TV posts

A few years ago, I posted this about a third-season episode of “M*A*S*H” that took a deep dive into Warner Bros. lore. I recently rewatched a season 2 ep. called “Carry On, Hawkeye,” where everyone gets the flu except Hawkeye, Hot Lips, Radar and Father Mulcahy, and we get the following exchange:

Hawkeye: You know there's a frontier feeling around here? Joel McCrea is in bed, so is Ralph Bellamy and Col. Andy Devine. Now there's just you and me: Frances Dee and Slim Summerville. 
Hot Lips: Why do you talk like that?
Hawkeye: I can't help it, I'm part of the movie generation. I spent every Saturday morning and afternoon in the dark. ... I could easily have been a mushroom instead of a doctor.

Later in the episode, he says, “Maybe we are in a movie. You're Bette Davis and I'm George Brent.”

Some of these references were obscure enough (Slim Summerville) that I had to look them up, so I'm curious who the big movie buff on staff was. There's three listed writers: Bernard Dilbert, Larry Gelbart, Laurence Marks. I'm leaning Marks, but maybe it was all of them? Maybe they just riffed their way into this dialogue.

The only female series regular on one of the greatest sitcoms of all time. 

I imagine most of the obits for Loretta Swit will talk up the evolution of her character, Maj. Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan, in a positive sense. In the 11-year run of “M*A*S*H,” set during the three-year-long Korean War, her character went from the hypocritical, hypersexualized and superpatriotic head nurse, forever going over the head of Col. Henry Blake (McLean Stevenson) about the antics of Hawkeye Pierce and Trapper John McIntyre (Alan Alda and Wayne Rogers), even as she herself engaged in a forever affair with the very married Maj. Frank Burns (Larry Linville), she went from that to a woman married to strong, dull soldier-boy, Maj. Donald Penobscott (various), to a woman married to her work and someone to be taken very seriously, Hawkeye. The character evolved, as they say, from “Hot Lips” to Margaret.

But even as she became less of a sexist trope and antiwar punchline, the character became duller.

Watch the first three seasons again. The scenes where Maj. Burns comes in to register a complaint, and then just stands there while Maj. Houlihan does all the talking, even as Henry keeps addressing the questions to Frank, are, sure, sexist; they're also hilarious. And she's so good in them.

She made a great drunk. Everyone had to act drunk at some point in the show and hers was not only the most realistic but among the funniest: confessing her crush on Trapper; complaining that Frank was “a lipless wonder”; telling Hawkeye, misty-eyed, after he gives her a B-12 shot to get her back on her feet, “And I didn't get you anything.”

There's a great scene in the second-season episode, “Henry in Love,” where Col. Blake returns from R&R ga-ga over a 25-year-old former cheerleader named Nancy Sue, and Majors Burns and Houlihan stare daggers at the situation in the officers mess. Until, that is, they're introduced, and Frank turns into very agreeable jello. “Everyone's so nice here,” Nancy Sue says, to which Frank replies, “It's nice to be nice! To the nice!” and giggles. When the others leave, before Frank is able to even sit back down again, Hot Lips repeats his line back to him in a tone drier than the driest martini Hawkeye ever ordered.

Did I ever see her in anything else? She was barely in anything before “M*A*S*H”: episodes of “Hawaii Five-0,” “Mannix,” “Gunsmoke” and “Mission: Impossible” before the show's Sept. 1972 debut. During its run she did other work, and yes, I guess I did see her in something: “It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Superman!,” based on the 1966 Broadway musical, which was an attempt to camp up the Man of Steel the way Adam West had done with the Caped Crusader. Didn't work. It showed up late on a Friday night and no one cared but me. I probably saw at least one of the five episodes of “Love Boat” she was on. Don't think I saw much of her post-“M*A*S*H” work, but she kept acting regularly until the late '90s. Her CV is basically an episode of a TV show here, a TV movie there, and 251 episodes of “M*A*S*H.”

Oh, right, she played the original Cagney in the pilot episode of “Cagney & Lacey”! Couldn't continue because she was still on “M*A*S*H.” The role went to Meg Foster for a few and then Sharon Gless, who made it her own.

Swit will be hailed as a feminist icon. She was. Just don't undercut how funny she was.

“Nice to be nice ... to the nice?”

