Dharma & Greg

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Dharma & Greg

Genre	Sitcom
Creator(s)	Dottie Dartland Chuck Lorre
Starring	Jenna Elfman Thomas Gibson Susan Sullivan Mitch Ryan Mimi Kennedy Alan Rachins Shae D'Lyn (1997-2001) Joel Murray
Country of origin	United States
No. of episodes	119
Production
Running time	22 minutes (per episode)
Broadcast
Original channel	ABC
Original run	September 24, 1997 – April 30, 2002
Links
Official website
IMDb profile
TV.com summary

Dharma & Greg was an American television situation comedy broadcast between 1997 and 2002 on ABC.

The premise of the show was a relationship between two characters regarded as cultural opposites. Dharma (Jenna Elfman) was raised by hippie parents, a practitioner of yoga and an adherent of Eastern spiritualities. Greg (Thomas Gibson) was an attorney from an upper class, old money family of Republicans. They married each other on their first date.

The show focused on the characters' marriage and the compromise of their different values. However, both Dharma and Greg were more moderate than their parents, often caricatures, in personality and viewpoints. Most of the episodes take place in or around San Francisco, as that is where the main characters live (Dharma's parents live in Marin County).

1 Main characters
- 1.1 Dharma
- 1.2 Greg
- 1.3 Kitty
- 1.4 Edward
- 1.5 Abby
- 1.6 Larry
- 1.7 Jane
- 1.8 Pete
2 Other characters
3 Cancellation
4 DVD Releases
5 Vanity cards
6 Syndication
7 Episode Guide
8 External links

[edit] Main characters

[edit] Dharma

Dharma Freedom Montgomery, née Finkelstein (Jenna Elfman) is Greg's wife and a flower child. She is extremely peppy and ditzy, but she also seems to be more compassionate and forgiving than most people. Dharma encourages Greg to seek happiness, rather than fret about practical issues like money. Due to being homeschooled by Abby and Larry, she has a limited understanding of Western culture and is very naïve when it comes to trusting strangers. She is named after the concept of dharma in Indian philosophy.

According to Chuck Lorre's eleventh vanity card (see below), he and Dottie Dartland originally conceived Dharma & Greg as "a series revolving around a woman whose personality is not a neurotic product of societal and parental conditioning, but of her own free-flowing, compassionate mind."

[edit] Greg

The lawyer Gregory "Greg" Clifford Montgomery (Thomas Gibson) is Dharma's husband. He is an upright, uptight, decent, though sometimes surprisingly open-minded, man. Greg's life was hopelessly banal before he met Dharma and married her on their first date. Since then, he has played straight man to the antics of his eccentric wife. Though his and Dharma's relationship has been rocky at times, Greg has never been shown to regret their marriage. He is shown to be an alumnus of the famous Phillips Exeter Academy, Harvard University, and Stanford Law.

[edit] Kitty

Katherine "Kitty" Montgomery (Susan Sullivan) is Greg's snobbish mother. She highly disapproves of Dharma and is often successful in making her feel guilty. This often has the unintended result of making Dharma try to make it up to her in a "special" way, which everyone tries (unsuccessfully) to talk her out of and which then leads to Dharma having another fiasco to make up for.

Kitty is generally represented as a manipulative, controlling woman and the other characters tend to consult her when they wish to do something evil. As an elite socialite, Kitty was initially quite displeased to have Dharma and her parents join the family, since they aren't exactly the kind of family she can present to her country club friends. However, she comes to accept Dharma somewhat over the course of the show and has even gone to her for condolence on rare occasions. She has also tried, unsuccessfully, to make Dharma come around to her way of thinking, especially involving the "responsibilities" of being the wife of a Montgomery.

[edit] Edward

Edward Montgomery (Mitch Ryan) is Greg's eccentric father. His philosophy for dealing with women involves remaining as uninvolved as possible. Head of Montgomery Industries (though he keeps going to work only because he can see little tugboats out the window) and at odds with Dharma's father, who calls him "Ed" and whom he calls "Finkelstein." Ed is often seen drinking martinis and Scotch.

[edit] Abby

Abigail "Abby" Kathleen O'Neil (Mimi Kennedy) is Dharma's caring mother, who encourages her daughter and son-in-law to produce children; "Feel free to have sex anywhere." Although they have a grown daughter and later a son, she and Larry are not married. Unlike her "lifemate" Larry, she immediately accepted Greg, though she still constantly annoys and conflicts with his parents. She is a militant vegan, which is a never-ending source of trouble.

[edit] Larry

Myron Lawrence "Larry" Finkelstein (Alan Rachins) is Dharma's father. He is a stereotypical sixties radical who frequently rants about various conspiracies. Despite this, he manages to get along with Edward, often when both are sick of dealing with Kitty. It is often alluded to that Larry is a chronic user of Marijuana, though never proven. In the pilot episode Abby explains his usual cluelessness with "he blew out his short term memory back in 1972".

