Egg McMuffin

I was watching “The Great Earring Caper,” which begins with Marcia indulging in one of her favorite activities: gazing at herself in the mirror. Cindy never should have ‘fessed up. She should have played dumb and let Marcia take the blame for losing the earrings. Marcia deserves punishment, just for being full of herself.

I liked Abe Vigoda and his wife, but the kids were super annoying.

Hazel is a bit of a Mary Sue. She’s pretty much good at everything she tries. And she’s selfless to a fault.

That’s a show whose following has always baffled me. I find Amy Poehler and her smug, preening performances unbearable.

Yep - I figured you saw the created by credit. Bochco and Fisher actually had a big falling out in season three. He was preparing to step aside as showrunner and she was going to succeed him. Instead, she was fired and David Kelley was named showrunner for season four. I vaguely recall some legal issues but they were settled out of court. Bochco also had a falling out with Michael Kozoll, who cocreated Hill Street Blues with him. Kozoll departed after the first or second season.

Roku is adding a dedicated Little House on the Prairie channel to its lineup. All Little House, all the time!

Steven Bochco and Terry Louise Fisher didn’t write the reunion movie; it was written by WIlliam FInkelstein, a writer/producer in the early seasons and the showrunner for the last season and a half. Bochco sadly didn’t have anything to do with the reunion movie or even the last two seasons of the show. Once he had his own production company, he didn’t want to do a show where he he had little/no ownership and was just a hired hand. Same with David Kelley. FInkelstein did a decent job getting the show back on track at the end, but I remember being disappointed by the reunion movie. Totally agree about Abby. They had hoped to do annual TV movies but the ratings for the first were disappointing so that was it. I’d love to see the busted revival pilot from a few years ago, where Arnie and Jonathan were the senior partners of the firm, now called Becker Rollins, and Ann Kelsey was a judge.

Judy Norton has said on her Youtube channel that the cast members brought up these inconsistencies with the producers when filming the 1990s movies. And the writers/producers insisted that the audience wouldn’t notice or care.

Somebody will be blind, or will be going blind, or will pretend to be blind.

It’s kind of amazing to me watching the first few episodes of season six that someone didn’t say, “Hey - this is NOT working. We need to regroup and figure this out.” I think they hired Julia Duffy, who was considered a “get,” before they came up with a character for her. And losing Jean Smart was arguably worse than losing Delta Burke. Allison had no redeeming qualities. She could have been at least a clever foil for Julia. But instead they turned her into this person everyone hated and was pathetic. Gee, wonder why that didn’t work?

Oh, that’s disappointing that there are missing episodes. You can’t really do that with a semi-serialized show. It’s not like this is Law & Order. I’m going to hold off on my rewatch until the missing episodes are added. I remember the “office mutiny” storyline leading up to Kuzak’s departure was fantastic. But after, it was kinda dull. A lot of the new characters just didn’t work (Billy Castroverti, Frank Kittredge, Melina Parros, etc). Didn’t help that David Kelley left as showrunner at the same time they lost Harry Hamlin, Jimmy Smits, and Michele Greene. And they actually got rid of Cecil Hoffman as Zoey, one of the few new characters that did work. Mind boggling. Just too much turmoil in those last few seasons, in terms of both cast and creative team.

Susan Dey auditioned for the pilot and didn’t get the part. Another actress played the ADA in the pilot, but she was dropped because they thought she looked too old for Kuzak. And then they went after Dey again.

Lear ended his creative involvement with AITF after season 8 (though he still had ownership of the show and the eventually spinoff). He was OK with CBS doing an “Archie and Edith” spinoff at that point, but he didn’t want them to use the “All in the Family” title or the “Those Were The Days” theme song. But AITF was #4 in the ratings when Rob Reiner and Sally Struthers left, and that was up from the previous year. CBS had a contractual option for another season of the show, and they exercised it. Carroll O’Connor and Jean Stapleton got big raises. This was back when TV lead actors were paid more modestly in general, and they didn’t usually make enough from their hit series to retire on. O’Connor chose to continue with the “Archie Bunker’s Place” spinoff a year later because he received partial ownership of that spinoff and became one of the highest paid actors on TV. I can’t really blame him for continuing. He had always been a character actor prior to AITF and he did not get rich from AITF. So he chose to continue with that character even when the show was past its prime in order to secure his financial future.

Norman Lear wanted to end it there. I think it would be the best sitcom finale of all time if that had been the end, with the right amount of laughs and tears, and the ending shot Archie and Edith sitting in the chairs, heartbroken, as the camera pans back.