John Amos (with Esther Rolle) in “Good Times”: the very definition of a man.

When I was a kid in the 1970s, John Amos seemed the very definition of a man to me. He was forceful and joyous, stern and affable. He put his best face on, and fought as best he could, and usually it wasn't enough—but he was still strong. If you'd asked me what a man was, I would've said that guy: James Evans, Sr., Gordie the weatherman, Kunta Kinte.

I guess I saw him on “Mary Tyler Moore” first, but he made the bigger impression on “Good Times,” and the show was never the same after he left. For some reason, I thought he'd left it, but I guess it was the opposite. The show couldn't sanction his public criticisms of its most popular character, his son, J.J. “Dy-no-MITE” Evans (Jimmie Walker), and let him go. History has since backed up Amos on the matter—though, in a perfect world, where groups controlled their own narrative, and there was much representation rather than a few characters against a sea of white, you might argue that J.J. wasn't dissimilar from what Barney Fife was doing on “Andy Griffith.” But it wasn't a perfect world.

After the dismissal, Amos played one of the most central roles in one of the most watched and impactful miniseries of all time: “Roots.” There was that strength again, to keep running, to be free, only to have his foot chopped off. More heartbreaking, for me, was a later scene. He and another slave, Bell (Madge Sinclair), have a daughter, and he suggests they name her Kizzy, which means “Stay put” in his language. That makes Bell happy because she's tired of Kunta running. But once Kizzy is an adult, now played by Leslie Uggams, a series of unfortunate circumstances (being taught to write by a stupid white girl, then using those skills to help her boyfriend escape, and then him giving her up), all of that lead to her being sold to a man who rapes her. I remember her being tied up in the bag of a wagon that's being pulled away from her crying mother and distraught father, and the father, after she's gone, does something with the dirt, an old African ritual so she will return to them. The wife looks at him with contempt and says:

“I thought her name was supposed to do that!”

The look of utter defeat on the man after that. Was it the last we ever saw of Kunta Kinte in the miniseries? I think it was. That awful moment. (Apologies if I misremembered anything. It's been nearly 50 years.)

It's odd when an actor will be in your field of vision constantly and then, though they keep working, not at all. Amos appeared in stuff I knew about—“Love Boat,” “The A-Team,” “Trapper John, M.D.,” “Hunter”—but those weren't shows I watched. To be honest, they seemed a step down from MTM and Norman Lear productions. Did he get a bad rep from the J.J. complaints? And relegated here. I don't think I saw Amos in anything until “Coming to America” 10 years later, when he played the overly ambitious restauranteur Cleo McDowell. Then he was in “Die Hard 2” ... as a villain! That was a shocker. James Evans Sr.—the bad guy? And then maybe I saw him on “West Wing” 10 years after that? We just kept missing each other. But during my formative years, John Amos was formative. He meant something. 

Who loves Lucy? Not IMDb and its algorithm.

I'm gonna do the conversation bit again. Imagine someone, maybe someone young, asks you what Lucille Ball is known for. What would your answer be? Would it be this?

IMDb: Lucille Ball? Yeah, she's known for producing various Lucy-themed TV shows, such as 'I Love Lucy,' 'The Lucy Show' and 'Here's Lucy.' Often uncredited.
Someone young: So were they named for her? I mean, did she also star in them? 
IMDb: If she did, it's not what she's known for. But she was an actress because she played the seminal role of Tacy Collini in “The Long, Long Trailer.” That is the role, as an actress, that she is known for. 
Someone young: K.
IMDb: But mostly she's known as a producer.
Someone young: Of various Lucy-themed TV shows.
IMDb: Now you've got it.

Remember in “Calvin & Hobbes” when Calvin's dad gave him false history and science lessons—for fun? IMDb does that with our cultural history through sheer ineptitude. And none of it is fun.

My friend Josh K. would say it's “Rockford Files” but I didn't watch “Rockford” much. Whenever Stuart Margolin would show up in something, I'd go, “Hey, it's the 'Love American Style' guy.”

So that's what I knew him from but I assume I'm in the minority. Margolin did 29 episodes of “Love” and 38 of “Rockford.” He won two Emmys for supporting acting for “Rockford.” In a long, respected career, they're the only major acting awards he won. So “Rockford” makes sense.

Except to IMDb's “Known For” algorithm.

