"Wait, you have a TV?" "No. I just like to read the TV guide. Read the TV guide. You don't need a TV." Hello everybody. Happy Saturday. It is a very special Saturday at that. It is a record store day and you might say, "Can what is record store day have to do a TV guidance counselor?" Well, I'll tell you. As promised in the West Hazard episode earlier in the week, my guest today is Angela Sawyer and Angela runs an amazing record store in Central Square in Cambridge called Weirdo Records. It is a classic record store. I think you would love it if you are in the area. You should definitely go into the store or she has an online store where you can buy some some great weird stuff from her. She is also a comedian. She puts my music knowledge to shame. She is very, very knowledgeable about some very esoteric and strange musical things. And she's very interesting and very funny. And I have a special place in my heart for record stores. I spent quite a lot of time in them when I was growing up. Pretty much every Saturday I would be hunting through record bins. So I really do love record store day. If you have never participated, I highly recommend you head out and just kind of go and hang around and look around even if you don't buy anything. Although I think the point is that you buy something. Also, it may be too late. I don't know when you've downloaded this episode or when you're listening. But later today, if you are in the Boston area, I will be doing a live version of the podcast as part of the Eugene Merman Comedy Festival at the Brattle Theatre in Harvard Square. And my guest will be appropriately enough, Eugene Merman. So I hope to see you there. That's at three o'clock. And actually later tonight, I am in Rhode Island with Todd Barry, which is not a podcast show. And I usually don't plug my stand up shows, but while I'm listening shows, there you go. So as I said, Angela is very funny. She's a great record store. I will put links up to all that stuff on tvguidescounselor.com and you should definitely check it out onto the episode. Please enjoy this special record store day, Saturday edition of TV Guidescounsel with my guest, Angela Solia. Thank you so much for having me on the podcast. Thanks so much. Welcome to the house. Yeah, we just had an exciting moment where our dog had an accident on the floor, so it pre-empted the recording. That reminds me of being eight years old. Yes, yes it does. It was really to get the atmosphere of this time. Nothing is not complete. Yeah, exactly. It's an fully immersive. It's like a virtual reality. It's my house is very much like the one more man, the movie, not the book. So you picked the TV guide from September 10th, 1978. What drew you to this particular issue? I picked, I was looking for an issue from around the time that my family unexpectedly got a puppy, which was in 1978 and 1979. So it was a very memorable time, obviously. It was very memorable, and that was the time in my life where I was using television to try and absorb the habits of the alien. The population seemed to be with me on the earth. It was research. I was pretending to be like a human being. I grew up in Denver, Colorado, so I was a child racist. You had to, there was no other options. So all of my understanding about how to deal with people who I had not seen in real life, which was everyone, it all came from TV. So you thought everyone was rubber keel? I did. And I named, I got the, I was given the chance, I didn't get many responsibilities when I was a kid. My parents were pretty weird. Are you an only child? Yes. Okay. And we unexpectedly got a puppy, which was very uncharacterized for family. Just showed up out of nowhere. And it was the kind of thing like, if it was a husband and he brought flowers, you'd be like, "What'd you do?" Right, right, right. Look at this puppy. Can you get me out about this? Yeah. And my parents were me. I could name the puppy. Oh, nice. It was a black lab. So of course I named it Benson. You named it Benson. I did. And they were horrified. I thought they would think I was very smart and very witty. But they were like, they said they were just like, "That's very racist." Yeah, they thought I was very racist. And my father, after some deep deliberation said, "No one will notice." So you kept it Benson. You didn't have to do it. And no one ever questioned it. Nobody ever questioned it. So how old were you when you first met an actual black person? In Denver, I saw one at a hospital. Okay. There was nobody at school. Yeah. There was nobody that we had an albino kid in our class. Ooh, that's kind of terrifying. Denver is extremely homogenous. And people say that Boston is racist, but it's not anything like it is. I mean, I'll get a lot of guff for this, but I don't think Boston is so much racist as incredibly xenophobic. Yeah, it's just angry at everybody. It really is. It's like, you're not from here. I