Okay, so I did a search, and found no thread actually about Dharma & Greg (though the "Committed" one makes a comparison to it in the heading). So I guess I'm good to go!
I was a big fan of this show, especially in the first season or two when it was the strongest. True, it became a bit more erratic over time, but it's still a lovable, fun show with interesting characters. I also love the romantic chemistry between Dharma and Greg. (Greg is just simply hot!) But then there are also all the wonderfully nutty supporting characters: Kitty and Edward, Abby and Larry, Jane, Pete. Maybe others will be more critical of the show than I am, but I guess that's allowed, too. Just wondering what people's thoughts are and what some favorite moments were.

Starting with:
Dharma, answering Greg's call phone, "Hello, Greg's pants. Sorry, he's not in them right now!"

You know I only find Greg attractive in the beginning. I dunno, in the later episodes he just didn't do it for me. Of course I hated the later episodes with that other kid......what was his name? Harry?

The first episodes were great though. And the "Greg's pants" quote is classic. It always makes me laugh.

I thought Greg was always nice looking. It's Dharma who started to look less hot and get too skinny. I loved Kitty and Edward a lot; they had a .

Did you guys know that you can read Chuck Lorre's vanity cards online?

I agree, Cress, about both D&G. Dharma got to be really skinny after a while. Also, when she changed her hair in the later seasons, it was pretty, but it just seemed to change her personality too much for me. I have an undying affection for Greg, however. Kitty and Edward were brilliant. I really love them, and also Dharma's parents. Abby is a lot like my own mother, which I think is really funny, though thankfully there is no one in the family who resembles Larry! Not that he isn't a brilliant character, but you know what I mean!

My friend and I watched the show avidly in the beginning and usually rewatched each one on tape over and over- one detail we liked was what we called the "Devo-hat lamp", you know, the red plastic lamp in their living room that looks a bit like a bunch of giant Legos stuck together. Or, as we liked to think, like the hats that the guys in Devo wore in the old "Whip It" video. I always loved their house, both places.

I enjoyed the first season of this show, but really loved the second season when they developed the courage of their own demented convictions and started following through their most absurd plots to conclusions you never thought they'd dare. For example, in the one where Greg gets a new boss, from Mississippi, who thinks D&G are southern [thanks to one of Dharma's role-playing shopping trips], you wait and wait for the humiliating moment of exposure and it never comes. I started to lose interest in the show around the time Dharma was attracted to Kevin Sorbo. However, I've caught some of the later episodes in syndication and enjoyed them.

I loved most of the cast - the character of Pete overstayed his welcome, but otherwise, they were all great. But my favorites were Edward and Kitty. I never understood why Susan Sullivan never got an Emmy nomination. But it was wonderful, after all those years of tragic soap opera heroines, to see that she had a great comic matriarch bitch inside her... I remember an interview with her and Mitchell Ryan, talking about how they were both in the dramatic series "Executive Suite" and how interesting it was to play together in a comedy.

Wow, I didn't realize that when I posted earlier, I left an incomplete sentence hanging like that. I was going to say that Kitty and Edward had a nice dynamic, and I also liked their maid. Remember when Dharma convinced her to invite Kitty to a wedding, and Greg and Dharma became valet attendants? That was funny.

I remember that one! I thought that was really inspired. A favorite Kitty episode of mine was the one where she's upset about being old and Dharma tries to cheer her up by taking her to a bar on an army base to schmooze with the cute young guys. Kitty's putting on the charm and having a good time when one of them says to her, "You remind me of my mother." At first, Dharma's afraid the moment's been ruined, but Kitty thinks for a second and replies, with a glimmer in her eye, "Young man, how old is your mother?" I forget what he says, but anyway, she was young enough that Kitty was flattered, and said to Dharma, "with a few nips and tucks, I could look even younger than that!"

I also love the way throughout the show both Dharma and Kitty think the other has changed for the better over time- under her influence, of course!

I caught a rerun the other day, and it ended with a line you don't usually hear on tv - or anywhere, for that matter.

Greg, to Dharma: "My father's penis is green, and it's your fault."

