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I had seen "The Bizarro Jerry" episode of Seinfeld, but it was the episode, more than Tim as Kevin, that made an impression. Other than being a nice guy, the character of Kevin didn't really have much for an actor to play with. But In 1998, Tim guest-starred in Cupid, and I said, "Who is THAT?", and I've been following his career ever since. He is unbearably sweet and darling in this role.

Cupid was a wonderful, hilarious show set and filmed in Chicago. It was canceled way too soon, because ABC sucks puréed donkey balls through a Krazy Straw. It was remade... this? Last? season, and was unbelievably crappy, and thank God it was quickly taken off the air. (I could go on a diatribe about how ABC treated the original, but instead I'll just give you the premise, and then links to Tim's episode, "The Linguist," on YouTube.)

Jeremy Piven plays a man who believes he's Cupid. According to him, he's been banished to Earth for some transgression against the gods, and has to match up one hundred couples without using his godly powers (bow&arrow, for example) before he can return to Mount Olympus. (One of the lovely things about the show is that it's never quite clear if he *is* Cupid or not--he does seem to have a few things going on that are not quite explicable.)

His psychiatrist (Get it? Cupid & Psyche?) is Dr. Claire Allen, who, in the pilot, winds up taking "custody" of him, in a way, so that he can be released from the asylum where he's being held. No one has any leads on his real name, where he's from, anything. (He goes by the name Trevor Hale, for reasons made clear in the pilot.)

Claire, on top of her private practice, runs a therapy group for singles. Trevor joins up, and it becomes a battle between mind and heart as to the best way to find love matches for the group members.

Trevor has found a roommate named Champ, who works at a bar while he tries to get jobs as an actor. In Trevor's room is a string of 100 beads, hung from the ceiling. For each couple he matches up, he moves a bead from one end of the string to the other.

In "The Linguist," Tim plays Jennings Crawford, a professor of Linguistics at the University of Chicago, whom Claire enlists to try to figure out where Trevor might be from via his accent and speech patterns. But Jennings turns out to need Claire and Trevor's help as much as Claire needs Jennings' help....

(Oh, and keep your eyes open for Tim's wife, Elisa, in a two-scene role; Claire meets her in a bookshop where she's looking for books on Glenn Miller.)

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If you want to save the episode to your computer, simply copy each link, and then paste it into the field at KeepVid and click "download." It will give you several filetype options for you to save it as.

I cannot stress enough how freaking adorkable Tim is in this. Seriously. I fell completely in love.

All comments about the episode and character are welcome here. SO. FREAKIN'. CUTE.

(x-posted to