Egg McMuffin

Alice should have tossed that baby out the window. Hester Sue could have caught it. The whole episode is ridiculous on a multitude of levels.

I liked that episode because it shows the streetwise side of Fran that pretty much disappeared after season 1. Fran physically threatens CC if she ever does something like that to one of the kids again (“They’ll be wiping your blue blood off the walls.”) I thought they made the Fran character too daffy (trying to be like Lucy, maybe?) after that season. The season 1 episode where the family is on their way to the airport and gets snowed in at Fran’s parents is a classic.

It would have been fun, for a change of pace, for her to finger the wrong person at the end. And the police turn out to be right and didn’t need her “help.”

I was watching an early one and she was judgmental with the character played by Andrew Stevens, who was her temp assistant. There may have been a good reason. I never understood why anyone talked to her. I would have said, “You’re not the police, so go away.” But of course, then that wouldn’t really work for dramatic purposes. Something about her bugs me, though. Does anyone ever stand up to her and tell her to buzz off?

Police commissioner. He and Wife had charm to spare. So their nosiness somehow seemed less off-putting.

I catch an episode on COZI now and then, and I never realized before what an annoying busybody Mrs. Fletcher is. She’s always sticking her nose in where it doesn’t belong and being awfully judgmental. Oh well. I guess if she wasn’t that way, there wouldn’t be a show. But I don’t remember McMillan & Wife being that annoying.

I wonder if they blew sand or something similar in front of the camera lens, and the actors were further away so they didn’t have trouble. I know that special effects on a TV show in the 70s were rare or pretty unsophisticated.

John Boy can be awfully self-centered and sanctimonious at times. He’s always telling his siblings to be honest. But when they had the house fire and he thought his pipe might have caused it, he hid the evidence and kept his big, hypocritical trap shut. You know damned well that if Ben had come to him and confessed that he thought he started the house fire, John Boy would have been all like “You better go tell your mama and daddy about that!” The Cloudburst is actually one of my favorite episodes, because it doesn’t have a pat, happy ending. JB is arrogant at the end, telling the hydromining guy that he should sell the meadow back. And the hydromining guy declines. Adult John Boy narrates that that land was never to be owned by their family again.

You’re right - they’ll eventually be able to do it. There are a bunch of shows that were only recorded on kinescope, which is even lower resolution that videotape. But they have the technology - expensive right now - to process those shows and add data so that they have the same frames per second as videotape. Check out this video of a 1950s production of 12 Angry Men. It was originally saved on kinescope, but the frames per second were restored to what is the equivalent of videotape. It’s pretty amazing.

I NEVER understood why Sara got all the accolades in the original series while Lecy didn’t. Sara was very good in the early years of the series. But something happened by midway through the series and she started delivering her lines in this monotone straight out of the Tina Yothers School of Acting. Lecy, once she really grew into the role by season three, was excellent - great comic timing and range. I was so disappointed when she left - it upset the dynamics of the whole show (and don’t get me started on PodBecky who came in during season 6).

The other thing - if the Tildens have been living next door to the Connors all this time, Jackie shouldn’t have been so surprised to see Molly. Wouldn’t she have been around sometime in the last 30 years? The people who are writing this just don’t care about continuity. And it’s weird, because of all the showrunners the original show had over the years (and Roseanne went through a LOT of them), it’s Bruce Helford, the showrunner from season five - when the Tildens were on - who is running The Conners.

The original pilot was made on film, and they decided that they liked the “immediacy” of videotape for the series. Too bad. All those old videotaped shows from the 70s don’t look all that great now.

It’s a shame they tried to produce 22-episode seasons of that show. If there were ever a show that would have benefitted from 13-episode seasons - or maybe even 10 - it was Moonlighting.

Aka “Prostitootie“

Jean Sagal is following in the footsteps of her father, who directed TV shows like Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone in the 50s and 60s, and directed the movie The Omega Man with Charlton Heston.

She did, but she probably put a piece of tape on it that said “Tilden” when she lent it to the Conners so she’d be more likely to get it back (typical when you’re getting overwhelmed with bereavement buffet dishes after a death in the family).