I'm still laughing.

Too funny! I believe you that that's a real line, but what was the context?

When a bunch of Greg's old things arrive from Casa Montgomery, Dharma finds an old notebook that turns out to be Kitty's - and it contains a very good piece of erotica of the 'heiress and stableboy' variety. Dharma coaxes Kitty to attend her 'erotica circle' [which features Abby and several other recurring women of their circle] and, when Kitty demurs, Dharma reads the piece to the others, who all adore it [and imagine themselves and their favorite men in the lead roles]. Thus encouraged, Kitty agrees to submit it to a publisher, who says if Kitty can expand it, they'll put it in an anthology. Kitty, in the name of 'research', becomes wildly demanding of Edward, who is rapidly exhausted. Various ruses to convince her he's ill or injured don't work, so he takes Pete's advice [never a good idea] and puts a fake gold wrist watch around his penis... and you can guess the rest.

There's also stuff about Dharma as Kitty's editor, and how the more actual sex Kitty gets the worse her writing gets, and how Greg reacts to hearing WAY too much about his mother's sexuality and takes refuge in model ship building, but you get the gist of it.

Sounds like a good one! I'll have to look for it in the reruns.
(Greg takes up model ship-building! You never know what they'll think of!)

Yay! I'm glad I'm not the only one who likes this show. I've actually been watching it in reruns quite a bit lately. I really liked Greg; whatever happened to Thomas Gibson? The straight man never gets any credit. And by straight I mean as opposed to weird, not as opposed to gay.

The parents were all great and I like that even though both couples were complete stereotypes at first, they got more fleshed out and they all eventually became somewhat likeable. I really liked the dynamic between the two fathers.

I agree, the parents were wonderful. I love all four of them. I like the way Dharma often manages to drag personal issues out of Kitty and then starts to understand and appreciate her more. (But still thinks she's stodgy!)
How many shows have so much in-law interaction? It seems like the parents are in pretty much every episode.

Thomas Gibson (Greg) had some screen credits before D&G. I don't know about since then, but he was in the miniseries Tales of the City, and I believe a soap opera as well.

I heart Greg!

After "Dharma and Gregg", Thomas Ian Gibson was in a couple of movies, including "Eyes Wide Shut", "Psycho Beach Party" and the second "Flintstones" movie. I also remember seeing him playing the hero cop in some "serial killer back from the dead" thriller a couple of years ago. A bit of a step down, if you ask me.

If we're talking about guest stars, I liked the one where Lindsay Sloane played Gregg's rebellious niece who was sent to live with them for a week. She is hot!

Yes, if you're a fan of Ho-Yay, go rent Tales of the City. Thomas Gibson and Billy Cambello doing it? Hello!

Yay! I love this show too. But I can only catch the reruns on the strange day that I'm home during the day. So, can anyone tell me why Dharma's in a wheelchair?

I love when Gregg is on pirate radio and has the line, "What action is a crime, a breach, and a tort? That's right, embezzlement." Hee, legal jokes.

As the season finale one year, I think Dharma and Greg were having some fight in the car on night, but then they made up and started driving. They ended up in a car accident, and in the next season Dharma was slowly recovering from that.

How does the show finally end? That I can't remember at all. Did it end with a real wrap up episode or just suddenly stop?

It ended with the episode where Dharma, Greg, and both sets of parents were going to stay in a cabin in the woods for the weekend. Dharma & Greg got stuck on the road somewhere and started having a fight in the car about how they would raise a kid if they had one. They eventually made up and started making out. It implied that they were going to make a baby that night, so I guess that was supposed to be a kind of wrap-up for them.

Meanwhile, the parents were fighting. The Finklesteins got offended by the deer heads and other hunting trophies in the cabin, so they protested by camping outside until Kitty and Edward confessed that the dead deer just got killed in a car accident. They promised to bury the corpse somewhere or do a spiritual offering, then the Finklesteins would come back inside the cabin.

