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Posted: 8 months, 1 week ago at Sep 12 9:44

Very good list, sir! Brought back a lot of memories watching my favorite TV shows.

Posted: 8 months, 1 week ago at Sep 13 4:44

Very comprehensive list!!

Posted: 8 months, 1 week ago at Sep 13 4:52

@Thumper & JPHOLT: Thank you. It'll be more comprehensive when it is finally finished.

Posted: 7 months, 1 week ago at Oct 10 11:54

The SNL and MadTV part reminds me of just how good SNL was in its heyday. I think MadTV struck a chord because it came, IMN-SHO, at the start of SNL's decline and filled a void. Unfortunately, FOX was nowhere near the ratings fixture that it is now and the showed just faded away.

Posted: 7 months, 1 week ago at Oct 10 22:27

@TrekMedic: Madtv was fresh when it came out. It felt like a new show, and there was a lot of comedy to be explored that SNL wasn't trying. Madtv didn't stay fresh for as long as SNL did, and so it couldn't survive. Some people swear by SNL even today, and I haven't watched the show recently enough to be able to disagree. I did enjoy the SNL of my childhood, watching Dana Carvey and Phil Hartman and the late 80's early 90's crew. It wasn't the best era, but it was enough at the time.

Posted: 6 months, 1 week ago at Nov 11 2:26

Great work! I enjoyed several of those shows...

Posted: 6 months ago at Nov 19 1:33

Comments, Part1

I respectfully disagree with your opinion that The Outer Limits was not as scarey as The Twilight Zone. I do admit Outer Limits was more Sci-Fi and less psychological than Twilight Zone, but I watched them as a kid and Outer limits always had a monster that would scare the hell out of me.
I haven't watched the newer version of the series, so I don't have on opinion on that, but the original Outer Limits was a true classic.

I remember Hitchcock as a funny host on his anthology show. Sometimes he was a bit corny, but I bet he got a kick out of doing it. I think he was just the host. I don't think he directed or wrote any of the episodes. Feel free to correct me if that is not correct.

What can you say about SNL? It is iconic and has gone through so many incarnations of Not Ready For Primetime Players, that it is hard to make a definitive statement about the show without specifying what seasons you are referring to. I was happy to see among the selected characters, you included one of my favorites, Nick the sleazy lounge singer.

I think Will Sasso was the break-out star of MadTV. That guy is just funny without doing anything, if you know what I mean, just a naturally funny guy.

I was suprized you didn't include Fridays. There was a time when SNL was in a transitional period and Fridays was consistently funnier than SNL during that period.

Cheers reminded me of Taxi, another great ensemble comedy.

The Wonder Years was another show I used to watch a lot. It was about growing up in the early 70's, not the late 60's, but I guess I'm being nit-picky by pointing that out.

I agree that Herman Munster was funny as the dumb and goofy head of a family of monsters, but I thought the Addams Family had their own charm as well. I admit I watched The Munsters more, but I think that is because it ran longer. If I am not mistaken, I think The Addams Family only ran for 2 seasons.

Bewitched is the classic example of a main character being replaced by a different actor. In 99.9% of the cases, the original is always best. Dick York was always my favorite, I never got used to that new Dick. The only execption to this rule that I can think of offhand, is when they replaced the original Floyd the Barber on The Andy Griffith Show. After the original appeared one time, they replaced him with Howard McNear and he became the definitive Floyd. Most people don't even remeber the other guy.

I loved Happy Days when it first came out. I think this is another show that suffered from running too many seasons. The first season was about Richie and his best friend Potsy going through their teenage years and coming of age in the 1950s. Fonzie was a minor character that appeared occasionally, usually as the voice of experience since he was older and more worldly than Richie and Potsy. Ralph was a cooler character as well. He was a friend of Fonzie's and tooled around Arnold's in a custom T-bucket hot rod. The look of the show was also different. They shot outdoors on the studio backlot for some scenes, like in the parking lot of Arnold's or outside the high school.
The Fonzie character became an instant hit, and the show expanded his part to cash in on this popularity. They started shooting in front of an audience on a sound stage, which changed the look of the Cunningham's house, Arnold's, and the whole show. Now everytime Fonzie would appear, you could hear the girls scream in the audience. He was made Richie's best friend, they paired Potsy with Ralph as 2 dumbells, and they traded his Harley Knukclehead for a silver Triumph. They really went over the top with Fonzie's ultimate cool, invincable image. They even wanted to change the name of the show to Fonzie's Happy Days, but Henry Winkler would not allow it. As the boys got older, they added Chachi as Fonzie's cousin for the younger fans. I never liked Chachi. They gave Richie a girlfriend he would eventually wed. When Ralph and Richie left the show, they had Potsy hanging around the Cunningham house trying to be buddies with Mr. C. I thought that appeared strange. They even made High School Dropout Fonzie a teacher at the school. This was not even the same show anymore. It needed to end several seasons before it did.

