Greatest Event in Television History #4

In the newest Greatest Event in Television History, Paul Rudd and Adam Scott recreate the opening to "Bosom Buddies."

The Bradys

 

It is the 90's and there is time for... Bradys.

In 1988, CBS aired a Brady Bunch reunion called "A Very Brady Christmas" and it was a big hit. I remember, not so much seeing it, exactly, but learning about it as a myth. "Did you know they made a Brady Bunch movie where they're all adults?" was passed from kid to kid as we watched TMNT or played Nintendo, which was the style of the time.

From that success, TV executives realized they could make Brady specials every few years to allow audiences to check in on the Bradys and see how things are going, and also to keep milking the cash. From that idea, someone said, "Why not a regular series?" "Fine," they said. And at some point - I don't know who or why or how - someone said, "Let's make it a drama."

Yes, the Brady Bunch show of the 90's was a serious drama, for some reason.

It's pretty nuts but this Brady Bunch show went up against "Family Matters" and "Full House" in its time slot. It also failed badly and was axed after only 5 episodes.

Here's the rundown (spoilers to follow for this crappy show):

Bobby Brady became a racecar driver in the Christmas special. In this series he crashes and is paralyzed in the first episode. Throughout the rest of the series he will hope to, and work to, get out of his wheelchair. It's fun, silly, Brady Bunch action.

Also, Bobby meets and marries a woman played by former MTV VJ Martha Quinn, which is notable.

Jan is married and is having sex. Her and her husband are trying to conceive (and having trouble) and the show makes it abundantly clear that Jan is having ALL OF THE sex. So much sex. I will never look at Jan the same way again.

Cindy is a radio DJ and dates her boss.

In the Christmas special, it is revealed that Peter is engaged but in the first episode of this series, he calls it off. Peter is a ladies' man and the joke is he basically dates a new girl every night. The only person having more sex than Peter is Jan.

Greg doesn't have much to do. He's a doctor and married to a beautiful wife (the new Gidget) and is just... kinda... he's just winning at life. That's pretty much his story.

Marsha is an odd situation. Marsha is the only case where the original actor didn't want to be in the show and had to be replaced. Which is too bad because... everyone loves Marsha and I am everyone. The Marsha character is married to a whiny loser for some reason. Her husband's main skill in life is to get fired from as many jobs as possible, leaving his family homeless. It's annoying.

Marsha slips into alcoholism. Why? It seems the show's explanation for her alcoholism is that she's bored one day and just starts drinking. And then she admits she has a problem, says she's going to get professional help and she never does. By the end of the show she is cured of alcoholism merely by deciding not to drink anymore. It's a serious topic, handled with skill and nuance.

Alice is basically comic relief and is just hangin' out. She's still married to Sam the butcher.

Mike Brady gets so fed up with his local government that he runs for office and wins. The Bradys help him with his campaign. Carol is there too.

One other note about "comic relief." The show is a terrible attempt at a serious drama, like I said, but the ratings were so bad that a few episodes in they start adding a fake laugh track to try to tap into the old Brady magic but it just makes things worse. A bad drama with a laugh track is just bonkers.

Top 25 David Brent Moments

Ricky Gervais counts down the Top 25 David Brent moments on "The Office" and gives some behind-the-scenes insights.

Late Night - The Tom Shales Saga

 In an interview with Howard Stern, Conan talks about the rough experience of his early Late Night days and identifies the specific moment when he was at his lowest:

"The one that comes to mind is... we were just on the air for 2 or 3 months and things weren't going well and then I did Charlie Rose's show when he went, 'Well, you're probably aware of what came out in the Washington Post today... The top TV critic in the world just wrote this piece and here's what it says- and it goes...' It was a brutal take down of me, Andy, everything..."

This is a story Conan had told before, though the way it was told and the location in which it was told obscured its gravity. In 2003, Conan recounted the Charlie Rose episode to Charlie Rose:

Rose: I remember at one point you, early, were on my show--

Conan: Yes.

Rose: And it was during the difficult time.

Conan: It was the beginning of the difficult time, I think, you- you informed me of one of my worst reviews when I was first here.  It was about 2 months into the show--

Rose: I read it to you?

Conan: And you said I don't know if you're aware of this and you started reading and it had just come out that morning... 

