"One Day at a Time" S9:E22 - "Another Man's Shoes"

For some reason, Get Comedy aired about 20 minutes of this series finale instead of a "Benson" murder mystery episode.  It's a doozy.  Ann Romano, who apparently had married a character played by Howard Hesseman in the previous season finale, had taken a job in London in the previous episode and didn't even appear.  Barbara, who was now a travel agent, briefly appeared to book Schneider a trip to Florida to take care of his dead brother's two kids, one of whom played by Corey Feldman.  Julie hadn't been seen for almost a season and was probably off shooting up heroin or having sex with her father.  This episode is obviously a last-ditch backdoor pilot and a weird one - as Wikipedia states, "The place where he arrives is a carnival-like place with circus-like people.  The place needs repairs and some "mainly guidance," so everyone tries to persuade Schneider to move there and with Ann gone and the kids grown up, Schneider finally accepts the move."

"Square Pegs" S1:E15 - "It's Academical!"

Patty (played by former Broadway Annie Sarah Jessica Parker) and Muffy (played by future billionaire and Atlanta Hawks owner Jami Gertz) are chosen to represent Weemawee on local TV quiz show "It's Academical!"  It's funny that they specifically reference "It's Academic," but Martin Mull is a much slicker host than Mac McGarry, also hosting the local "Teen Rap" show (DC's version of that kind of show was Channel 9's "Pick Up the Beat" - I loved the little vignettes they showed at the beginning of the show to introduce that episode's topic).  Other '80s shows with quiz show appearances include "Family Ties" (Mallory becomes the star player when Alex gets stage fright on camera) and pretty much every episode of "Head of the Class."  

"The Jeff Foxworthy Show" S2:E23 - "Field of Schemes"

ABC, in its infinite wisdom, once gave comedy sensation Jeff Foxworthy a sitcom in the mid-90s and then decided that the Southern comedian known for redneck jokes was too Southern for a national audience and set his show in Indiana.  Then again, they also thought Margaret Cho was too Asian-American in that era.  The show was a fish out of water comedy, which I guess gave Foxworthy the chance to explain the exotic South to the residents of Bloomington and get in a few redneck jokes.  His father-in-law, played by the guy who played Doug's dad on "King of Queens," was IU's president and looked down on him, as did most of the rest of the town.  Because he was from the South of course!  Even more inexplicable was the decision to portray Foxworthy as a love-machine sex god, but perhaps that was his choice.

Unsurprisingly, the show didn't do particularly well and moved to NBC for its drastically retooled second season.  All of the cast was dropped except for Jeff and son Haley Joel Osment, his new wife was much less hot, and the entire thing was moved to the small town in Georgia where the character was from and he ran a trucking company.  It was still a sitcom, but the humor was more natural and there wasn't a need to explain the South ... to Southerners.  Anyway, it still didn't do particularly well so this company softball game-themed episode was the last and one of the better ones.  Well, except for the fact that the opposing company's team is led by pitcher and giant Bill Walton.  He was an analyst for the NBA on NBC at the time, so perhaps the network felt a need to promote him?  Regardless, he's no Dick Butkus as a luncheonette owner on "My Two Dads," shown on the same Roku live channel.

Ads

"CBS Sunday Morning" has some interesting commercials.  Every week, they have an ad from the Soda Council with an employee in red for Coke, one in blue for Pepsi, and another in white for Dr. Pepper/Keurig.  Some of the ads tout their low- or no-sugar options, but others claim that they use amazing new plastics for their bottles.  "CBS Sunday Morning" once immediately followed that ad with a segment about how such claims are deliberately misleading efforts by the oil and plastics industries that are really designed to get people to not worry about waste issues with plastics.

Now they also repeatedly run an ad from the Check Council explaining the proper ways to use checks, the most important of which is to never, ever use checks if at all possible. 

Not Even with Cleavage!

A new Roku channel shows "Square Pegs" on weekend mornings.  I hadn't seen an episode since I watched them over 40 years ago on Monday nights on CBS, but the first one I saw was probably the one I best remembered - Johnny Slash is bizarrely good at hitting home runs for the school's baseball team.  Unfortunately, he can only play home games because the fields at other schools look different.  Steve Sax makes a cameo, and they mentioned that he had just been named Rookie of the Year about 6 times.

I also always like Tracy Nelson as Jennifer.  She has the Valley Girl thing going on, even though the show is basically set in the New York area, but also has a proto-Madonna vibe.  She's also true Hollywood royalty, being the daughter of Ricky Nelson, sister of Nelson Nelson, granddaughter of Ozzie and Harriet, niece of Mark Harmon and Pam Dawber .... 

The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh

The Pisces were coached by Sacramento's top investigative TV reporter, Jeffrey Trout.

Update:  Nicholas Pryor apparently and coincidentally died this week.  I'll also remember him as a passenger in "Airplane!" and from a couple of "Murder She Wrote" episodes.

Theories that Probably Aren't True But Should Be

1.  "The Wizard of Oz" is an allegory for bimetallism and the gold standard.

2.  The movie version of "The Shining" is an allegory for the genocide of indigenous peoples of the Americas.

At least the theories seemed compelling when I first read them as a kid.