At least he had an important role in “Death Wish”: the Arizona land developer who reintroduces Charles Bronson's Paul Kersey to guns. It was a famous film, too. It's still a famous film.

But he was sixth-billed.

The algorithm seems to have a thing for “Death Wish.” It's what Charles Bronson, Hope Lange, Steven Keats, Jack Wallace, and Margolin are all best known for. A few weeks back, it was No. 1 for William Redfield, too. To me, he's Harding from “Cuckoo's Nest,” and he'll always be Harding from “Cuckoo's Nest,” and the IMDb gods must've finally listened because they made that the No. 1 answer. So IMDb can actually improve if it wants.

I suppose I should be happy IMDb doesn't say Jeff Goldblum is best known for “Death Wish.”

Yep, Dad interviewed him, too, in the summer of 1980, as Bob (Newhart, not Dad) was headlining a weeklong run at the Carlton Celebrity Room in Bloomington, Minn. The gig had been planned for earlier but he ran into scheduling conflicts filming the Buck Henry comedy “The First Family” so he put it off for a few months:

“'I was originally supposed to come there in February,' he said, the telephone line virtually crackling from the dryness of his wit, 'and like a fool I made the film instead. I mean, who would conceivably come to Minnesota in June if they had the chance of going there in February?'”

The movie didn't open until December, so thankfully Dad's feature on Newhart doesn't have the awkwardness of a fun interview juxtaposed with a pan. (Despite the comedy credentials of almost everyone involved, Dad wrote five months later, “'First Family' is about as funny as the 5:30 news.”) The interview in June begins with back-and-forth on the upcoming election, which neither Bob is looking forward to, and includes great quotes and a deep dive into Newhart's background. He began on stage in Chicago as part of a comedy duo with longtime friend Eddie Gallagher but it never took off, and Eddie moved to NY to go into advertising. “Really, the telephone in my act became Eddie,” Newhart told Dad. “There's always somebody on stage with me, in a sense, because I'm either acting with someone or reacting to someone. Once a double, always a double, I guess.”

We get the Minnesota connections: playing in Freddie's Nightclub in Minneapolis at the start of his career; his record, “The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart,” being played over the airwaves for the first time by WCCO's Howard Viken, providing “the skyrocket for his career,” Dad writes, and remaining “one of the best-selling comedy albums of all time.” They talk about his comedy friendships with Shecky Greene, Buddy Hackett, and particularly Don Rickles, whom Newhart ribs for his many failed TV shows: “I tell him he's had more pilots than TWA.” Then they talk about Newhart's own successful sitcom. 

Back then it was just the one. Generationally, I'm a “Bob Newhart Show” guy. I don't think I ever saw an entire episode of his '80s sitcom, “Newhart,” which was equally critically acclaimed. But the other? My brother and I watched it every week for years. It was part of that killer CBS Saturday Night lineup: “All in the Family,” “Mary Tyler Moore,” “Carol Burnett.” The sitcoms were not only funny and brilliant, they were specific to place. “Family” was Queens, Mary was Minneapolis, Bob Chicago. Casting him as a shrink was a perfect move. Giving this balding, measured, stammering man the hottest of wives, Suzanne Pleshette, was another. The supporting cast was to die for: Marcia Wallace, Peter Bonerz, Bill Daily as Howard Borden, Jack Riley as patient Elliot Carlin (49 of the 142 episodes), John Fiedler as patient Mr. Peterson (17 episodes), forever fearful, a kind of Piglet in human form. (“And I said to her, I said, 'Doris...'”) Is it suprising in that era of spinoffs that nothing spun off of “The Bob Newhart Show”? “All in the Family” gave birth to “Maude” and “The Jeffersons”; “Mary Tyler Moore” led to “Rhoda” and “Phyllis” but there was no “Borden” or “Carlin.” 

“He was successful in everything he did,” Dad said by phone this week.

Well, movies. His run there was sporadic. I guess his quiet stammer worked better on TV. But he was Papa Elf in “Elf,” Major Major in “Catch 22,” ad exec Merwin Wren in the Norman Lear comedy “Cold Turkey.” His first movie, his “...and introducing” movie, oddly, was “Hell Is For Heroes,” starring Steve McQueen and directed by Don Siegl.

