The third season of the show has more of the usual: Becker smoking, Becker complaining, the supporting cast cracking jokes, some sort of mishap or zany comedic adventure that is solvable in 30 minutes. In other words, it is formulaic, but for some reason it works. While Ted Danson is excellent as Becker, the supporting cast does a great job as well. Saverio Guerra as Bob earns the most laughs out of anyone in that show. He’s a fast talking scumbag, but for some reason, he is still lovable. He’s like the guy you would see outside of a stadium trying to sell you scalped tickets, and you end up doing it anyway because he makes a convincing case. Alex Desert, who also sings in the ska band Hepcat, just radiates cool as the blind Jake, but he radiates cool when shopping for groceries while wearing socks with sandals. There are a lot of blind jokes made at his expense and occasionally he breaks character by doing something non-blind, but it’s not a big deal.
The best episode of the season is entitled “Smoke ‘Em If You Got ‘Em.” In it, Becker makes a bet with Jake that he can quit smoking successfully for a day. If you have ever watched a sitcom in your life, you can guess how it works: the day gets more and more stressful as he craves the cigarette more and more. It’s definitely the funniest episode by far, with Becker’s hatred of people getting showcased even more so and it gets so stressful at the end that even you as the viewer want to have a cigarette.
The show does have its faults. It’s very formulaic and the humor is mostly for an older crowd. Becker’s rants, which are funny a lot of the time, also come off as annoying at some points and you just wish for him to shut up. Shawnee Smith is absolutely god-awful annoying in her role as Linda. It is written for her to be stupid, but her voice is just so grating that you want to hit mute every time you see her on screen. I just about clawed my ears out every time she opened her mouth. Thank god she dropped that voice for the Saw films. As for the DVD itself, it has no special features whatsoever, so if you were looking for that tell-all Becker documentary, look elsewhere.
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