Maria Ferrari is a staff writer on "The Bill Engvall Show." She is a graduate of Northwestern University.

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Episode 203 - No Gifts, Please

One of the great things about working on this show is having Bill come into the room and tell stories. I know what you’re wondering, and yes, Bill is a really nice guy. Now, granted, in Hollywood that’s a phrase we toss about fairly lightly. I’ve called people I’ve worked with “really nice” just because they didn’t happen to key my car that morning.

But with Bill, it’s the truth. He’s absolutely as grounded and kind and funny in real life as he seems like he would be when you watch his stand-up. So we love to have him in, because poaching stories is a lot easier than thinking up new ones. And the fact that he has older kids provides us with a lot of material we can use for Trent and Lauren. This week’s B-story grew out of Bill trying to wake his son up for school, pleading “Dude, wake up!” in about the same broken tone you would plead with your dog to stop throwing up on the couch.

Bill also gets huge props for being a hero during the scene where Bryan is in Bill and Susan’s bed. I think the true test of whether someone is really a nice guy is putting a child actor’s feet up through the neck of his shirt into his face, and then see how many takes you can get him to do before he asks you to write a different end to the scene. (For the record, Bill did FIFTEEN… and never asked us to change a thing.)

The anniversary story was one of those stories where we’ve all been there. I can’t reveal the exact source of the ‘bad gift’ idea for fear it would end in a messy divorce, but I definitely relate. For some reason my husband and I have a really hard time with anniversaries… starting with the very first one, when he surprised me with a trip to the frozen food aisle of our local grocery store, took off my blindfold, and said with absolute, heartbreaking sincerity, “Baby, pick out anything you want.”

I mean, the idea was good. The idea was he wanted to make a nice dinner, which was very thoughtful, and the calzone we ended up choosing was almost heart-shaped. He has many other fine qualities. John, I really love you. You always know how to fix the Internet.

So that’s about it. Tune in next week, when the writing staff asks ourselves, did we really need to put so many Boy Scouts in this scene?