Get a Life
Chris Peterson is a carefree, childlike bachelor who refuses to live the life of an adult. At the age of 30, Chris still lives with his parents and maintains a career delivering the St. Paul Pioneer Press; a job that he has held since his youth. He has no driver's license (instead, riding his bicycle wherever he goes). He is depicted as being childish, naive, gullible, foolish, occasionally irresponsible, and extremely dimwitted. His lack of intelligence is exaggerated to absurd levels: at one point, he tries to leave his parents' house but is unable to operate the front door. He also fell out of an airplane after opening the plane's airlock, believing that the "EXIT" sign was a restroom.
Chris' parents (Fred and Gladys Peterson) are a vapid middle-aged couple who are almost always seen in their pajamas and robes (even when they leave the house). They are often shown doing something abnormal like polishing handguns, or trying to shoot the deer that ate the flowerbulbs out of their garden. Gladys (Elinor Donahue) is a smiling, caring mother who doted over Chris, though often makes cynical, passive-aggressive comments about him and his lifestyle. Fred (Bob Elliott) is a much more blunt, wise-cracking old man, who is constantly exasperated by his son, and seems to have a reckless disregard for Chris' well-being (on one occasion, Chris demonstrated how his father taught him to use a shotgun by placing the barrel in his mouth).
In the early episodes, Chris wanted little more than to spend his days reliving his childhood with his father and his best friend, Larry (Sam Robards). Larry was Chris' friend since childhood, but unlike Chris, Larry has since "grown up", owns a house, works a dead-end job as an accountant, and has two children and a wife, Sharon (Robin Riker). Sharon is an overbearing housewife who does not want her husband associating with Chris, preferring instead that he make friends with more sophisticated socialites that better befits their image. Sharon despises Chris, and Chris takes any opportunity to irritate her. Larry is envious of Chris' carefree lifestyle, and is often coerced by Chris into joining him in his adventures, despite his wife's wishes. To Chris' dismay, Larry eventually heeds his advice and leaves his wife and children at the beginning of the second season. This leaves Sharon traumatized, and she becomes more and more obsessed with killing Chris in revenge.
In a defiant nod to Fox Network demands that his character "be more independent", Chris Peterson was moved out of his parents' house at the beginning of the second season, much to his parents' amazement and joy, and into the garage of ex-cop Gus Borden, played by Brian Doyle-Murray, who had been fired from the police force for urinating on his boss. He is a gruff, demeaning sociopath with minimal tolerance for Chris' antics, which Chris seems to be oblivious to, while looking up to Gus as a sort of paternal figure. For that reason, Gus serves as Chris' comic foil throughout the second season.
One of the more controversial episodes featured a character named Spewey the Alien (a parody of the films Mac and Me and E.T.), an extraterrestrial who secretes mucus from under his scales (which Chris proceeds to drink and call the "nectar of the Gods") and projectile vomits when he becomes emotionally overwrought. At the end of the episode, Peterson and Gus barbecued and ate Spewey, although the creature was resurrected inside their refrigerator.
psychedelic