When he and Dad talked, Newhart was in his 50s and had been a name comedian for more than 20 years. He would have another 40.

Here's Nos. 1 an 2, according to the brainiacs at IMDb:

Right? I remember when I had her poster (actually several of her posters) on my wall because of “Millennium” and “Poison Ivy.” Those movies were cultural phenomenons.

“Poison Ivy” is that Drew Barrymore/bad teen thing, or whatever, for which Ladd is fourth-billed, and it grossed $1.8 million, good for 158th in 1992. “Millennium” I've never heard of. This is its IMDb synopsis: “An NTSB investigator seeking the cause of an airline disaster meets a warrior woman from 1000 years in the future.” Fun! MST3K-style fun! I guess Ladd is the warrior woman? With Flock of Seagulls hair? That one actually did better at the box office: $5.7 million, good for 117th in 1989. Cultural phenomenons, as I said. 

Here's the rest of Ms. Ladd's known fors, per IMDb:

Psst: It's that fourth one. That's what Cheryl Ladd is known for, IMDb. That's what she'll always be known for.

If you ask my in-laws, apparently, it would be nothing. During Zoom calls, we often mention celebrity deaths, and this week I brought up Joe Flaherty and got stares. They knew SCTV, kinda sorta, just not him much. 

The New York Times obit has it correct, though:

Yes, first and foremost one of TV's most influential sketch shows; and then, yes, a short-lived but beloved and influential sitcom from 2000. Right? Right. Done and done.

What's that? IMDb has something to say about Joe Flaherty? OK, go ahead:

I guess I should be happy that “SCTV” made the cut at all amid all those cameos. One wonders why these cameos and bit parts rate when others don't. Mae Clarke's, for example. Grapefruit in the face from James Cagney? One of the most iconic moments in early Hollywood history? Nah. We'll take “King of the Rocket Men” and “Daredevils of the Clouds,” two late 1940s, low-budget Republic pictures barely anyone has seen or remembers. Although I guess the former did inspire 1991's “The Rocketeer.” 

Obits are often when attention must be paid. For IMDb, it's just another sign of its grand inattention. 

Murderers' Row: Flaherty, Levy, O'Hara, Thomas, Martin, Candy.

I heard about Joe Flaherty's death when I was at the Minneapolis airport flying back to Seattle after a week of sorting through my brother's possessions. Perfect timing, cosmos. This is one of those deaths I wish I could talk over with Chris.

We watched SCTV religiously—tough to do since the place of worship kept changing. I think we first saw it in syndication, Friday nights at 6:30 PM on some local Minneapolis station. This was in the Harold Ramis days, and it was funny and oddball, and what the hell was it? What was it mocking? Everything? Where was it from? How come nobody else knew about it? Then it disappeared and wound up on PBS, sans Ramis, John Candy and Catherine O'Hara, and with Tony Rosato, Robin Duke and Rick Moranis. Finally it went over to NBC for a much-ballyhooed 90-minute show late Friday nights, at which point they jettisoned Rosato and Duke, kept Moranis, got back Candy and O'Hara, and eventually added Martin Short.

Talk about your all-star rosters. Over the years, Chris, Dad and I talked up our favorites. Dad usually went Eugene Levy, case closed. Chris might've gone Candy? I sometimes went Ramis, sometimes Dave Thomas, but I remember a few times choosing Flaherty. His Count Floyd alone, man, the hapless host of “Monster Chiller Horror Theater,” emerging from a crypt, clad as a vampire, and forced to talk up the latest “scary movie” they'd booked, which usually wasn't scary at all. “The Odd Couple,” for example. “Aooooooo! ... It stars, uh, Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon. And they play two roommates. One guy's real clean and the other guy, uh, is a sportswriter ... that DRINKS BLOOD!” I loved both his bad lies (in Bela Lugosi accent) and his eventual angry admission (in his own). Has anyone listed all the movies they booked? Yes, of course, it's the internet age: It's everything from their parodies of schlocky '50s 3-D movies (House of Wax/Cats/Pancakes/Stewardesses) to Dick Cavett interviewing Bobby Bitman about his latest vanity project. My favorite may be “Whispers of the Wolf,” which sounds scary, but is in fact an Ingmar Bergman parody, with O'Hara as “Leave Ullman” visiting her sister in Room 1313 (tarten tarten) of a hotel, and getting into the usual Bergman oddities. Cut back to Count Floyd, who maintains his composure for about five seconds before dropping the Lugosi to demand, off-camera, “Who booked Bergman!”

