WKRP in Cincinnati

One of my all-time favorite shows is WKRP in Cincinnati, a classic sitcom from the late '70s to early '80s about a low-rated radio station in Cincinnati and its trials and tribulations after switching from an easy listening format to rock and roll. This is very much a character-driven show, with much of the humor coming from the personalities and quirks of the characters themselves, rather than the situations they're placed in -- so maybe it's not so much a sitcom as it is a...I dunno, "charcom"?

The station is run by the well-meaning, but not so hard-working Arthur Carlson (Gordon Jump). His station's program director is Andy Travis (Gary Sandy), the man responsible for the change in format. Dr. Johhny Fever (Howard Hesseman) and Venus Flytrap (Tim Reid) are two of the station's disc jockeys, who occassionally butt heads with Les Nessman (Richard Sanders), WKRP's news directory with a penchant for farm stories, and Herb Tarlek (Frank Bonner), the station's sleazy salesman. Jennifer Marlowe (Loni Anderson) is Mr. Carlson's secretary, and Bailey Quarters (Jan Smithers) works in billing, and later, in the news department with Les. The cast is perfect in these roles, and the characters really are the heart of the show. WKRP always seems like it'd be a great place to work, even if it's unorganized and not very successful in its market.

I first saw this show in syndication as a kid, and loved it. I must've been channel surfing one day and came across it, or something I'd been watching ended and this came on afterwards, because I can't imagine how a show about a radio station would appeal to me when I was 7 or 8, or however old I was at the time. But I loved it.

This is one of those shows I have some good memories attached to. I remember one summer I spent a day at an amusement park with a friend, and later that evening being exhausted from the day's activities. I got a shower, then turned on the TV to find an episode of WKRP, and I remember laying there on the floor feeling tired, comfortable, and happy, watching that show. When I was older, after high school, I had a job where I would work most weekends so had some days off during the week, and on those weekdays, I'd get up, make some fried eggs and toast for breakfast, and watch reruns of WKRP on the small TV we had in the kitchen.

One of my all-time favorite episodes is "The Contest Nobody Could Win". Dr. Johnny Fever, one of the disc jockeys at the station, reads a promo for a station contest on the air but mistakenly reads the prize amount as $5,000 instead of $50.00, so they decide to make the contest so difficult that nobody could win. To this end, they splice together bits from 6 different songs, with each splice less than a second in length, and ask the listeners to identify each of the songs. But of course, things don't go quite as planned. Here's a clip from the episode, one of my favorite moments in the series:

Unfortunately, due to the high costs of music liscensing these days, this series isn't seen as often in syndication, and the only DVD release of the show (the first season) had the music in many scenes replaced with stock music, and where they couldn't do this, they cut footage entirely. In the aforementioned "Contest" episode, even the quick song snippets have been changed, and the voiceover of the caller naming them has been changed to a different actor, citing fictional song and artist names. The actor's delivery is different than in the original, and in my opinion, much less funny. Hopefully, some day they'll release the show with all the footage and music restored, even if it means a more expensive product. Another more recent series, Freaks And Geeks, had a similar issue with music, but they went to the trouble of securing all the rights and released the series uncut with the original music. Surely someone could take the time to do the same with WKRP, a series that ran four times as long and probably has more fans (no disrespect intended toward Freaks and Geeks, which is an awesome show too).

With it's character-driven comedy and a cast that really feels like a family (as cheesy as that sounds) WKRP is a classic.

UPDATE
Shortly after writing this post, I learned that the television network Antenna TV is currently airing WKRP, with at least some, and possibly all, of the original music intact. In fact, I'll be writing about Antenna TV in a later post.

Episode Review: The Twilight Zone - One For The Angels

In this classic Twilight Zone episode written by series creator Rod Serling, Ed Wynn plays Lou Bookman, a street-corner salesman who is beloved by the neighborhood children. After a day spent in the summer heat on a street corner trying to make some sales, he heads home, stopping on the doorstep to hand out some toys to a few of the neighborhood kids. Upon entering his apartment, he finds someone waiting for him: a well-dressed man who just so happens to be Death himself. Death tells Lou that his time has come, but Lou bargains with Death for a little more time -- time to make a great sales pitch, or, as he calls it, "One for the angels". No sooner does Death show Lou some mercy then Lou welches on the deal. But Death tells Lou that if he won't come with him, someone else will have to. And it just so happens that someone else is one of the neighborhood kids.

But Lou has a conscience -- he's a good soul -- and he doesn't want this to happen. So he puts on that sales pitch that he mentioned: to Death himself. He knows that if he can make this sales pitch, the one that he bargained for to save his life, Death will take him instead of the little girl he plans to take in Lou's place.

This was a great episode. The pacing during the conversation/bargaining between Lou and Death near the beginning of the episode was a little slow and I felt maybe went on a little longer than it should have, but the story -- and the character of Lou -- has a lot of heart. A great episode.