Posted: 6 months ago at Nov 19 5:57

Comments Part2

The only thing I remember about The Nanny was that I was unable to watch due to the fact that I couldn't stand Fran Dresser's voice for 30 minutes.

Lost in Space was a very campy, fun show. It was similiar, in my opinion, to Batman in that way. It must have been on opposite another popular show, as I only remember watching it occasionally. But I have seen it enough times to know the characters pretty well. Irwin Allen had another show called Land of the Giants and it was almost an exact copy of Lost in Space in a different setting. They had a young boy, 2 strong heroic men, 2 attractive women, and a sniveling, cowardly older guy that would always get them in trouble. Instead of going from planet to planet, this crew was stranded on one planet that was almost exactly like Earth, except the people were like 50 feet tall. Everything was on a larger scale and the crew had to constantly hide and keep on the lookout for threatening things like giant bugs and snakes, not to mention the people of the planet.

I agree with your observation that everyone else seemed to have no trouble arriving and leaving Gilligan's Island except the castaways. There was always a creative way to have the guest star leave the island without saving anyone but themselves. Another popular observation was that the Professor was such a genius he could make a two-way radio out of coconuts, but was unable to patch a hole in the boat.
This show was very successful and had a long run. After it left the air in first run episodes, the reruns were so popular, several TV-Movies were made using the original cast for the most part. Producer Sherwood Shwartz attempted to create another hit for his star, Bob Denver using the same concept as Gilligan's Island. It was called Dusty's Trail and it was set in the western frontier. The premise was a scout and his assistant get two wagons seperated from a wagon train headed west and they are wandering around hopelessly lost. Each cast member co-responded to a Gilligan cast member. Bob Denver was Dusty, the assistant that got them lost-obvisously Gilligan. The Head Scout was played by Forrest Tucker of F Troop. He was similiar to The Skipper. In the first wagon was a very smart dude from the East who knew all about the geography of the land, the local Indian tribes and their customs, etc. And like the Professor, he could do just about anything except navigate them back on the main trail. Riding with him was 2 pretty girls who used to appear on Petticoat Junction. One was a pretty school teacher that was sweet like Mary Ann, the other was a brassy saloon dancing girl, who was proud of her looks and show biz experience like Ginger. The second wagon was very fancy and belonged to an older, rich couple like the Howells. I don't think it lasted an entire season. I have only seen a few episodes on the internet.

I used to watch Northern Exposure. I thought it was kind of a quirky, offbeat show. It had the sexual tension between Rob Morrow, the doctor and newcomer to Alaska, and the main female lead. The old man had a pretty young girlfriend, or was it his wife? The Zen radio DJ would read New Age poetry on the air, there was a indiguous Alaskan Girl, and a Texas Oil Millionare. I know she must have been born there and the Texan was probably supposed to have been speculating on new oil well sites. Nothing really much ever happened as best I remember. The thing I remeber most about it was that after it recieved good ratings, star Rob Morrow quit to pursue a movie career and you never saw him again.

For some reason, as a kid I thought Mr. Wizard was mean and I didn't like him. I thought he kept a mean look on his face and talked gruffly to the kids assisting him. I have no basis for thinking this. I am sure he is a very nice man and probably loves kids since he has dedicated his career to them. That is the reason I missed out on all the wonders of science he could have taught me.

Now Westerns are something I know about. I was always playing cowboys as a kid and most of the shows on TV back then were westerns.
Rawhide was a favorite of mine. It told the tale of men on a catle drive and each episode was an incident they ran into on the trail, or nearby town during the drive. It had a great theme song by Frankie Laine, who was famous for singing the High Noon theme. The show was very similiar in structure to Wagon Train, which told the story of people travelling on a wagon train and things that happened to them along the way. Rawhide was tougher and more hard edged than Wagon Train, though. Clint Eastwood was the ramrod, second in command under the trail boss. He was seen on this show by Leone Sergio, who offered him the lead in Fistful of Dollars based on his performance on this show. He agreed and made the film during a break in filming of the TV show.