The initial premise of “Monster Chiller Horror Theater,” a send-up of local horror shows (for me, “Horror Incorporated”), was funny enough. But then add the nonsensical bookings as well as the never-mentioned in-joke that Count Floyd is in fact superserious newsman Floyd Robertson with a magic-marker widow's peak? Classic.

Flaherty also gave us half of “Farm Film Report,” the unctuous and untalented Sammy Maudlin, a brilliant satire of William F. Buckley, and a pitch-perfect Bing Crosby counseling Moranis' Woody Allen on how to deal with an irascible Bob Hope (Thomas) in “Play it Again, Bob.” Not to mention station president Guy Caballero, appearing in white suit and fedora, and sitting in a wheelchair—but occasionally getting up to perch casually on his desk because, as he states baldly, he only uses the wheelchair for sympathy. For years I was able to crack up my father doing Guy mid-SCTV telethon: “We need $10,000 ... PER PERSON!”

Flaherty's post-SCTV career didn't quite break the way it did for the others. Candy, Short and Moranis starred in movies, while Levy, O'Hara and Andrea Martin had strong supporting roles in big hits. Flaherty kept popping up mostly in bit parts, notably “Stripes” (Czech border guard), “Back to the Future II” (western union man), and “Happy Gilmore” (jeering fan). His biggest post-SCTV role was probably in the short-lived “Freaks and Geeks,” as Harold Weir, the father of Lindsay and Sam. The name alone, perfect.

Because of “SCTV,” I always assumed Flaherty was Canadian. Nope. Born and bred in Pittsburgh, PA. A lot of tributes from the famous and not-so-famous on social during the past week, including this one from Adam Sandler: “Oh man. Worshipped Joe growing up. Always had me and my brother laughing.”

Amen.

And I don't mean the late-life Trump craziness. Or the mid-life Scientology craziness.

Last month I watched “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” for the first time in forever, and I was like, “Oh right, Kirstie Alley as Lt.—or Mr.—Saavik.” I'd forgotten how sexy she was. To be honest, I'd also forgotten she'd died in 2022—age 71. Cancer. But while perusing all of this on her IMDb page, I, inevitably, came across this.

What's missing from this “Known For”? Just what she's known for.

That algorithm really disrespects TV, doesn't it? That algorithm really disrespects us, doesn't it? 

Lear in The Chair.

A few years back I read Norman Lear's autobiography, “Even This I Get to Experience” and could've sworn I included excerpts on this blog. But that was just another thing I thought about doing and didn't. So here you go, all at once:

ON FATHER COUGHLIN
He despised Franklin Roosevelt, fulminated endlessly about the New Deal as a betrayal of American values, and attached prominent Jews to everything he was railing against. Coughlin repulsed me thoroughly, but I listened to him enough and was so chilled by his polarizing and divisive rhetoric as to be reminded of him throughout my life whenever I’ve run into an irrational, self-serving mix of politics and religion.

WORKING WITH SINATRA ON “COME BLOW YOUR HORN”
Frank was notorious for not doing retakes ... I looked at the scene in question and was even more certain that it needed to be reshot. I picked up the phone. Frank, whose day didn't start until eleven A.M., was in a makeup chair. “Frank, I just looked at that scene and we really have to do it again.” He asked why, and I told him. “My mother in New Jersey ain't going to notice that,” he said. “But, Frank—” “Did you hear me, pally, there is no fucking way I'm doing that again.” “But we have to, Frank,” I said earnestly. “You give me one reason why,” he fumed. “Because I fucking said so!” I exploded. “Okay,” he said.

