After Alex has a long, enjoyable conversation with a girl named Angela from Bobby's answering service, he asks her out. But when he meets her in person, she's a lot less friendly, with hang-ups about her appearance. Meanwhile, Latka finds $2,000 in a cab, and the cabbies try to figure out what to do with it.
Thoughts
This is another episode with a lot of heart, though the difference in demeanor between Angela on the phone (a conversation we only hear about and don't witness directly) and in person is extreme. It seemed a little too extreme to me, even if the underlying reason -- Angela feeling inadequate about her appearance -- is understandable. Alex proves himself to be a good guy, and for the first time so far, the other cabbies seem less chummy and supportive, and a little more (what I would consider) realistic, ribbing Alex over Angela's appearance (with the possible exception of John, who tells Angela he was happy to meet her). As for the subplot with Latka and the money, it goes nowhere.
As a side note, the main theme to the series was originally written as a piece of music for this episode, and is titled Angela. Composer Bob James had originally intended for a more upbeat track, Touchdown, to be used as the series theme. Both tracks are available on James' album Touchdown.
Tony gets the chance to spar with a professional boxer at the gym, but things aren't what they seem.
Thoughts
This episode gives Tony Danza a chance to shine, and he does well. I'm not sure if he's more famous for Taxi or Who's the Boss (which is where I know him from).
Like the first episode, this one also makes a point of showing how tight-knit the group of cabbies are, and the support they give each other. The other cabbies pitch in to buy Tony a boxer's robe, and at one point Alex is giving some advice about driving a cab to Elaine and John, and tells them not to feel bad if they don't know this information already because he's had 10 years experience. This sort of...being good to each other, I guess, isn't so common in the shows I've watched. I noticed Glen and Les Charles, and James Burrows, mentioned in the credits, and even their show Cheers didn't feature this level of intercharacter support (I'm remembering the episode where Cliff was in the hospital and nobody wanted to visit him).
Louie gets a moment alone in the garage which is pretty funny (and I wonder if it gets cut for syndication -- it seems prime to be), though Latka barely appears, and John doesn't have much to do here either. Louie comes across as very despicable and unlikable, and while I realize that's the point, I hope they tone him down a bit as the show goes on. Though at the end, even he admits he was rooting for Tony, and for a brief moment shows some geniality.
The first season of most TV shows tends to be a little atypical in hindsight as the show goes on, so I'm curious as to how much the rest of the series is like the first two episodes, especially in regard to how supportive the characters are of each other.
Taxi was a show I'd known about from syndication when I was a kid, but I'd never watched an episode until yesterday. I recently picked up the entire series for $30, and will be reviewing each episode as I watch them for the first time.
The first episode of Season 1, Like Father, Like Daughter, introduces us to the characters and the taxi garage they work out of. Cab driver Alex Reiger (Judd Hirsch) shows up with a passenger, John Burns (Randall Carver) because he didn't have change for the bill John gave him. There, we also meet Alex's coworkers, which include struggling actor Bobby Wheeler (Jeff Conaway), losing boxer Tony Banta (Tony Danza, who I know mostly from Who's the Boss), their abusive dispatcher Louie De Palma (Danny Devito), new employee Elaine Nardo (Marilu Henner, who is a mainstay on Hallmark Channel these days), and mechanic Latka Gravas (Andy Kaufman). And because this is the first episode I've ever watched, I had to look up these character and actor names on Wikipedia!
While at the garage, John, who has an incredibly positive attitude, raves about how great their pay phone is, because the change compartment can be opened and therefore anyone can just keep inserting the same coin and call anywhere! This prompts the employees to begin making phone calls they normally wouldn’t, or couldn’t, make. Alex is encouraged to make a call to the daughter his hasn’t spoken to in 15 years, only to learn she’s left for college, but will be making a connecting flight in Miami, Florida. So, Alex, along with Bobby, Tony, Latka, and even John (who he’s just met) borrow a cab and drive from New York City to Miami so Alex can talk to his daughter and see her for the first time since she was a toddler.
As first episodes go, this one’s very unusual, given the heartfelt plot. I liked that Alex’s coworkers and John made the trip with him, and when Alex waded into the passenger area to try and find his daughter, Bobby said “Don’t worry, we won’t leave you.” as a show of support. It’s a very touching scene, more so than most premiere episodes of sitcoms. I'm looking forward to watching the next episode.