Gunsmoke is another show that got its start on the radio. Matt Dillion was voiced by actor William Conrad, who later starred as Cannon on TV. The role of Doc was played more comically by Howard McNear, who would later play Floyd the Barber on Andy Griffith. The role of Chester was played by character acter Parley Baer, he was an older character than on the TV show and was part Indian, with the last name of Proudfoot instead of Goode as it was on the TV show as played by Dennis Weaver. When they wanted to try the 'new' medium of television, the networks wanted John Wayne to play Matt Dillon. Wayne, of course, turned down the part. He recommended James Arness, whom he had worked with and admired. Wayne even filmed an introduction that was shown before the first episode. The role made Arness's career and he played the role from 1955 until 1975, then repeated the role in a couple of made for TV Gunsmoke movies. When Dennis Weaver left the show as Chester, they broadened the part, too much, some say, to Festus played by veteran western actor Ken Curtis. Ken had been a part of John Ford's stock company and appeared in many of his westerns, along with John Wayne, Ward Bond, and many others. Curtis was also a singer and a one-time member of the Western singing group, The Sons of the Pioneers. He was also once John Ford's son-in-law. There always seemed to be sexual tension between the marshall and Miss Kitty, the owner of the Long Branch Saloon. I think they made her the owner, so there could never be any doubt that she may have been a 'working' girl in the saloon. It was always inplied that she had feelings for Matt, but he always seemed oblivious to them. Some speculate this was because he didn't want her involved in the dangerous nature of his job. Of course, shwe got involved plenty of times just being a friend of the Marshall's.

Wanted Dead or Alive was an early role for movie star Steve McQueen. He played bounty hunter, Josh Randall. It was one of the westerns that had the gimmick of a special gun used by the star. Like Have Gun Will Travel had Palladin's custom-made weapons, The Rifleman had Lucas MaCain's special rapid firing Winchester with the custom ring for easy spinning, and Wyatt Earp's Buntline Special, Josh Randall had a Mare's Leg strapped to his hip. The Mare's Leg was actually a Winchester Model 1892 44-40 carbine with a barrel shortened to 12 or possibly 9 inches and most of the butt stock removed. It could be worn in a large holster and used with one hand. He had a specail Gunslinger rig setup and was able to draw and fire the big gun very fast, sometimes even faster than opponents with smaller guns. In spite of all this, he was no gunslinger. The character of Josh Randall was a Confederate veteran and bounty hunter with a soft heart. He often donated his earnings to the needy and helped his prisoners if they have been wrongly accused.

Bonanza was another very popular western TV show. It ran for 14 seasons. Gunsmoke is the only western that ran longer. It ran in color from the first episode in 1959. It was about a rich cattle baron living on a huge Nevada ranch on Lake Tahoe with his three adult sons. As you pointed out, each sone was different and had a different mother. Poor Ben was widowed 3 times. There were three seperate flashback episodes telling the story of each mother and the birth of each sone. Adam was the oldest and the son of a woman from a seafaring family in New England. Ben, himself was a sailor when he was young. Adam was college educated back east and often flaunts his education on the other sons. Hoss, the middle son, was a mountain of a man. His mother was of Swedish descent, and was killed by Indians on the trip west. Despite his huge frame and powerful strength, he was lovable and kind-hearted. The youngest, 'Little' Joe's mother was French-Creole from New Orleans and he inherited her impetuous, hot-headed nature. I watched this show with my parents every Sunday night. It was like a tradition. The family TV night. We stayed with NBC all night. We seldom got to see all the shows, but by the time Bonanza was on at 9pm, everyone was usually there. The early episodes had the Cartrwights more clannish and distrusting of strangers on their land and the miners and townspeople. The term Bonanza referred to a large deposit of ore. Most commenly referred to as the Comstock Lode, a huge silver strike in that area around this period in history. In the later episodes, they became more friendly to peopl crossing their land, allowing them to camp, and towards the townspeople. The sheriff became one of their best friends and Ben served on many Virginia City committees as a successful local businessman. The boys seemed to have the same luck with women that their had. Whenever you see Adam, Hoss, or Joe get friendly with a girl you can bet she will die by the closing credits. I think the writers wanted to keep the men single for the female fans or something, but the word in Virginia City should have been out that the Cartwright boys were the kiss of death. If you see them coming, run for your life. Looking back, it was really more of a western soap opera.

I used to watch the Lone Ranger when I was real young. It was one of the children's westerns, like Roy Rogers, The Cisco Kid, Gene Autry, Hopalong Cassidy and shows like that. Of coruse everyone know The Lone ranger orignated on Radio and moved to TV. The Ranger was a firm believer in being a role model. He shot bullets of solid silver, forged in his own mine. He rode a big white steed, wore a big white hat, and only fired to wound or capture. He never shot to kill. The silver bullets were a symbol of how precious your shots are and not to shoot wrecklessly. The legend goes that he was with a company of rangers that were led into an ambush in a box canyon by a traitor in the ranks. The Butch Cavendish gang left the rangers for dead, but Tonto, an indian, and sometimes implied to be a childhood friend found the lone ranger that was still breathing and nursed him back to health. He donned the mask hide the identity of the lone ranger and dedicated his lifr to righting injustices along with his faithful indian companion. I enjoyed the show until I got older and wanted to watch more adult westerns.