THAT was the last episode? I never would've thought of that as the last episode. Thanks, Cress, for that answer

I liked the show but every once in awhile Dharma would get on my nerves. She acted like she was all about acceptance and letting people do their thing, but only when she agreed with what their thing was. Maybe that was the irony of the show and I just missed it.

I think sometimes it was supposed to be ironic, and sometimes it was just inconsistency.

I think Greg might have called Dharma on that once or twice, saying, "You're only accepting if it's your idea of acceptance" like when she forbid him to join the army or when she wanted Kitty to fight with her instead of bottling up her feelings and pretending that embarrassing stuff never happened.

Yeah the series finale was kind of weird. Maybe the writers weren't given enough warning to wrap things up? Chuck Lorre's website, which houses his vanity cards, show him begging for viewers in #103 and saying goodbye to fans in #107.

Yeah, the series finale was sort of meh. But like Cress suggests, maybe the writers weren't given fair warning.



Yes, I think it was after the debacle between Dharma and the professor. She'd enrolled in a college class and Greg was being a jerk about it (she was spending time a lot of time studying) and Dharma was hurt by his lack of support, she felt lonely, and eventually she hit it off with her professor and they kissed. She was full of guilt and told the professor it can never happen again. Somehow Greg found out (I think he found a letter Dharma had written to the professor telling him that they need to stay away from each other) and the shit hit the fan. Dharma swore there was nothing between them and she and Greg started to move past it. But one night the professor was standing in the rain and couldn't get a cab and he begged Dharma for a ride. She refused at first but eventually gave in, and Greg saw them and blew up again.

What was cool about that episode was Kitty's reaction. She admitted to Greg that she wished he'd married someone else, but she knows he wouldn't have been remotely close to being as happy as he is with Dharma. She persuaded him to forgive Dharma. So one night, Dharma and Greg are attending a wedding and as the couple are saying their vows, D & G look at each other and smile and almost cry and begin to make up. On the way home, they're talking, and Greg suddenly swerves to miss a deer and the car rolls over. In the following season's premiere, we see that Greg was okay but Dharma was pretty banged up and was in a wheelchair for awhile.

I hope I remembered that right!

One of my favorite Dharma/Kitty moments:

Kitty was being honored by some charity she worked with, and at the banquet, Dharma was standing on a ladder hanging up a banner she made that said: "Kitty Montgomery, You Are a Huge Asset To [whatever the charity's name was]. Dharma suddenly slipped and fell off the ladder and accidentally tore off part of the banner. What was left was:"Kitty Montgomery, You Are a Huge Ass"
LOL!

Thanks, Cress and Phenobarbara- I missed most of the last season or two because I was overseas, and believe me, watching year-old episodes of D&G dubbed in French is not the same! I'd been wondering how the show ended, too, and wasn't sure for a while if it had.
I'll have to look for those episodes in reruns, I guess. But it does sound like the writers were setting things up for the next season and then were suddenly told there wouldn't be one. If Dharma and Greg were talking about having a baby, etc. in the last episode, I definitely think the writers were setting the stage for that to come up at the beginning of a new season, since that's a typical kind of end-of-season cliffhanger for sitcoms. Too bad we were just left hanging!
But to me D&G still live on!

One of the things I loved about the show was that it was very fair. None of the characters were treated as if they were completely right or completely wrong. Dharma's 'flower power' could be just as judgmental as Greg's upper crust upbringing.

I'm glad I found this thread, if only to know that there are others out there that enjoy this show.

I really liked Kitty and Edward, as well as Larry and Abby.

And Jane especially cracked me up.

It was a Navy base and they were after pilots. The pilot's mother was 36.

My favorite is "The Official Dharma and Greg Episode of the Winter Olympics".

The Devo hats were actually lampshades. (Thanks, Pop-Up Video!)

My favorite moment is when the parents are throwing a suprise party for Dharma and Greg for some reason and Kitty and Edward have a banner made saying "Welcome Home!" or something like that. They hang the banner and Edward steps back to take a look at his handiwork before saying "Wonderful place, that Kinky's."
My parents haven't called Kinko's by its real name since.