ON FOCUS GROUPS 
Some 30 people, likely recruited at a mall, were brought to a screening room and seated before a large TV screen. They were a bused-in midlife group, carrying shopping bags, dressed on a warm day in shorts, sandals, and blowsy short-sleeved shirts, all wearing the “What the hell am I doing here?” expression. The host explained that they were going to be shown a 30-minute situation comedy [“All in the Family”] and the network was interested in their reaction to it. At each chair there was a large dial at the end of a cable. They were to hold that dial while watching the show and twist it to the right when they thought something funny or were otherwise enjoying a moment. If they didn’t think something was funny, if it offended them or simply bored them, they were to twist their dial to the left. ... The group howled with laughter, rising up in their chairs and falling forward with each belly laugh. But wait! Despite the sound and the body language, they were dialing left, claiming to dislike much of what they were seeing, and they were really unhappy with it. But really! While I can’t say I could have predicted this behavior, unlike my friends at CBS I understood and was elated by the audience’s reaction. Who, sitting among a group of strangers, with that dial in his or her lap, is going to tell the world that they approve of Archie’s hostility and rudeness? And who wants to be seen as having no problem with words such as spic, kike, spade, and the like spewing from a bigot’s mouth? So our focus group might even have winced as they laughed, but laugh they did, and dialed left. 

ON THE UNIVERSALITY OF ARCHIE BUNKER
The most telling letter we received was from a woman who had been divorced many years before, when her son was four years old. The boy had never seen his father after that. On the night All in the Family debuted, her son was now 32 years old and living 1200 miles away. The show was on for about 10 minutes when the lady ran to the telephone and almost broke her dialing finger phoning her son. When she reached him she screamed across the miles: “You always wanted to know what your father was like—well, hurry up and turn on channel two!” 

ON THE ESSENCE OF ARCHIE BUNKER
Archie's primary identity as an American bigot was much overemphasized because that quality had never before been given to the lead character in an American TV series. But the show dealt with so many other things. Yes, if he was watching a black athlete on television, he'd make an offhand bigoted remark, and Mike would call him out on it. But the episode in which that exchange occurred might have been about Archie losing his job and worrying about how he was going to support his family. ... He was lamenting the passing of time, because it's always easier to stay with what is familiar and not move forward. This wasn't a terrible human being. This was a fearful human being. He wasn't evil, he wasn't a hater—he was just afraid of change.

ON CARROLL O'CONNOR
The marvel of Carroll's performance as Archie Bunker was that at some point each week, deep into the rehearsal process, he seemed to pass through a membrane, on one side of which was the actor Carroll O'Connor and on the other side the character Archie Bunker. Fully into the role of Archie, he was easily the best writer of dialogue we had for the character. ... If Carroll O'Connor hadn't played Archie Bunker, jails wouldn't be a “detergent” to crime, New York would not be a “smelting pot,” living wouldn't be a question of either “feast or salmon,” and there would not be a medical specialty known as “groinocology.”

ON 'MESSAGE' SHOWS
“If you want to send a message,” I was told, “use Western Union.” In the early years I would face that accusation by denying it. ... Then came a moment when—after expressing this for the umpteenth time—I thought: Wait a second. Who said the comedies that preceded All in the Family had no point of view? The overwhelming majority of them were about families whose biggest problem was “The roast is ruined and the boss is coming to dinner!” Talk about messaging! For 20 years TV comedy was telling us there was no hunger in America, we had no racial discrimination, there was no unemployment or inflation, no war, no drugs, and the citizenry was happy with whomever happened to be in the White House. Tell me that expressed no point of view!

**

All the obits say Lear changed American television, and he did—for about five years. Then it changed back. His shows thrived in the aftermath of the “Rural Purge,” when sitcoms like “Mayberry R.F.D.,” “Petticoat Junction” and “Gomer Pyle” went away or were canceled; and for a time, per Paddy Chayefsky, Lear replaced them with the American people. “He took the audience and he put them on the set,” Chayefsky said. By the 1974-75 season he had five shows in the top 10: “All in the Family” (1), “Sanford and Son” (2), “The Jeffersons” (4), “Good Times” (7), and “Maude” (9). The characters were bold and brash, and the sum total looked more like America, and everyone argued with everyone. And soon audiences tired of it. It was like what happened with the movies. For a time, we wanted reality, or hyped reality, or maybe just violence and sex, but before long the No. 1 movies were not “The Godfather” or “One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest” but “Star Wars” and “Superman,” while the No. 1 TV shows were “Happy Days,” “Charlie's Angels” and “Three's Company.” And by 1980-81? It was rural redux. The No. 1 shows were “Dallas” and “The Dukes of Hazzard,” and Lear's real people were replaced by “Real People,” the beginning of reality television, and the beginning of the end. That year, Reagan was elected by a landslide and began to change everything. Archie Bunker won and made things worse for the Archie Bunkers of the world.

