Search results

Airing exactly 39 years and one day ago, The Facts of Life Goes to Paris* didn't have any crooks in it that I recall. At least with that show, they didn't ignore the events of their movies when they came home, since the chef who trained Mrs. Garrett actually visited her and the girls at...

Most of those episodes are copying the movie Rashomon. Even Diff'rent Strokes and Mama's Family did it, but only they acknowledged Akira Kurosawa by calling one "Rashomama" and the other "Rashomon II."

One of those flashbacks even had Bea Arthur in a wheelchair as Sophia's mother while yet another had Dorothy as a 7-year-old child jealous of newborn brother Phil (who died next season in the same calendar year). So in that case, they knew having Bea play a younger version of herself wouldn't...

I was a 1980s kid and a 1990s teen, so I caught the tail end of a lot of this sense of ritual you talk of. We missed Peak Catchphrase and had to experience it vicariously in reruns, but we still talked about The Simpsons every Friday morning. I still remember the last episode of Cheers and...

Steven Keaton was the manager of a PBS station. Do you really think NBC was going to depict their competition in a positive light? Then again, they did air Big Bird in China.* He still seemed like a Rhodes scholar compared to some of his contemporaries. But as for your point about them doubling...

I would say Family Ties was one of the better shows from that era, and any episodes I've re-watched as an adult I've still gotten plenty of laughs out of. They were obviously trying to copy Norman Lear's production style with the use of videotape, the lack of background music, and the...

That had already happened when it was still All in the Family. The edge already started to wear off the character once Mike and Gloria had the baby and moved into George and Louise Jefferson's house. But to keep showing Archie's life without any of these people and show him having learned...

I'm trying to imagine the look on Mick Jagger's face while cashing their royalty checks. Dean's old comedy partner Jerry Lewis also had a son who thought he was a musician.

It's interesting that back in the days when networks couldn't even refer to each other by name, their cast members could still do guest appearances on shows on "another network," as they used to say. With only three to choose from back then it shouldn't have been hard to guess which one. But in...

MTV Unplugged … before there was even MTV!

Maybe she thought you meant TV about old people, not TV that is old.

The main thing I noticed about that episode is the fact that Louise forgot about her meeting Sammy in Queens, which was about a year before George ever set foot in the Bunkers' house. So his refusal to enter a white man's house (not his words) before his brother Henry left cost him a chance to...

Some people seem to think the original also aged poorly. Either way, based on what I saw of the show, Anthony Booth looked like a much better actor than Rob Reiner, who wasn’t even the first or second choice for the US remake.

All in the Family was also based on the British show Till Death Us Do Part, but very few episodes of the UK original still exist.

That happens to a lot of shows when they get old. It's harder to get the same comedic reaction as before, so the stakes naturally get higher and higher until it eventually comes at the expense of the characters themselves.

I could never get into the "gospel according to St. Hawkeye" years of M*A*S*H. I thought the show was at its best in the years that McLean Stevenson was on it, i.e. the same number of years the actual Korean War lasted. Those post-Henry Blake years rarely get a viewing from me. It's the same...

My grandfather almost got sent to WWII but the war ended. Then, many years later on the other side of my family, my uncle got drafted for the Vietnam War but the war ended.

The singer, Julie Rinker, was also on The Dean Martin Show while her father, Al Rinker, was in a group called The Rhythm Boys with none other than Bing Crosby and later went on to co-compose "Ev'rybody Wants to Be a Cat" from The Aristocats, the only song in the film not composed by the Sherman...

Well, from my perspective, the men she co-starred with both here and on LA Law were nothing to sneeze at.

Funny they should object when the lyrics of the song don't actually mention the sexes of the protagonist and the object of affection. As for any "confusion," I think Annie Leibowitz cleared that up with a certain Rolling Stone cover photograph a year later. Ironically, the producer of that...

I'm glad you enjoy them. Sorry about the finger sprain. Look on the bright side: at least you won't get eyestrain since this time there are no footnotes!

Phyllis: “Pilot” (9/8/1975): The shortest-running spinoff of The Mary Tyler Moore Show had the most auspicious beginning, coming in 6th place in the 1975-1976 Nielsen ratings and being mentioned in the movie Network as being one of the top-rated shows on TV. Phyllis Lindstrom (the late Cloris...

LA Law: “McKenzie, Brackman, Barnum & Bailey” (2/17/1994): Stuart’s latest case involves dueling jugglers (Michael Moschen, Carl Carlsson) arguing over how much money and credit one owes the other. Jane represents Erica Hastings (Gelsey Kirkland), a ballerina suing a ballet company to get out of...

LA Law: “Safe Sex” (11/11/1993): US Attorney Shale warns Stuart not to expect any special treatment for Jay Ellison, who is up for a bail hearing. Stuart wants a different prosecutor. Arnie wants some more security in the building. Ann and Jane defend ValuSquare, a department store chain accused...

That was the one Tandem/TAT/Embassy show I couldn't stand then and can't stand now and I watched all the others in reruns (and remember the network runs of the ones still standing after Norman Lear sold out) at one point or another. In fact, that show more than any of the company's others put...

The days when a network would take a chance on an out-of-the-box show like that are over because it would be more likely to end up on cable or streaming.

It's funny how a show could get canceled then with better ratings than a show considered a hit now. There's just so much stuff out there today that you literally can't watch it all and still have a life. There just aren't enough hours in the day.

The Jeffersons: “George’s Family Tree” (1/25/1975): When Mother Jefferson invites herself to dinner, Louise gets as tired of hearing George’s “ladder of success” stories as she is of dinner with her mother-in-law. As the Willises come by with a housewarming present, an African statue, George...

There was barely any TV when he was a kid, so in his case it's difficult to blame TV for his crimes. I'm not a big fan of the idea that TV is to blame for antisocial behavior or beliefs in general.

Then by that logic, I guess it's good Charles Manson was already an adolescent by the time TV became widespread because who knows how much more damage he could have done otherwise.