I lived in Austria for a year and only ever saw Dharma and Greg dubbed into German. When I returned to the UK I caught a couple of episodes on cable and was amazed how different everyone sounded in English.

Thanks Cress for letting us know how it ended. The last one I saw was the car crash ep.

ITA. I think that the beauty of this underrated show was the fact that D&G were the answer to all their parents' extremism - a balance between the two extremes.

Sure, the show jumped a shark or two (the supermarket checkout girl's baby, Greg's 2nd journey of self-discovery) but at the same time there was such a loving spirit of fun and they were able to sometimes explore some real depths of their characters and the relationships (eg. when they pretended to date/court each other because they had skipped that part of a relationship and it started to go haywire).

Oddly enough, my favorite moment was when Kitty confronted Dharma about Dharma's feelings for Charlie. Kitty told her that while Dharma was not the woman she'd had chosen for Greg, that Dharma was the women Greg chose. And that real love is not unburdening one's sins and being hurtful but living with the pain and guilt in order to protect those you love. I think it was so sweet because it showed a side of Kitty we'd not seen and, in a odd way, expressed a non-judgemental love towards Dharma. I thought it was very moving.

Does anyone have any news on whether they are ever going to release D&G on DVD? I'm dying for it!!!

I agree, and I also think it demonstrated a core part of Kitty's attitude towards marriage and family, which was very much in character and in line with her upbringing. An earlier episode revolved around Dharma's stubborn need to keep discussing an embarrassing incident between her and Kitty, who preferred to pretend it never happened. Dharma's efforts resulted in an escalation of the embarrassment, until even Dharma admitted that some things probably should be swept under the rug.

It just seems all of a piece to me, with Kitty firmly in the corner of not talking about things, sometimes to the point of non-communication, and Dharma into 'honesty' even when it's not necessarily the kindest or most constructive approach.

I used to hear about how hílarious this show is, yet watching it (the later seasons) I felt it wasn't quite so brilliant. Catching it in reruns now, I realize what people meant: the first seasons are hilarious and the concept of the show is quite original. Only seems like it got watered down a bit towards the ending.

I have mixed feelings about most of the characters. I like that about this show: no one's perfect and it's quite interesting how the point of view is being shifted from conservative to hippie and back, and people's behaviour seems to make sense when you look at it in its own framework.

The "flower child" ideology definitely had some uptight points about it. Can't give a child a traditional Mickey Mouse toy because they don't want "brand names"; Abby not letting Larry eat meat, chocolate, etc.. There were many other examples, I'm sure. When you have an ideology, you have to do things in a certain way, and there's not as much space for personality. I always thought the message was that either of the opposites is restricting and you should go with your heart. Or am I reading too much into it?

The first couple of seasons were so funny -- it's so sad to see what the show became. Though I think one of my favorite episodes may be from a later season -- it's where Teller (from Penn and Teller) plays "Mr. Boots," a man who chooses to live as a cat. Jane asks Dharma to watch Mr. Boots for the weekend, and I love watching Greg's changing reactions to having a man pretending to be a cat live in their apartment. It's such a bizarro B plot!

At the end, Greg is so attached to Mr. Boots that he is sad when he leaves, even though he KNOWS he's not a real cat. Then he asks Dharma: "The dogs are real, right?"

Hee! I liked the dogs - Stinky and what was the other one called? They rarely played a significant role, but they were always there, which is more than you can say about most TV pets. They even took those dogs for walks.

One thing I found disturbing in the early seasons was that after they adopted the black baby, they had to give it back to its biological mother. That was kind of a cliché and not done particularly well. They didn't even fight for the baby - it was as if the writers thought it would be a fun twist, and then decided, "Nah, we're not sticking with this."

You gotta love the Christening seremony with all different religions present though.
Shaman: (reciting something)
Rabbi: Amen.
Shaman: I'm not done!
Rabbi: Oh, sorry. (To the priest) sounded like he was done!

And the priest and the rabbi telling each other, "This kid is gonna be really screwed up."

Nunzio.

LOL! Anyone know why?