That was television in the 50s through the 80s. Unless you were a big star (Alan Alda) or you owned a piece of your show (Donna Reed, James Arness, Carol Burnett, Lucille Ball), you didn’t get rich as an actor back then. Salaries were relatively modest compared to today. If you were lucky, you had residuals for the first few cycles of reruns, and that was it. That really started changing in the 80s and 90s, as actors began negotiating for a piece of the back end (syndication dollars) as opposed to just limited residuals. And even if they didn’t have a piece of the profits, they got higher salaries. That’s also when we really saw the episodes per season decrease - it became too expensive to do 30-40 episodes per season with the higher cost structure. People vilified Suzanne Somers for her salary holdout on Three’s Company. And she negotiated poorly and managed to piss off most of her colleagues. But she was right in principle. That show made over a half billion dollars in syndication, and the actors deserved a piece of it. It’s sad when I see cast members of shows that have been very successful in syndication - like LHOTP or The Brady Bunch - and the actors didn’t share in that success.

She’s basically awful in the whole Bunny arc. And I generally like her, but blaming a little girl like Laura for Nellie’s accident on a horse she didn’t even own is crazy. And had I been Charles or Caroline, I would have visited Harriet and ripped her a new one instead of just standing by and letting Laura get mindfucked. And then I would have forbidden Laura from being anywhere near her or for doing Nellie’s homework for an accident Laura wasn’t responsible for. The part where Laura happily says, “Mrs. Oleson talked to me today!” is wrong on many levels. The Ingalls’ parenting in that episode was subpar, to say the least.

This is the most depressing show on TV. It’s too bad because I really liked the original, especially the early years. And I like the performers, particularly Lecy Goranson. But every week the family’s situation gets worse. I recall from the original series that the Tildens consisted of a single dad and his two daughters. Where did the mother come from? Wings Hauser, who played the dad, is still working.

I loved the Harriet/Perciville dynamic. Anyone know why Alison Arngrim left? Was she bored when they reformed Nellie?

I felt that with The Waltons, when it became less “gritty,” it was somewhat organic. They came out the depression and had more money. Livvie realized that as her children grew, she wasn’t going to be able to control them (they had several episodes devoted to this). And John always stood up for the kids’ independence. One of the better episodes in a later season focuses on a new minister coming to town. The church has fallen into disrepair and John Boy explains in his narration that without Livvie and Grandma around, most of the kids have become backsliders when it comes to attending church.

Simi Valley, where they filmed, gets pretty hot in the summer. That’s why they didn’t even try to fake it for the final Christmas movie, Bless All the Dear Children (“Spring came early to Walnut Grove that year...”). LOL. The Waltons is the same way. It was filmed in California so there were very few “cold weather” episodes, aside from the pilot movie which was partly filmed in Wyoming.

I was really hoping they’d have some serious contenders for the permanent job and try out other people with broadcasting experience. But that’s clearly not the producers’ intent. They just want to bring in wide range of celebrity fans to host the show before they anoint the inevitable host, Ken Jennings. I’d rather see someone with more hosting experience, but that doesn’t seem to be the plan.

Aaron is really bad - stiff and low energy. To be fair, I couldn’t do any better. But please - no more football players as game show hosts (I’m old enough to remember Rolf Benirschke’s disastrous turn as host of daytime “Wheel of Fortune.”) Experienced broadcasters only.

I caught “The New Girl” parts 1 and 2 over the weekend. I have to give the producers credit - this is one of the strongest examples of a series revamp that I’ve seen. Of course, the bar was low - season 1 is corny and embarrassing, and some of the performers are downright amateurish (Sue Ann, this means you). I thought they were smart to make Mrs. Garrett a more authoritative and intelligent character starting with season 2. Lisa Whelchel, a talented performer, had better material starting with that episode, and a decent sparring partner in Nancy McKeon. Mindy Cohn and Kim Fields were still pretty green as performers, but you could see the potential there. There was pretty much a new writing staff too and that helped a lot. Even poor Molly, relegated to a glorified cameo, came off better.