[edit] Jane

Jane Deaux (briefly Jane Cavanaugh) (Shae D'Lyn) is Dharma's friend. She considers all men more or less evil; over the course of the show, her hair went from black, to red, to blonde. She and Dharma met when Dharma was calling strangers to meet new friends. D'Lyn left at the end of the fourth season, though she had one "guest appearance" in season five.

[edit] Pete

Peter "Pete" James Cavanaugh (Joel Murray) is one of Greg's fellow lawyers and a graduate of the Bob Marley School of Law. He's a particularly bad, lazy lawyer and was married to Jane for a time. His entire life can be summed up by the interior of his apartment: a massage chair surrounded by empty take-out containers, next to this is a small refrigerator and a stack of porno tapes. A high-class entertainment center is in front of this. It is said he wears adult diapers to football games. Greg once said of his friend; "Pete went to Law School in Barbados, he failed the Bar seven times. The last time because he threw up on the exam."

[edit] Other characters

Celia (Lillian Hurst) — Kitty and Edward's Hispanic maid. She is given constant support from Larry, who views her as "oppressed." When Kitty and Edward are out of town, Celia and her family move into the Montgomerys' mansion and invite their friends over, pretending it's their house. (appears in 16 episodes)
Marci (Helen Greenberg) — one of Dharma's Co-Op friends; nausy-voiced receptionist, whose vocabulary primarily consists of the words "I'm sorry" (appears in 17 episodes; Greenberg also played a different character in the episode "Drop Dead Gorgeous")
Susan (Susan Chuang) - another of Dharma's friend from the Co-Op, she is seen as Marci's counterpart. Susan also pulls a "Dharma & Greg" with a lawyer hired by Kitty in a community garden spat (Her wedding, along with Dharma's accident was the Season 4 finale). (appears in 17 episodes)
Marlene (Yeardley Smith) — Greg's legal secretary who he fired and then re-hired. She is snide, rude, and a bad secretary in general, though a better "lawyer" than Pete. (appears in 13 episodes)
George (Floyd Westerman) — an elderly American Indian, who came to live with Dharma and Greg in the episode "Indian Summer"; he died at the end of the episode, but his ghost sometimes appears to Dharma to offer her advice. (appears in 4 episodes)
Charlie (Kevin Sorbo) — a university professor going through a divorce who falls in love with Dharma. His affections, particularly a love letter and offering to drive Dharma home on a rainy day, cause Dharma and Greg to briefly separate. (appears in 4 episodes)
Young Greg (Matthew Weiss) - Greg as a young boy. Falls in love with Dharma instantaneously when the two swap glances for the first time while barely missing each other on the subway. (only appears in pilot)
Stinky — Dharma's and Greg's dog; a long-haired mutt
Nunzio (Bud 1997–1998, Butch 1998–1999, Twiggy 2000–2001)— Stinky's dog, a Welsh Corgi; a gift from Dharma on Stinky's Bar Mitzvah

[edit] Cancellation

After a moderate success of five seasons, the series was cancelled in 2002 along with Spin City and Once and Again due to low ratings during the 2001–2002 season and a change in target demographics.

Years after the show was over, both Jenna Elfman and Thomas Gibson would return to television with their respective shows Courting Alex, a short-lived comedy, and Criminal Minds, a crime drama, back to back on Wednesdays on CBS during March 2006.

[edit] DVD Releases

20 Century Fox has released the first season of Dharma & Greg on DVD in Region 1 for the very first time. It is unknown if the remaining 4 seasons will be released at some point.

DVD Name	Cover Art	Release Date	Ep #	Additional Information
Season One		June 13, 2006	23	Audio commentary for "Pilot" and "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Father" by Jenna Elfman, Mimi Kennedy and Alan Rachins, When Worlds Collide: The Dharma & Greg Story, Vanity Cards, Reaching Your Inner Dharma

[edit] Vanity cards

At the end of each episode, a message appeared on the screen for a brief moment, so that it is readable only to those who record the program (using a VCR, for example) and pause it. These "vanity cards" were written by producer and show co-creator Chuck Lorre, and express his personal views on a variety of subjects. These vanity cards are also seen at the end of episodes of CBS' Two and a Half Men, also a Chuck Lorre production.

[edit] Syndication

Country	Alternate title/Translation	TV Network(s)	Weekly Schedule
Argentina		Cosmopolitan Channel
Australia		Seven Network, W. Channel
Bulgaria		bTV, Fox Life
Denmark	Et umage par ("An Odd Couple")	TV2
Estonia		Kanal2
Germany	Dharma und Greg	ProSieben, Comedy Central
Austria	Dharma und Greg	ATV+
Japan		NHK, FOX, Fox Life
Netherlands		RTL 5	M-F @ ~19:30
Spain		Paramount Comedy (Spain)
Turkey		CNBC-e	Aired in 2000-2003
United Kingdom		ITV, Living TV, Paramount Comedy 1
United States of America		FX Networks and WE: Women's Entertainment