Wasn't one of the dogs the pet of the other? I vaguely recall when Greg first met the dogs he said something like "You have dogs?" and Dharma responded with something like "I have a dog. [One dog] is [the other dog]'s pet."

Or am I imagining this whole thing?

Nunzio was Stinky's dog. He was Stinky's Bar Mitzvah present.

Yep. Nunzio was Stinky's dog, I believe. A bar mitzvah present.

Wow, that's actually really cool. That's the kind of originality you couldn't expect in other sitcoms.

Too bad they kinda lost that towards the end.

Yeah, that was a good moment, despite the drhama they bathed the later episodes in (Dharma in a wheelchair and messing herself up? Not funny!). I recall Kitty called her selfish for her wanting to be honest to Greg about her affair.

Anyway, part of the problem of the later episodes was that the characters quickly merged personalities, as what often happens in real life. There was this episode where Dharma realizes she's not as "hep" as she used to be and overcompensates in a big way, only to blow up in her face. It was then that I realized that the show had gone on for too long.

I really liked the episode with Greg's grandmother who died. Dharma and the grandmothers were the only ones to act natural about death, everyone else was really stiff and embarrassed. It was cute - Dharma wasn't being all "you have to deal with this like me" IMO, it was more like "death is a part of life, what's the big deal if we talk about it openly". And the grandmother's vicious behaviour to Kitty made Kitty look a bit sympathetic.

Dharma also played the violin. A Stradivarius no less. She goes to a kids' violin class, and Greg is watching with the parents.
Parent: Which one's yours?
Greg: The tall blonde one!
Hee.

I loved the scene where Grandma is on her death bed in her house and tells Dharma to pick out anything she wants. Dharma doesn't want to, but Grandma insists. She finally chooses the violin.

Kitty: (to Grandma) "You can't give her that! That is priceless!"
Grandma: "No, the look on your face is priceless!"

Good times.

This was a pleasant enough show. In watching a few reruns though, I was struck by how the endings were always so lowkey. The one episode where Greg joins the Army, you keep waiting for some big resolution to occur, but no, nothing really happens. Kind of refreshing and odd.

Also in that ep where Dharma becomes an obsessed 49ers fan. In the end,there's no resolution really. The episode just ends with a joke, end of story. I kinda liked it.

The funniest joke of the "49er" episode was at the end, and Jenna Elfman (technically) wasn't even in it. Dharma and Greg meet 49er quarterback Steve Young on the football field, and Dharma excitedly bolts off screen and "goes long" for a pass. Young throws her a perfect spiral, and we watch the facial reactions of Thomas Gibson and Young as the ball reaches the top of its arc, comes down, and they wince as we hear the "whump" of the ball hitting Dharma.

A pause, and then Greg lovingly calls out: "Walk it off, honey!"

For pure comic strangeness, I'm not sure anything will ever top the Abraham Lincoln dream with the waffles. "They're full of waffley goodness!" "I have some syrup in my pants."

One of the most random D&G's was on a few nights ago: the community garden. I think it was written as a flashback experiment. Show opens with the finale: helicopters and SWAT team descending on Larry, Kitty arguing with Dharma's friends, Ed Asner poking his finger in Ed Montgomery's chest. The rest of the show is all flashback, showing how Dharma was the root of most of the problems.

But what confuses me is Larry's garden. Supposedly, he's growing pot in his curtained-off section of the community garden. And that's why the police raid the garden. But he's shown emerging with a giant zucchini. He wasn't growing pot? And the police want his giant zucchini? Or was that the joke?

I think the police assumed he was growing pot, but he was actually growing the giant zucchini but is so paranoid that he thought that was what they were after. But this is Larry we're talking about, so who knows?

The community garden episode actually started a nice bit of continuity, with Dharma's Asian friend falling in love with the Montgomery family lawyer's son... they married later on, and it was at their wedding that Dharma and Greg reconciled after the final quarrel about stupid Kevin Sorbo.

I never put that together - D&G reconcile at that wedding.

Then again, I didn't watch this during its first run, I've only caught it in reruns.

Continuity, indeed.