In news that likely generated the kind of excitement rarely seen these days on the “Hans and Franz FANZ” message board, NBC has picked up a half-hour comedy pilot as a potential starring vehicle for Kevin Nealon. The as-yet-untitled show—co-written by Nealon with his wife, Susan Yeagley, better known as the matriarch of the Sweetums candy empire on Parks And Recreation—finds him playing one-half of a recently divorced couple, whose jointly owned Vegas bar still binds them to both their families and each other. (“You can pawn your wedding ring in Vegas, but you can’t pawn FAMILY,” is no doubt the tagline currently sitting on an NBC whiteboard somewhere.)
This would mark Nealon’s first starring role on a network television sitcom, though his most recent success (following his long-running stint as a cast member on Saturday Night Live) was as a regular on the Showtime dramedy Weeds. Since then, he’s done a number of guest-star appearances on various shows and turned up in several films (most notably as the “male lead” in Aliens In The Attic—which is to say, the main character who was not an animated alien). And while Nealon has done a number of roles in beloved smaller projects (and has some excellent stories to share about those projects), really, we can all agree that the important thing is that, in any long and storied career, you gotta harness in the good energy, block out the bad. Harness. Energy. Block. Bad. Feel the flow, Happy. Feel it.