I didn't know, watching “All in the Family” in the early 1970s, that I was watching America for the rest of my life. This line above gets at it: “Yes, if [Archie] was watching a black athlete on television, he'd make an offhand bigoted remark, and Mike would call him out on it.” One side was racist, the other side was annoying, and they just swirled together forever. We're still caught in that dynamic. “Didn't need no welfare state/ Everybody pulled his weight” has been, along with a touch of Father Couglin, the GOP platform since forever.

But what a life Lear led. From the above, you get a sense of how he did it. It was not just that he was funny, it's not just that he had original ideas and a good moral compass, it's that he didn't compromise. If he could stand up to Sinatra, what chance did CBS have? None. By forcing the suits to go his way, he made them millions. And yes, he changed television. Until it, and America, changed back.

FURTHER READING:

• “Norman Lear Reshaped How America Saw Black Families,” The New York Times

My father and Suzanne Somers in Mexico in 1978. And no, not that way, it was just a press junket. 

This is how The New York Times began its obit:

Suzanne Somers, who gained fame by playing a ditsy blonde on the hit sitcom “Three's Company” and then by getting fired when she demanded equal pay with the series' male star — and who later built a health and diet business empire, most notably with the ThighMaster — died on Sunday at herhome in ...

If she'd died in the 1990s, I think the lede would've read more like this: 

Suzanne Somers, who gained fame by playing a ditsy blonde on the hit sitcom “Three's Company” and was fired after making salary demands — and later wound up selling exercise equipment on late-night TV — died on Sunday... 

What's the line from “The Dark Knight”? You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain? Somers lived long enough to see herself become the hero. And a feminist icon! I don't think anyone thought Somers was a feminist icon in 1978. Particularly the feminists. 

Contempating her trajectory—from walk-on eye candy, to sexy blonde TV star, to failed film star—I thought of Farrah Fawcett, and lo and behold they had the same manager, Jay Bernstein, who was apparently great at publicity, and getting actresses to leave successful TV shows, but not much else. It feels slightly shady to me, but he became a producer on their stabs at film stardom: “Sunburn” for Farrah, “Nothing Personal” for Suzanne. In the latter, Somers plays an environmental lawyer who gets entangled with a professor, Donald Sutherland, in preventing the clubbing of (yes) baby seals to make room for (yes) a missile base. That's the late '70s all wrapped into one awful storyline. My father, who, per above, had every reason to give her a pass, lambasted “Nothing Personal” in his usual manner. He quoted the publicity dept.'s take on the film and tore it apart. You call it a “modern comedy”? Neither, actually. 

Here's a question: If Somers indeed demanded equal pay with John Ritter, was she right to do so, or was she more replaceable than John Ritter? Since she was in fact replaced—first by Jenilee Harrison, who didn't take, and then by Priscilla Barnes, who did, kinda—it seems like the answer is yes. But as someone who was there, and watching, off and on, the show was never the same once Suzanne Somers was gone. It was fun, and then suddenly she was calling in long distance? That didn't work. And all of her replacements never really replaced her. Chrissy Snow was a dumb blonde, but also sweet and wise. In many ways she was smarter than the others. She knew what mattered in life. 

You know who thought she was worth the money? Newsweek magazine:

Look at that. She's literally bursting out of the televsion set—and her nighty. Which is the point. Newsweek was tsk-tsking about SEX AND TV but using both, and particularly the former, to sell the magazine. Suzanne Somers had to deal with that hypocrisy her entire life. 

Her most memorable film role was one of her first—the blonde in the white T-bird that Richard Dreyfuss spends the night, and the movie, chasing after in “American Graffiti.” Smart boy. Oddly, I always thought she was in the backseat. Nope. He was—in the other car. She was driving. Not a bad metaphor, particularly if the posthumous accolades are correct. All the time I thought she was a passenger, she was actually in the driver's seat.

Phyllis Coates was the third woman to portray Lois Lane (after radio star Joan Alexander and Noel Neill), the second live-action Lois (after Neill), and the first non-Minnesotan (from Wichita Falls, Texas). She died last week at age 96. 

