An early television show starring Jennifer Aniston has repeatedly killed the cast

Summary

• Jennifer Aniston was part of the cast of a sketch comedy series in which characters died in every episode, leading to dark comedic scenarios.
• Early in her career, Aniston appeared in many shows that were canceled, but she remained confident and eventually became a star in “Friends.”
• “The Edge,” the sketch comedy show starring Aniston, featured biting humor and a talented cast, including future stars like Tom Kenny and Wayne Knight.

TV LEGEND: Jennifer Aniston starred in a short-lived sketch comedy series in which the cast was “killed off” in every episode.

When Friends When it debuted in 1994, virtually all of the cast members became instant superstars. Interestingly, none of them were “stars” before that. Friends When it came out, virtually all of the actors were familiar faces to audiences. Courteney Cox was of course the most famous of the six and had a number of notable roles (perhaps the most famous being Alex’s girlfriend in the hit TV series, Family ties), but Lisa Kudrow had a recurring role in the hit series, Crazy about youMatt LeBlanc received two separate spinoffs of Married, with childrenDavid Schwimmer had just had a remarkable story arc in the first season of NYPD Blueand Matthew Perry and Jennifer Aniston were regularly cast in new sitcoms. Therefore, they all became household names with Friendsthey were all already relatively sought-after artists BeforeFriends.

However, it doesn’t always help to be “in demand” when the shows you’re cast on keep getting cancelled, and Jennifer Aniston has been on A LOT of cancelled shows. She never let that discourage her, though, telling Howard Stern in 2019 that she never worried too much back then when the shows she appeared on kept getting cancelled quickly, as she enjoyed waitressing, enjoyed acting, and was confident that she would eventually “get there.” And obviously SHE DID. Along the way, however, was an unusual television show she hosted for one season in 1992-93 called The edgewhere the entire cast would be killed in almost every episode!

What was “The Edge”, the sketch comedy show with the young Jennifer Aniston, about?

David Mirkin was a longtime sitcom writer who became the showrunner of the hit series. Newhartin the 1980s, and received his first Emmy nomination in 1987 for the episode “Co-Hostess Twinkie”. However, Mirkin’s interests were not really in the multi-camera format, and he left Newhart 1988 freelance work as author for single camera series such as It’s Garry Shandling’s show And The Tracey Ullman ShowIn 1990, Mirkin launched the surrealist comedy series Do not you have anything else to dowith Chris Elliott, for Fox (one of the most notable “cult classic” sitcoms of all time). Someone out there obviously felt that Mirkin’s keen sense of humor would mesh well with the comedy of Julie Brown, the comedian who was best known at the time for her “Valley Girl” comedy songs and her Madonna parodies.

Mirkin was co-creator The Julie Show in 1991 with Brown (and Brown’s longtime collaborator Charlie Coffey), but the series was not picked up by NBC. NBC liked Mirkin and Brown, however, so the network commissioned Mirkin to come up with a concept for a sketch comedy series starring Brown. NBC eventually rejected the concept, but Fox picked it up, and The edge first aired on Fox in 1992.

The concept behind it The edge was to do, well, you know, edgy sketch comedy (I’ll write a future legend about one sketch in particular that was TOO edgy for a major TV creator), while at the same time moving at a very fast pace and constantly moving from sketch to sketch. The talent on the show was incredible. Brown was the star, but the cast included a fore-SpongeBob SquarePants Tom Kenny, aMr Show Jill Talley, aHis field Wayne Knight, director Paul Feig from before his big success and of course Jennifer Aniston.

Aniston, then in her mid-20s, was often treated as a token “hot girl” on the show, doing sketches as a bikini model or in a sketch where the audience tells the characters what to do using electrodes hooked up to the actress’s brain, and the audience wants her to take her clothes off in front of everyone. That kind of thing…

By far the weirdest thing about the show was that they killed off the cast in every episode!

How come the cast of “The Edge,” including Jennifer Aniston, kept getting “killed off”?

In the first episode, Brown and the rest of the cast introduce themselves just before the set collapses on them and crushes them to death…

In the second episode, after assuring the audience that they were safe, they all had their heads cut off with a giant sword…

In the third episode, everything looked promising until they learned that an archery demonstration was about to take place and they were all killed by arrows…

In the fourth episode, they escaped from the set but were hit by a truck…

In the fifth episode, they left the set wearing helmets and protective vests, but did not notice that their clothes were completely soaked in gasoline, which was set on fire…

For Halloween, the entire cast brought candy that turned out to contain alien eggs, and the aliens burst out of their chests…

In the seventh episode, a potential question-and-answer session with the audience goes awry when Tom Kenny mentions “Who Shot Jr?” and the cast shoots everyone one by one…

In episode 8, it turns out that a man they think is a security engineer has actually installed a portal to hell…

In the ninth episode, the actors are hung by their necks (hanging is always very difficult to portray realistically without putting the actors in great danger, which is why it always looks a bit cheesy)…

Finally, in the tenth episode, the cast hides in the dark, but a gunman has night vision goggles and is able to take out the cast one by one in the dark (something like that would NEVER work today, not even in a “provocative” sketch show)…

By this point, Mirkin was probably just tired of the joke, as it was left out for the rest of the game. Mirkin actually left the show during the first season because the studio cut the show’s budget (he became showrunner on The simpsonsstarred in two of its most popular seasons, Seasons 5-6) and the show was canceled after Season 1 (Mirkin came back to edit a “best of” episode and try to extend the show).

Hilariously dark stuff!

The legend is…

STATUS: True (at least for the first ten episodes)

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