Cheers Revisited

My son and I are currently watching Cheers on Netflix. The whole thing started when he caught a few minutes of a Frasier episode one night -- he liked it, and ended up watching the whole series from start to finish (also courtesy of Netflix). At some point during all this, I mentioned Cheers to him and we watched a few episodes from the Kirstie Alley era. Eventually, we decided to sit through the whole series, which we're in the process of doing now.

This was another show I started watching in syndication. I haven't watched every episode, so a lot of the ones we've seen lately are new to me. I used to catch the show during weekdays in the evening, when one of our local stations would show it along with Night Court and Star Trek: The Next Generation.

There's something very "comfortable" about the show. Maybe it's the laid-back bar setting; maybe it's the fact that it's recorded in front of a live audience, and you can detect a slight echo from the soundstage; or maybe it's just the archetypal barfly characters that inhabit the stage. Regardless, this is a fun show to kick back and enjoy without having to put too much thought into it. Sometimes it's fun to watch a show that makes some sort of point, and sometimes it's fun to watch a show whose only point is finding a way to make you laugh.

I was surprised when we started going through these episodes that the older ones really didn't make me laugh as much as the later ones. Also, I was surprised by Sam's occasional mentions of the physical harm he wants to do to Diane when she makes him angry (he mentions wanting to smack her and bounce her off walls -- yikes!).

At certain points in the early seasons, the show almost becomes a soap opera, fixating too much (IMHO) on Sam and Diane's relationship. But when it's going down different paths it tends to be funnier (again, IMHO).

As for that place "where everybody knows your name", I was never much of a drinker and didn't tend to hang around bars, but I did have that sort of "everybody knows your name" hangout when I was in my late teens and early twenties: it was a pool hall. I started hanging out there after a friend of mine took me there one night, and I ended up meeting a lot of good friends there. On any given night, you were almost certain to find someone you knew there. We'd hang out, talk, play hackey-sack in the parking lot, loiter, play some games in the arcade, and just generally have a good time. We'd also occasionally shoot pool.

Anyway, Cheers makes my list (and I'm sure many other people's lists) of classic TV shows.

The Original Star Trek

What list of classic TV shows would be complete without the original Star Trek series? And what could possibly be said about it that hasn't already been said?

Rather than go on and on about how culturally significant the show is, or how ground-breaking it was for its time, I'd like to just talk about what Star Trek is to me. Anything else, quite honestly, would just be a rehash of what many others have written before.

The show had already been canceled and was in syndication by the time I was born. I first saw it as a young kid, and I think the first episode I saw was one called "A Private Little War". It was early on a Saturday or Sunday, and I think we may have had people over. I didn't catch the whole episode, just a part of it where Captain Kirk is attacked by a giant white gorilla-like animal named a mugato. I was pretty young at the time, and the sight of this screaming ape-thing scared me. I think that was the first time I'd seen the show, and that was all I watched of that episode.

Sometime later, when I was still pretty young, I saw the show again. This time I caught the teaser opening. It was around 7pm on a Saturday evening, in the spring I think, and it was the episode "The Savage Curtain" (I didn't know these episode names at the time). The episode starts with the crew encountering Abraham Lincoln, sitting in a chair in space and speaking to them. It was such a strange opening, and I wanted to find out what happened, but my father, who was also in the room, said something about Star Trek being stupid and changed the channel. I left the living room and went into our rec room, where we had an older TV that didn't get good reception, but I tried to tune in the station so I could find out what happened next. I was unsuccessful.

Fast-forward another year, two, or maybe three. We moved to a new home, and one of the neighbors was a guy a few years older than me who was a big Star Trek fan. By this time I'd already seen The Motion Picture and Wrath of Khan (which I loved) but still wasn't too well-versed in the original series. I started learning more about the show from my neighbor, as well as watching the reruns in syndication every Saturday at 7pm.

Later, when I was about 14, I would record the episodes that aired at midnight on one of the New York stations we got with cable and would wake up early and eat breakfast while watching it.

So what did I like about the show? I wish I could say the oft-repeated line about the show's positive view of the future, but to be honest, as a kid I liked it just because it told good stories and told them well. As an adult, there's more to it than that: I still like the stories, but I also have more appreciation for the characters and how they interact, and (oddly enough) for the way the show is somewhat dated: I've also developed an appreciation of television shows from the '60s (as well as '70s) -- I have a certain nostalgia for the show, despite not being born when it first aired.

Star Trek is one of the shows I'll put on if I want to relax. Some people have "comfort foods", and for me, Star Trek is a "comfort show" -- it has its critics, and it's not perfect, but it's one of my guilty pleasures.

Introduction

With all the hustle and bustle of everyday life, I often find it comforting to take note of the simple things in life and appreciate them. Some of those simple things for me, as funny as it may sound, are old television shows, and even old television commercials. Many of the shows and commercials I enjoy were aired before I was born, but reflect a simpler time that I find comforting when life is moving at a frenetic pace.

The purpose of this blog is to discuss some of this classic television, reminisce, and just generally express my appreciation for this simple past time of kicking back and watching a good story unfold.