At the end of the episode, John becomes a driver for the cab company as well, and the series’ ensemble is set in motion.
Shout! Factory has announced that they will be releasing the complete WKRP In Cincinnati series on DVD, and rumor has it that it will be including the original music. I've been having trouble finding the original press release, and going to the product page of Shout! Factory's website (via a Google search -- the site's internal search returns nothing) displays a message stating that you must be registered to view the page. I registered and logged in, but the page still gave me the same message.
However, viewing the page via Google's cache, Shout! Factory describes the show as ""Pairing an impeccable ensemble cast with hilarious wit and popular tunes". In addition, the set is available for pre-order on Amazon, albeit without an expected release date.
You can view the cached version of Shout! Factory's WKRP product page here.
You can pre-order the set on Amazon here.
Over the past year or so I've been watching The Six Million Dollar Man, starting with the original made-for-TV-movie, and progressing an episode at a time in order through the seasons. Yesterday I watched the 3rd season episode, "The Price of Liberty".
When I saw that the episode was written by Kenneth Johnson, I knew I was in for a treat. Johnson is responsible for some of the series' best episodes, as well as having created the character of Jamie Summers (the Bionic Woman), bringing The Incredible Hulk to television, creating the original "V" miniseries, and helming the TV version of Alien Nation.
Johnson excels in writing characters, and this episode is a prime example. The premise of the episode involves the heist of the Liberty Bell prior to its tour of the United States in celebration of the U.S. Bicentennial. Without giving away too much of the plot, Steve Austin must enlist the help of a convict (played, quite effectively, by Chuck Conners) in securing the bell.
Now, I love the 1970s. And I have a nostalgia for the U.S. Bicentennial, which I was too young to remember at the time. And, of course, I love classic television. So this episode appealed to me in many areas. The script is excellent, and Lee Majors and Richard Anderson are solid as Steve Austin and Oscar Goldman, respectively.
The episode does, however, have one comical shortcoming: even though it's supposed to take place in the Philadelphia area, it was obviously filmed in California. I'm very familiar with the Philadelphia area, and the the building they tried to pass off as Independence Hall looks nothing like the real thing, but much more amusing is their use of the dry, arid hills of California as a stand in for Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania isn't exactly known for dry areas of sand and brush -- its name means "Penn's Woods" after all. So I had to chuckle a few times during this episode when it came to the scenery. But hey, they couldn't exactly justify a location shoot on the opposite side of the country, could they?
A great episode, scenery shortcomings notwithstanding.
You can visit Kenneth Johnson's website here. At some point, I'm going to have to create the Classic TV World Hall of Fame, and Mr. Johnson will most likely be the first inductee.
It's been quite awhile since I've written here. My schedule has been pretty hectic and I haven't had much time to post anything here. Of course, whenever someone from the world of television passes away, I want to try to find the time to post a tribute here, yet at the same time, I don't want this to become the "Classic TV World of Celebrity Deaths".
Over the past year, we've lost some of TV's greats, even though some of them weren't household names. Hal Sutherland of Filmation passed away in January, as did Lou Scheimer, also of Filmation, in October of 2013.
We lost Harold Ramis -- more famous for movies than television, but he made a huge impression in SCTV as both an actor and a writer -- back in February. And, most recently, Casey Kasem passed away last Sunday, June 15th.
Yesterday, June 1st, 2013, actress Jean Stapleton passed away. She was best known for her role as Edith Bunker in the classic '70s sitcom All In The Family. I used to watch the show in reruns when I was a little kid, and I'm sure that much of the humor, and significance, of the show was lost on me at such a young age. But I always liked the character of Edith Bunker, particularly her almost always cheerful demeanor and positive outlook. I was amazed the first time I heard Ms. Stapleton speak outside of the show, never realizing that her real voice was so much different than Edith's. To hear her speak out of character was to realize, and appreciate, how good and effective an actress she was.
Edith Bunker is a television classic, and Jean Stapleton a television icon. She will be missed. And speaking as someone who didn't have a good relationship with his mother, I would've loved to have had a mom like Edith.
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.