Now, through the magic of Youtube, we can watch the original 'offensive' interview from 1993:

Here is what Charlie Rose actually said:

"If in fact you're doing the show you want to do and critics - I just saw a piece by Tom Shales, I think, saying, 'Look...', you know, it's not working for him as a critic - does it bother you or do you say to those critics, 'I'm doing the show I want to do. If you don't like the show I want to do, then sorry. I can't please everybody but this is what I want to do, I found my voice, it's the show I want, it's the combination I want, we are approaching what I want to be."

Quite a difference. Quite a difference. It isn't Rose reading the hit piece to a horrified Conan on national TV. It's briefly mentioning the review and using a phrase - "it's not working for him" - is arguably the kindest and most sanitized summary of the article possible. 

It's amazing how wrong Conan's memory of it is. But this isn't uncommon - memory is not as reliable as people think. It's quite a problem of History. If you were writing the story of Conan, who would you take as more reliable to talk about his own experience than Conan himself? And if a person recounting the major events of their own life are unreliable, how do we trust the things passed down through indirect accounts?

That aside, I accept Conan's answer to the "lowest point' question, outside of Charlie Rose. Conan got a bad Tom Shales review during a critical point in the show, it was devastating to him and that was his lowest moment doing Late Night. And I suppose, some time after that, Charlie Rose's part grew from announcing the review to reading it.

One point that I can pretty much confirm from Conan's story is where he stresses the importance of critics back then. It does seem silly now, but they did have a great deal of power in shaping public perception, for whatever reason. 

Here is that Shales review, by the way, if you'd like to revisit it. And it's worth noting that 3 years later, Shales did another review that reassessed the show and was much kinder to Conan. Shales noted that the late night landscape had shifted drastically and essentially called Conan "The New Dave".

10 years after the original review, Tom appeared on Conan to promote his new book. Conan confronts Shales about the bad review (though within the bounds of the playful interview shtick).

Another aside about memory and history. In this interview, we have both Conan and Shales agreeing that the phrase "white Irish shark coming at you" was used in the review when it doesn't appear at all. 10 years after an event that directly affected them, they agree on a hallucination.

A final aside. I always found it creepy how Shales sounded so similar to Roger Ebert. It was disconcerting. How is it that the top film critic in the world and the top television critic in the world are both fat men with glasses and similar voices? I don't know but I also never heard anyone mention it.

To Conan's great credit, he seems to have handled the whole thing with great grace and, of course, seems to have a great sense of humor about it all. Shales passed away in 2024.

Why Are You Laughing? - The Life and Times of Tim

"Why Are You Laughing" the history of comedy podcast, talks about the HBO animated series "The Life and Times of Tim."

And since you, and I, have never seen or heard of the show, it becomes a case of "Eh? You want to check it out, right?"

And I do want to check it out because he uses the magical phrase "the most underrated show of all time." Any show with that descriptor is a show I want to see. Of course, I think the most underrated show of all time is the Canadian show "The Newsroom" - which nobody has seen and when you suggest it people think you're talking about a different show and dismiss your opinion, and even if they don't, and in the 1-in-a-million chance that try to check out the show, they won't find it anywhere; but even if they did find it and watched it, they'd shrug and say "meh, it was just 'ok'" and not see where I was coming from at all, maybe you just had to be there, man - but that's neither here nor there.

Or maybe my pick for most underrated show of all time is "Hogan's Heroes."

Oye Listen AIDS is a Killer

This PSA aired in my area so often, it's not ingrained in my mind and gets stuck in my head often. This, despite the fact that I don't know 90% of the lyrics and never have.

For whatever it's worth, I think this youtube version is sped up and the proper playback speed is 0.90.

Oye! Listen! AIDS is a killer!

Watching Every Episode of MST3K

Somewhere around 2000-2003 (college) I resolved to watch every episode of "Mystery Science Theater 3000." It was the heyday of file-sharing, in those days, and such a thing was just, at that precise moment, theoretically possible. Big, special shout-out to eDonkey and eMule. "Possible" but not necessarily easy.