I thought they should have softened Darrin’s relationship with his in-laws as time went on. They could have still written them has having some conflicts without Darrin and Endora despising each other. There’s an episode in the second season where Endora joins Darrin and Sam for dinner, and Darrin even greets her, “Hi Mom.” It’s sweet. Instead, it seemed to get worse as time went on. Maurice, does seem less hostile toward Darrin in the later seasons, but Dick Sargent’s Darrin never warms up to him.

I was watching the (color) episode the other day where Darrin finds out that Tabitha is a witch and he’s all shocked and disappointed. Uh, you realize there was a good chance of this considering you’re married to a witch, right? And Samantha is afraid to tell him and is apologetic afterward. Ugh. He comes around by the end of the episode, but his whole attitude toward his own daughter is obnoxious.

I get what you’re saying, but there are far sillier things if you want to pick at the realism of the show. Remember the episode where Jack passes himself off as Austin, his twin brother? And he plays both “roles” in a party with Ralph Furley, dressed completely the same except that he puts a cowboy hat on whenever he’s supposed to be Austin, and he somehow keeps Furley from looking over at Jack when he’s Austin, and vice versa. Linda staying with them for a few days when Janet was “away” is one of the lesser of the show’s sins when it comes to realism.

The script was already written and the actors already knew their lines. It was easier to have Anne Schedeen, who played Linda and who was a known quantity, step in for Joyce rather than rip everything apart so close to taping and distribute Janet’s lines to everyone else and re-block and re-rehearse the whole thing. Chris Mann details this in his behind-the-scenes book. This was why the cast was furious at Suzanne later on - she was pulling no-shows, which meant that everyone had to relearn the script when they redistributed her lines before taping. Joyce actually settled her dispute right before the episode taped and asked to appear in the episode. But the producers didn’t want to disrupt things - again - at the last minute.

Same reason they got a “temporary” roommate in Cindy when Chrissy went away. The scripts were already written. They did a have a few episodes they had to rewrite when Suzanne started missing episodes and before they brought in Cindy. But then ABC refused to accept another episode with just the two roommates - they did not want Jack and Janet living together without someone else there. So in came Cindy. Funny that just a few years later, times had changed enough that they were OK with Jack and Vicky living together.

It would be fun to see it on ABC but I’m not holding my breath. And my guess is that it will end up on Hulu, which Disney owns a majority of, as opposed to Disney+ (I think it’s off brand for D+).

Polly Holliday stated at the time that she had no intention of returning even if the spinoff failed and talked about how you don’t return to the nest. The “Flo” show was strangely not produced by any of the “Alice” crew. Holliday did work with the “Alice” producers again when she subbed for Eileen Brennan on the TV version of “Private Benjamin”. The years without Flo are unwatchable. Polly was that good - she was the comic center of the show. Yeah, even the seasons with Flo can be cheezy. Most of the seasons were produced by Lucille Ball’s old writers, so there were a lot of episodes with special guest stars playing themselves or Alice getting to do a number. But Flo is always good for laughs and she has great chemistry with everyone. I was watching an episode where Flo is going to marry a middle eastern man and finds out that he already has multiple wives. Very funny.

Suzanne Somers began her salary holdout at the beginning of the season - instead of during hiatus - in order to put pressure on the producers. They brought in Cindy to “clean up” the scrips that were already written for Chrissy. In most episodes, they just crossed out Chrissy’s name and write in Cindy’s. If she had been better received, they likely would have kept her as the third lead. But when ratings dipped, they went ahead with plans to introduce an entirely new character the following season.

Ann B. Davis was the real deal. I generally dislike the Snow White episode, except for the part where Alice plays the wicked queen. Davis shows what a great character actor she was.

I never could stand Matthew Rhys and his “smell the fart” style of acting, with that permanent sneer on his face. Totally agreed about the mistress. It was kind of a miserable family. I didn’t like any of them.

Posing in Playboy might not have seemed like a big deal to a kid in the early 80s, but there was still a stigma, especially with of Dynasty’s older audience. The early 80s was still a conservative time in many ways. Tom Reilly, who replaced Larry Wilcox on CHiPs, saw his part cut down to nothing and was blackballed due to a drug arrest. Different times. We don’t know the context of John Forsythe’s conversation with Aaron Spelling. Sure, it could have been “This is immoral! Let’s kick Joan off the show!” It also could have been, “Hey, I’m concerned how this is going to affect the show’s audience - what do you think?” It could have also been somewhere in the middle. We don’t know that he was looking down on her or that he was a hypocrite. Forsythe’s earlier years in Hollywood were at time when actors - even those who starred in successful weekly series - did not get rich for life. Dynasty was his first long-term role where he was very well compensated. His conversation with Spelling could have been based entirely on his concern for a show that was blossoming into a hit. And maybe this was just single lapse in a track record of treating people kindly and fairly. People don’t always use the best judgement when they think their livelihood is threatened. Who knows. I’m not going to brand someone as an “asshole” based on this.