Some actors work all too seldom while there are those that are never too far off your entertainment radar so ubiquitous are they. Case in point: if you saw the promos, read the TV Guide’s ‘Returning Favorites’ issue, or tuned in to the show itself, you noticed that John Goodman has joined the cast of Community. Yes, John Goodman is joining a series already in progress. But hey, wait a minute! Didn’t John Goodman just join another series in progress earlier this year—namely, Damages? Yes, he did. There were ads showing a scowling Goodman lined-up with the series regulars as that drama got relegated to Direct TV, and no sooner  had that season wrapped up on September 14^th, when the following week’s schedule found him in his new job on NBC. This comes as another John Goodman movie, Red State, is opening sporadically in theatres around the country. Later this year he’ll be seen (but not heard) in the silent, black and white French film The Artist, which has been winning raves at film festivals. And this is all happening the year after he was featured as a regular on yet another show, HBO’s Treme, until his character ended his own life. What’s with all this John Goodman fever, you may ask? And I say, why not?

Let’s face it: John Goodman is a great addition to the entertainment scene and has been since the mid-80’s. I first remember him as Huck Finn’s dirt-bag dad in the Broadway musical Big River, in which he was given a memorably outspoken solo number called “Guv’ment.” (That’s Southern-speak for government, y’all). I also recall him singing a tune called “People Like Us” in the weirdly enjoyable David Byrne movie True Stories and playing an inept bank robber in the Coen Brothers’ Raising Arizona. But then, bang, overnight Goodman became the most unlikely star when he was chosen to play Roseanne Barr’s husband on her sitcom in 1988. While Barr became the most reported-on, undisciplined celebrity of her day, making plenty of enemies in her efforts not only to make her show work to her satisfaction but to ensure that she shared her every outspoken thought with the public, Goodman, in contrast, seemed to get on nobody’s bad side. Indeed, he himself had no complaints about his television wife’s brusque behavior on the set and both critics and public agreed that he grounded the show and helped make it something more than a Barr showcase because he was never once upstaged by his larger-than-life leading lady. Because Roseanne was a comic and not an actor, it was up to Goodman and the other cast members to help her shine, as indeed they did. His portrayal of Dan Conner was alternately comforting and edgy, which is true of much of the actor’s work. In addition to attaining stardom, he earned Emmy nominations for the first seven of the show’s nine seasons, though no wins. (His only Emmy to date is for guest starring on Aaron Sorkin’s unpopular Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip). How famous was John Goodman because of Roseanne? Well, I remember him passing me on 57^th Street years ago, and after he’d gone by hearing one gawker say excitedly to another guy, “Oh, man! Did you see him? That was the ‘fat guy’ from Roseanne!” (Okay, so public response to celebrity doesn’t usually coincide with tact; hey, give the guy a break—he’s lost weight in recent years—maybe he overheard his ‘fans’?).

Fortunately, during Roseanne’s long run, everybody was so anxious to work with Goodman that television didn’t shut down his movie career, as he kept busy on the big screen during his series’ hiatuses, supporting Al Pacino in Sea of Love, carrying a biopic of The Babe (as in Ruth), and bringing everybody’s favorite caveman to life in The Flintstones. And once Roseanne began sinking in a sea of misguided ideas in its waning years, Goodman even did the right thing there, choosing to back off and only appear in select episodes. It was clear that even if Roseanne couldn’t seem to do the right thing with her own personal relationships, at least she had married the right guy on television.

Continuing to escape bad luck, Goodman  did not become one of those unfortunate folks who is typecast by a hit series and therefore fails to get substantial work after its cancellation. Not Big John! He just kept bouncing around from movies to television, accepting all kinds of work: voice roles (Monsters, Inc.), cult movies (The Big Lebowski, pictured right), brief supporting roles (Coyote Ugly, The Jack Bull), occasional star parts (The Borrowers, The Year without a Santa Claus), participation in a Bob Dylan self-indulgence (Masked and Anonymous), children’s television (Sesame Street), and the lowest of the low (Death Sentence, Freshman Orientation, to name but two). Unlike many a performer who’ve found the faster and easier way to make money in acting by sticking to the Hollywood soundstages and turning their back on their theatrical roots, Goodman actually has taken the time to return to the stage (The Seagull, Waiting for Godot). Between naps he even squeezed in two ill-fated sitcoms, Normal, Ohio (the joke being that JG was the world’s most un-stereotypical gay man) and Center of the Universe, the failure of which nobody blamed on him. These were rare instances of a star from a successful series failing to reclaim a past glory that didn’t come across as desperate or sad. (We’ve all seen our share of those). Instead, it just seemed like John Goodman was doing his job as professionally as required and then moving on to other things when the shows didn’t click.

So, I say bring on the Goodmans, in bunches, in series that run and series that don’t, in movies good and bad. Put him on stage, in commercials, on lunch boxes. Whatever! I’m always glad to see him. I love the fact that someone who looks like a Far Side character became a star; that he never goes down for the count, even in trash. He’s dependable. He fits in everywhere, no matter the genre, the assignment, the tone. Maybe I’m biased, but I enjoyed his performance on the season opener of Community more than any of the established cast members. His timing is that spot on. Oh, what the heck—his role on that series probably isn’t too time consuming; I’m sure there's another show or two that could benefit from his presence. Just get him a golf cart and he can shuttle back and forth between the soundstages. I’m sure few people would complain.