To illustrate the effort of watching every MST3K episode, I used to say that it was harder than watching every episode of "The Simpsons" (or basically pick any long running series you want). The reasoning is simple: there were (at that time) about 200 episodes of MST3K and each one was about 1.5 hours long, so that's about 300 hours of viewage. Compared to "The Simpsons", I'll even include all the episodes made since then, the math is: 805 episodes, at 0.3 hours each episode that's about 250 hours of viewage. Note: it's a pretty good metric for comparison because download effort and file availability are generally proportional to the length of material. This metric, of course, doesn't take into account how bad "The Simpsons" has become, though.

Given the disorganized nature of file-sharing, I created a spreadsheet to act as the source of truth, each episode listed, each had a "watched" or "not watched" status. I even added percentage calculation and a countdown to 0 because I had a lot of time on my hands and it seemed cool. But on that spreadsheet there were always 4 blank spots: 4 "lost" episodes that did not exist publicly in any form.

After 1 or 2 years (perhaps more, it was a long time ago), I finished the goal - I had watched every available episode and, by that time, I simply made peace with the idea that there were 4 episodes that just did not exist.

Then, in 2008 the "Pilot Episode" ("The Green Slime") (not really an episode) was shown at a convention and bootlegged on Youtube. Check. Down to 3.

Then, in 2016 two more "lost" episodes ("Invaders From The Deep" and "Revenge of the Mysterions from Mars") were found by the MST3K Producers in their archives and were released to backers of the 11th Season Kickstarter. Check and check.

That left ONE unreleased, "lost" episode.... One episode that no fan has turned up. One episode that even the creators of MST3K confirmed they had no access to.... What are the chances that someone somewhere taped it, kept the tape, held on to it for 38 years and never told anyone?

A few days ago, arthurputie on Reddit posted that his cousin had bought a load of old VHS's at a garage sale in the Minneapolis area and that one of them was labeled with the episode name ("Star Force: Fugitive Alien II"). Arthurputie confirmed it to actually be the lost episode and it has now been uploaded it to Youtube. 

Lost no more.

This is not posted as a recommendation. If you are not a MST3K fan, avoid the early episodes at all costs. If you are a MST3K fan, still avoid this at all costs. This is only posted for Completionists like me with a 25 year old score to settle. That, and it's also a fascinating archeological discovery.

So here's the final word. I have now watched all the episodes of MST3K, it is still difficult and the spreadsheet has not been updated to 0 because it was lost in a hard drive crash 10 years ago. Oh, and new episodes are in the works.

The Cinematic 90s Diner

Cigarettes & Coffee - 1993

Look at the entire aesthetic of "Cigarettes & Coffee" and compare to...

High and Dry - 1996

That's extremely close.

Of course "Cigarettes & Coffee" is Paul Thomas Anderson's short film that was later made into...

Hard Eight - 1996

And there's also...

Pulp Fiction - 1994

and 

The Big Lebowski - 1998

And if you're worried that we've jumped from the booth to the counter, I promise this is the only time. And anyways you can cover that here.

And now that we're in Comedy there's...

Can't Hardly Wait - 1998

And...

Swingers - 1996

And then if we go over to Television...

Seinfeld (1989-1998)

Why, Charlie Brown, Why?

 

One of the things I love discovering and posting about is pop-culture surprises and oddities. A while back I looked at the history of Peanuts TV Specials and noted the oddity of the live-action "It's the Girl in the Red Truck, Charlie Brown." There is another Peanuts oddity that I have been avoiding posting anything about but I may as well just get it over quickly and move on.

I'm just going to say it. The plot of "Why, Charlie Brown, Why?" is: a little girl in Charlie Brown's class gets cancer. And.... that's not what you expect when you want to watch Snoopy.

I can't do a beat-by-beat breakdown of how wacky and crazy it is - it's well executed, I suppose. The noteworthy thing is just the very concept is shocking and unusual. So it exists, I watched it, it doesn't make sense to me but perhaps that's due to the nature of Peanuts - it's watched by kids but wasn't intended to be solely for kids; it's not afraid to get serious among the jokes, and so forth.

Evidently it was well received and was praised for helping educate kids on this subject.

The Complete History of It's Always Sunny

The Blind Mike Project tells the complete history of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia."

Fonzie Fights Tom Hanks

 

No, "Fonzie Fights Tom Hanks" is not the latest AI slop, it's the slop from the 80's known as "Happy Days."

In this episode, "A Little Case of Revenge," Fonzie's nemesis from 3rd Grade has been harboring a grudge since then and shows up wanting to fight him using the art of "karate." The karate nemesis is, of course, played by Tom Hanks.