Overall, Coates' Lois seemed more grown up and officious than Neill's. You feel you might get away with crossing Neill but not Coates. She was also the first actress to walk away from the role. After filming the B-movie “Superman and the Mole-Men” and the first season of the “Adventures of Superman” TV series, she gave it up and the role reverted to Neill again for the final five seasons. Looking through IMDb's photos, you get an idea why she might have done this: 

OK, so the first shot is classic Lois and the third shot is from a cheapie serial. But the other two are from “Supes.” Seems a girl reporter couldn't get through a 30-minute episode without giving the fetishists something to fetish about.

Looking over these photos, what's surprising is how different Coates can look from role to role: here blonde and Teutonic for “Jungle Drums of Africa”; there, suburban housefrau for an episode of “Leave It to Beaver”; young and coquetteish for her early pinups, and leggy for low-budget Republic serials. She always seemed smarter than her roles, but I guess that wasn't hard.

Though she ditched a great character for those sad Republic serials, she was part of one of the great unheralded moments in early superherodom. It's from the “Mole-Men” movie which wasn't even much of a movie—it's barely an hour long. At one point, the “Mole-Men” are discovered in an oil-drilling Texas town, and, being Texas, a lynch mob is quickly assembled. A rabble rouser rags on “them two reporters from back east” (Lois and Clark) and tells the crowd that no strangers are going to stop them. But one stranger does. After a gun goes off, an illegal alien named Superman says the following:

Whoever fired that shot nearly hit Miss Lane. Obviously none of you can be trusted with guns. So I’m going to take them away from you.

And he does.

Man, I'd love to watch this with an NRA crowd someday.

How many women have played Ginger Grant, the Marilyn Monroe-esque movie star stranded with “the rest” on Sherwood Schwartz' much-syndicated 1960s sitcom “Gilligan's Island”? I knew that for some of the subsequent TV movies another actress had been tapped, since Tina Louise had been uninterested in reprising the role; but it turns out, no, not just some: She never reprised the role, through all of its various reiterations. Which means this is our Ginger roll call:

1. Tina Louise: “Gilligan's Island” (1964-67)
2. Jane Webb: “The New Adventures of Gilligan” (1974-75) (Animated)
3. Judith Baldwin: “Rescue from Gilligan's Island” and “The Castaways on Gilligan's Island” (1978, 1979) (TV movies)
4. Constance Forsland: “The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island” (1981) (TV movie)
5. Dawn Wells: “Gilligan's Planet” (1982-83) (Animated) *

* Is this the ultimate revenge of Mary Ann?

But wait: Apparently there was a pilot episode, too—like Star Trek's “The Cage”—which resurfaced in the 1990s. And while Gilligan, Skipper, Thurston and Lovey were played by familar actors, the Professor was played by John Gabriel, Mary Ann was someone named Bunny and played by Nancy McCarthy, while Ginger Grant was played by yet another redhead, Kit Smythe. So:

6. Kit Smythe: “Gilligan's Island: Pilot episode” (1964)

I know she was a bit of a diva, but it's a testament to Tina Louise that no one compares.

This is from Sherwood Schwartz' book “Inside Gilligan's Island” (don't judge):

In 1970 there was an important survey of the buying habits of TV viewers by an authoritative advertising publication. This survey revealed a tremendous difference in the buying power of urban viewers versus viewers in rural areas. Consumers in large metropolitan cities spent twice what their country cousins did, and were far more important for sponsors, and, therefore, to the networks who served them. As a result of that survey, Bob Wood, Programming Chief at C.B.S., cancelled all the rural situation comedies on his network, four of which were in the top twenty in the Nielsen ratings. The inside joke in the industry that year was that Bob Wood had “cancelled every show with a tree in it.”

I assume he's talking “Mayberry R.F.D.” and “Hee Haw,” among others. But yes, this is what helped lead to the diverse, urban, Norman Lear-style sitcom that dominated from 1971-74. Then we got our fantasy jiggle shows in the mid-70s. And by the end of the decade we'd come full circle, with “Dallas” and “The Dukes of Hazzard,” both on CBS, leading the way. And then we got Reagan.

I knew about the rural purge, just didn't know the rationale behind it.

Who knew this divide, rural/urban, country mouse/city mouse, would wind up being the great continuing battle of my American lifetime? And ongoing. Tune in next week for more exciting episodes.