Retooled Life and Times of ‘Drew’

Football announcer John Madden isn’t the only change to ABC’s Monday night lineup.

A retooled “The Drew Carey Show” launches its eighth season at 8 tonight with a new female co-star and a new workplace along with its new time slot. The rest of Carey’s familiar ensemble returns, including the glasses, the dopey pals and the annoying archenemy.

With cast member Christa Miller departing the sitcom, the writers are marrying off her character, Kate, in a two-part story that concludes next week.

Even before Drew learns that the woman he loves is leaving his life forever, Drew is down on his luck. The department store has gone bust, costing him his menial job, and his ex, Nicki (Kate Walsh), is mooching off him.

Drew’s prospects perk up when he begs his way into a job as an “internal expediting analyst”--he doesn’t know what it means, either--alongside rival Mimi (Kathy Kinney) at the dot-com retailer that has taken over the store.

Meanwhile, Cynthia Watros (from “Titus”) joins the cast as Drew’s childhood chum Kellie, who returns to Cleveland after a divorce. When Drew and his friends Oswald (Diedrich Bader) and Lewis (Ryan Stiles) find the homeless Kellie working in a strip club, Drew rescues her by offering his “spare” room.

But Kate’s surprise engagement spoils Drew’s bliss, and next week he resorts to desperate measures ranging from reason to kidnapping in an effort to thwart her marriage.

Obviously, this new “Drew” is hardly innovative, but fans of his silly, self-deprecating humor won’t object. The amiable Watros steps easily into her role as this troupe’s straight man. Who is she, or anyone, to argue with Drew when he explains, “If you saw me start to strip, you’d stop me, right?”