The scene is played for laughs so, unfortunately, it's not as wild and whacky as it sounds. 

This role helped launch Tom Hanks' career. Ron Howard used to be the star of "Happy Days" but had moved on to directing. He saw the episode and that led to him casting Hanks in "Splash." This is also the first time anyone hits Fonzie.

Transformers: The Movie - The Apology Tour

 

Hasbro is apologizing for traumatizing you when you were a child by killing off Optimus Prime in "Transformers: The Movie."

The natural consequence of this is that they'll be re-releasing it to theaters this May for its 40th anniversary.

I was a huge Transformers fan and was at the exact age to get hit by it as a phenomenon. I remember exactly where I was when I first saw the scene where Optimus dies. I have to say, of all the things that traumatized my childhood, this wasn't one of them. I can't explain why, and it did hit me, it just didn't hit me hard.

The Super Bowl Honeymoon

 

The continuing tradition of doing decidedly non-Super-Bowl things instead of watching the Super Bowl... the historical exception being that I'd watch if the Eagles were playing but even that is inconsistent. For my own records, here's the run-down of the previous 30 years...

Pre-2011 - Puppy Bowl I, Muppet Treasure Island, Follow That Bird.

2011 - Bob Ross Marathon

2012 - Family Ties Marathon

2013 - Steel Magnolias

2014 - The Bridges of Madison County

2015 - Various, Poetry

2016 - Best of the Worst, Da BullS

2017 - Cooking, Super Mario Bros. Super Show

2018 - Super Bowl

2019 - I don't know, did I forget?

2020 - How Green Was My Valley?

2021 - Facts of Life Marathon

2022 - Jem Marathon and Film

2023 - Super Bowl (boooo!)

2024 -  Little House on the Prairie Marathon

2025 -  Super Bowl

And I'll repeat, of course, that this recurring tradition jumped the shark in 2021.

So this year, no real idea came to me. No gimmick, no hook, no high concept. Then this week I went a little crazy with work and when the weekend came, I didn't feel like doing anything.

It occurred to me that not watching The Super Bowl gave me a great opportunity to go grocery shopping during the game and have the store to myself. There were still some people around, and I don't usually shop on a Sunday night, but it was basically successful. A "pro tip" if any of you are in the same situation.

Another thing that occurred to me: with today's high being about 18 degrees Fahrenheit, it was a good day to make a fire, which I did.

And now for the main thing...

Some time back, I heard Jean Shepherd recounting a Honeymooners episode and opining that the show was much more sophisticated than it gets credit for - and a show worth remembering. As far as I can tell, the plot he describes was made up by him, for what purpose I don't know, but there's no time for that mystery now. That story, plus the fact that I never saw much of "The Honeymooners," plus the fact that it only lasted one season and "only" had 39 episodes planted the seed that I might, someday, watch the full series.

So tonight's experiment was watching "The Honeymooners." Only 3 episodes, by the way. Here is where I might usually go through the episodes in depth but I don't think I can do it justice. Ralph Kramden and Ed Norton are one of the great duos in comedy history, of course. And at the same time, Ralph Kramden and Alice Kramden are also one of the great duos in comedy history. It's a classic early American sitcom. For a long time I thought it was the earliest sitcom still rerun on TV but here's the trivia on that: "I Love Lucy" premiered in 1951 and "The Honeymooners" didn't go on the air until 1955. It was the cheaper sets and the rougher video quality that fooled me into thinking it must be much older.

A few interesting pieces of trivia from imdb:

• Two episodes were filmed per week instead of the usual one per week for weekly shows.
• Gleason, a veteran live performer, chose to deliberately stage the show as a play using a live audience, something that was still a very new concept in television in 1955. As such, Gleason eschewed rehearsals as he wanted the performances to capture the feel of a live show, even though all episodes were taped and aired later. Due to under-rehearsing, almost all episodes contain a mixture of dropped lines, missed entrances, actors correcting or covering for another's lines, and moments of general confusion. Gleason did not re-shoot or try to conceal these flaws as he wanted the audience to feel like they were watching a live broadcast.
• The show was shot "as live" (filmed before an audience, edited, and shown later). If you ever notice Jackie Gleason patting himself on the stomach, it was a sign that he had forgotten his line.
• CBS and Buick, the show's sponsor, wanted a second season. Jackie Gleason refused because he felt that the quality of the scripts wouldn't sustain it for another season.

