernhard and John Witherspoon.

When I broke my arm for the first time, back in grade five, having a cast was almost fun. All of my friends signed it. I got out of gym class. And I didn’t have to do the dishes for over a month.

When an “on the bubble” show gets renewed, one condition for its renewal is usually that it will have a lower budget. (In case you’re wondering, for example, why most of the final season of Angel took place in offices.) And the surest way to cut the budget is to whittle the cast down from “huge” to merely “really, really big.” And so it is with Friday Night Lights; it was announced today that showrunner Jason Katims will be demoting two of the regulars, Smash (Gaius Charles) and Jason (Scott Porter) to “recurring” status. They will appear when the writers wrap up their stories, but they will not appear or be paid on a regular basis.