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The Brian Benben Show is an American sitcom that aired on CBS in 1998. It stars Brian Benben as a long time news anchor at KYLA-TV news in Los Angeles who is replaced by a younger person when the ratings begin to drop. The series was cancelled after only four episodes aired.
1998
Brian's career and ego nose-dive when his station manager replaces him with an attractive but dimwitted young duo, Chad and Tabitha. Benben is relegated to the role of human-interest reporter, a beat with no shortage of opportunities for embarrassment, especially when it comes to interviewing a 102 year-old woman.
When Brian learns that the only way to make ends meet financially is to sell his beautiful house, it's a bitter pill to swallow. Chad, however, makes him choke on the pill when he offers to buy it from him -- cash -- right on the spot. Brian's pride takes a back seat when he rebuffs Chad's offer and decides to do celebrity endorsements instead.
Brian tries to contain his anger toward Chad's evil side, but the anger finally erupts. Brian takes out his anger on some circus clowns he was supposed interview for one of his live human interest stories. In response to Brian's eruption, Beverly orders him to take anger management classes. Kathy Kinney acts as the anger management class facilitator. While there is a lot of hostility and badmouthing in the anger management class, Brian is still able to find out what his problem actually has been all this time. Brian's cure to his anger is to eat chocolate every time he would like to smash Chad's face. Brian has a lot of anger in him, but also a lot of chocolate.
Brian's cure of eating chocolate when he is anger, causes him to gain a lot of weight. Oddly enough, this additional weight seems to cause Tabitha to appear to become attracted to him. Julie is suspicious of Tabitha's motives, but Brian decides to go out with her anyway. During their first date, Brian sees pictures of her old boyfriends and realizes that Tabitha likes very large men.
Brian meets and falls for Summer, a real babe who turns out to be a real nut. She is a flat-out militant vegetarian, and environmentalist and Brian is not. He pretends to feel the same as her, and they end up tied to a tree.
Chad shows no intention of ending his ""secret"" cruelty toward Brian, so Brian tries in every possible way to show Kevin LaRue and Billy Hernandez the evil side of Chad. He fails every time. Frustrated, he places a secret camera in Julie's earring when she starts dating Chad to capture Chad's evil ways.
In a special segment for the news broadcast, Brian and Chad have to demonstrate how drinking can affect driving with a special video game. After seeing that a couple of drinks have not noticeably affected the two men, Beverly hands them some ""help"" and they quickly get drunk. They ended up visibly drunk and alter the regular news broadcast. During this drunken experience, Brian and Chad bond, which makes Julie very happy. Her two favorite men are finally getting along. But that doesn't last, and by the end of the episode Brian and Chad try very hard to hide from Julie the fact that they are still at each other's throat.
Beverly decides to have the news broadcast tested by a focus group. Oddly enough, Brian turns out to be the most popular with the focus group, while Billy ends up the least popular. After refusing to change his segment of the show for the sake of the ratings, Billy quits, and Beverly replaces him with Brian. Brian wants to help Billy get back on the air, but he accidentally does a great job, which makes it even harder for him to persuade Beverly to hire Billy back. Brian can't help feeling guilty about this situation and blackmails Beverly with some compromising pictures. After Billy's return to the show, it turns out Beverly read the results wrong and that Billy's segment was highly regarded.
While Kevin is giving a motivational speech to children in the studio, Brian is doing a live report in a sports-memorabilia restaurant. Unfortunately, the restaurant owner ""proudly"" presents the evidence of one really embarrassing moment in football history, namely Kevin's final fumble on the field, which was also the cause of his early retirement. Kevin becomes very depressed. Brian tries to lift Kevin's spirits, and they go the opening night of the restaurant to steal Kevin's football. They find real-life athletes defending the ""treasure.""
Wendell Pierce
Charles Esten
Brian Benben
Himself
Lisa Thornhill
Luis Antonio Ramos
Susan Blommaert
Streaming availability information not available