The bit about eschewing rehearsals is incredible. The scenes are looonnnnggg and filled with tons of dialogue. How they remembered it all and performed first-time, is beyond my understanding. And then two episodes per week?! What? Amazing.

Having watched the first three episodes, I plan to keep watching. In addition to being a timeless classic, the show has a certain nostalgic feel that defies explanation. I never lived in the time of the show and I didn't grow up watching the show on reruns but somehow it feels cozy and comfortable, like it's from my past, somehow. And no, I'm not making allusion here to "The Flintstones."

Making a 90s Cable Simulator

Just recently I discovered a new site that simulates 90s television. Now, completely unrelated, someone sent me this video where a guy creates a 90s cable television simulator, complete with an actual cable box. It's quite involved.

Growing up, I didn't have cable so I have no nostalgia for the cable box and only some nostalgia for the channels. MTV is a big one, Nickelodeon obviously and then Comedy Central later in the decade.

I Love the 90s

 The website:

https://www.ilovethe90s.app/

Is in Beta. It's meant to simulate watching television in the 1990s using Youtube as its database. Check it out, if that's you're thing.

It's similar to http://www.my80stv.com/ and http://www.my90stv.com/ which appear to be offline or permanently shut down.

Gary Busey Pet Judge

Gary Busey has a new show where he presides, as judge, over real disputes involving pets. And by "new show" I mean it's labelled 2020 but I've never heard anything about it until now. And by "real disputes" I mean "probably fake but it's not worth thinking about."

The following preview gives more context than the trailer, I think:

There are a collection of clips on youtube like the one above. The show itself is on pluto.tv.

The announcer for this show appears to be Shadoe Stevens.

It's the Girl in the Red Truck, Charlie Brown

According to the internet there are over 50 Peanuts TV Specials and movies. Although I'm a big fan of Peanuts, I have made no attempt to watch them all. My impression is that they're mostly cash grabs by TV execs, rather than genuine creations from Charles Schulz.

Having said that, when I heard there was a Peanuts special that tried to blend animation with live-action footage, I had to see it for the bizarre "this can't be real" aspect of it.

I'm not going to say it's terrible... I'm not going to say it's terrible... For some reason it centers on Snoopy's brother Spike - despite the title clearly referring to Charlie Brown as if he's involved - and it's very boring. The key take away is that in this special almost nothing happens at all. I don't know who they thought this was going to appeal to. The main conflict is: a boyfriend signs his girlfriend up for an audition and she's mad because she wasn't consulted. Is that really going to draw in the kids? I'm an adult and can't care less. If you don't want to go to the audition, don't go. Nobody cares, get over yourself.

As I mentioned before, I would like to chalk this up as a cash grab with little input from Charles Schulz but that's not the case. He wrote and produced it. One of the things he most wanted people to know was that it was in production before "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" came out. In other words, the idea for mixing animation with live-action wasn't lifted. Noted. He also said of this film, "I wanted this to be my Citizen Kane, but it's not."

Mr. Plinkett's What Happened To Star Wars?

 

I largely agree with Mr. Plinkett, aside from the fact that I have no opinions on "Andor" and "The Acolyte" because I haven't seen them. I am an old Star Wars fan who is not passionate enough to continue through the crap and also not passionate enough to complain about the crap. I've made my peace with reality, although this review brings the mourning back to the surface, ironically enough.

I miss the humorous Mr. Plinkett videos. This is solid anal-sis but it's a bit depressing, to be honest.

The Mitch Hedberg Project

 

In 2001, Mitch Hedberg filmed a pilot for MTV which would document the comedy tour of himself and his friends.

The show was not picked up and never aired. The footage has recently re-surfaced and is presented above.

It's quite rare to hear a new Mitch Hedberg joke, these days.

1980s Drug PSA

This is a drug PSA that aired in the mid-80s.

I saw this repeatedly when I was 4 or 5 and it freaked me out and haunted my dreams. I've been looking for it for a while but all I remember is a creepy girl waving a white stick and I remembered it involved climbing stairs, for some reason. Finally found it.

It'll make you feel good, good, good, good.