The Drew Carey Show

The Drew Carey Show was an American sitcom starring Drew Carey, set in Cleveland, Ohio. In the series, Carey played an assistant manager of personnel at Winfred-Louder, a local department store. The sitcom was known for its everyman characters and themes.

Cast & Characters

Drew Allison Carey (Drew Carey) - The protagonist. Forty-something assistant director of personnel at a department store in Cleveland. He's very much the lovable loser, though it should be noted that he's the most successful of his group of friends. Original founder and owner of Buzz Beer (a special brew the gang makes containing coffee and beer. The brewery is in Drew's garage). A perpetual "nice guy." Has a long-standing feud with Mimi Bobeck, aspects of which include: Destroying Mimi's clothes, shredding her vacation requests and masquerading as Antonio Banderas to taunt her.

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Lewis Michaelangelo Kiniski (Ryan Stiles) - Forms a double-act with Oswald. Lewis is the tall, lanky, blond, insane one. Lewis can be counted on to nonchalantly say bizarre and offensive things. He possesses an IQ of 180. He's a janitor in his forties that works for a company called DrugCo. He notes in one episode that due to accidentally releasing a virus into the population he was busted down to janitor from a position that required he wear a labcoat. It's uncertain if he was a scientist or lab assistant, though it's possible he was joking. At one point he posed as Drew to take his physical for him, and inadvertently ended up taking a psychiatric exam as well. The results showed him to mentally unstable, possibly criminally insane.

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Oswald Lee Harvey (Diedrich Bader) - Lewis's slightly shorter, dark-haired friend, is the dumb one of the double-act. That tends to be his only distinguishing characteristic. Lewis described him once as a "man-child stuck in a state of prolonged adolescence." At one point he was training to be a nurse, but he proved unsuitable. Oswald was a deejay in the first season, but later he became a delivery driver for Global Parcel (a UPS ripoff made for the show).

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Kate O'Brien (Christa Miller) - Friends with Drew, Lewis and Oswald since they were kids. Kate's main characteristic is that she's a bit of a tomboy, a tramp, and a hothead. She and Oswald almost got married at one point, but she called it off just after Oswald threw her a surprise wedding (essentially leaving Oswald at the altar). Kate found out about Drew's long-standing crush on her at their high school reunion, and realized that she had feelings for him too. They dated for a season (even becoming engaged), but broke up when they disagreed about having kids. Drew and Kate were married for a short time in a later season, although this was illegal, as Drew had just become married to his old girlfriend Nicki. Eventually, Drew's sham was discovered and Kate felt incredibly betrayed. It took Drew a long time, but he eventually regained Kate's trust and they went back to being friends. Kate left at the begining of the eighth season, marrying a Marine and moving out of Cleveland.

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Nigel Wick (Craig Ferguson) - Drew's boss after the first season, replacing the never-seen Mr. Bell. Crude, boisterous and offensive. He was also a cocaine addict before he was forced to go into rehab. Wick dominated every scene he was in and was the focal point of the show for a while. For some time, he and Drew were in a homosexual marriage (technically a civil union) in order for Mr. Wick to get his Green Card and Drew to get his job back. When he first appeared on stage in guest episodes in the last two seasons he was greeted with thunderous applause. Wick always had unusual methods of firing employees (and always fired someone named Johnson.)

Related Topics:
Craig Ferguson - Homosexual - Green Card

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Mimi Bobeck (Kathy Kinney) - Mr. Bell's, later Mr. Wick's, assistant. She is an overweight woman who wears a lot of make-up. However she has very high self-esteem and is Drew's arch-nemesis. Mimi vowed to make Drew's life a living hell after Drew denied her a job based on her makeup. Mimi's pranks included gluing Drew's hand to a porno magazine, covering Drew's desk with garbage and eventually sending Drew to China. Her character can be seen as an attack on societal norms of beauty, much as the main character of Rosalie Goes Shopping is. Later on she becomes more of a friend to Drew (they agree to put their feud on hold while Mimi dates/marries Steve) and a good, if unconventional, mother to Gus.

Related Topics:
Kathy Kinney - Rosalie Goes Shopping

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Steve Carey (John Carrol Lynch) - Drew's crossdressing brother. He came to Cleveland and got a job in the cosmetics department in the same store Drew works at. He falls in love with Mimi and they eventually get married. In later seasons the concept of Steve being a crossdresser is abandoned entirely with little explanation (though it is hinted that he gave it up to make Mimi happy). He leaves, along with Kate and Wick, during the early seventh season.

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Kellie Newmark (Cynthia Watros) - An old friend of Drew's from high-school. She was a housewife who was left by her husband. When Drew met up with her again she was working as a stripper. She took Kate's place on the show, but the character was much different. Kellie was probably the only genuinely nice person on the show, and was horrified at many of the goings-on that our characters had come to take for granted. She was also the only liberal character on the show, the others either being libertarian (as is Drew Carey), South Park Republican, or completely oblivious to the world of politics.

Related Topics:
Cynthia Watros - Liberal - Libertarian - Drew Carey - South Park Republican

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