don't care what you look like. You're just not from here. Yeah, you're not my friend. Yeah. And it even goes down to the neighborhood level. They'll be like, "You're not from this street." So, hey, funky. Yeah, I think that's true. It's very odd. And where I grew up, everybody was it just it was like living inside a sitcom already. Okay. Very just super homogenous, very superficial laugh track. Almost. Yeah. And so it wasn't until I got older and I moved away from there and sort of. Did you move away from college or you just moved away from college? Okay. Where'd you go to college? I went to U.S. Lowell. Yes, nice. I've only been a Colorado handful of times. I was in this thing called Odyssey of the Mind. And we made it to the world finals at the University of Colorado Boulder. Nice. But I made a specific effort to go to Estes Park to go to the Shining Inspiration Hotel. Did you ever go to that hotel? I'd been to the hotel. Not I didn't know what the Shining was. But Colorado was in popular culture a lot. In the 70s. Yeah, absolutely. For reasons that I don't really understand. But I showed up frequently. I don't have any historical basis for this, but I feel like the 70s is when Hollywood celebrities discovered Aspen. Yeah, I think that's right. So that might be why they were shooting a lot of things. No, we're shooting an episode in Colorado. That's why we're going to Aspen. Well, because in the early 70s, 100 Thompson runs for the mayor of Aspen. And some people would have thought that it would be about to be like the capital of the counterculture. But then by say 1980, Aspen is a place where you can only buy Beverly Hills North. Yeah, it is. It's fairly Hills North. You can only buy shoes that cost $1,000. Right. And they literally had like an encampment for the people who couldn't. The workers. Yeah. For the workers that was around the back of a mountain. That's very strange. The only way to get there was a bus that only ran a couple times a day. That's very odd. It's so sad. I mean, I mean, it's very strange. I made a special trip to go to my Ohio comics. That was a big thing for me. But I went to Aspen. The Walsh brothers who were Boston comics, they moved to LA. Sure. They got in the HBO Aspen Comedy Festival in 2006 and I invited myself along. Nice. And I rented a car to drive from Denver, a boulder to Aspen, which is like a four hour drive, I think or so. And it was in March, so I'm like, this will be fine. And the guy I'm renting the car and he goes, what are you doing with this car? And I'm like, I'm driving to Aspen and he's like, I can't rent you this car. And I'm like, why did he go, you will die? Yeah. And I was like, what are you talking about? I mean, maybe I was FTV. I got stuck in a blizzard and it took me almost ten hours. And it was like white knuckle side of the cliff. I don't know how you people live out there. I don't know how you drive out there. I can remember many times my childhood friend Holly lived on the top of Green Mountain. Okay. And so she was one of the kids that would have an hour ride to the bus stop and then an hour bus ride into school. That is terrible. Yeah. And her road was just a zigzag up beside of a cliff. So like one side of the car is nothing. And the other side of the car is gross. I don't know. Very strange. So we've set the scene for this time. Now, this is an LA edition. So we don't really capture all of it because you're in Central Time, which is something that sort of fascinates me. Because in some ways I felt bad for the Central Time people. But in other ways I was jealous of you because you got to watch the ten o'clock shows before bedtime. We did. Sometimes. I remember very distinctly being rightously upset because I had to go to bed in the middle of Charlie's Angels every week. No one would want that. I was so angry. I was ready for revelers to write that. Oh, so your parents had a 30 on the 30s bedtime. Yeah, I had a 30 bedtime. That is cruel and unusual. Very difficult. Very difficult. So let's jump right into it. Saturday night, eight o'clock, would you watch? I started with us against the world two. Us against the world two is not something I am remotely familiar with. Us against the world two is a one-time celebrity athlete competition. Okay. Very strange. Basically Howard Cosello is very popular and somebody decided let's just do more of that. So it's sort of predating the classic, what's the word I'm looking for? Battle of the network stars. Yes, it's a lot like all of the network stars. Just with whoever. Whoever on the one network. So I love the pomp and circumstance of the 70s and these sorts of things. Us against the world two is a athletic competition between American celebrities and those from around the world. The US team includes Gary Berghoff, Dick Clark. I don't think I've ever seen him do anything physical. Can you imagine him running? Erka Strata, who I assume probably beat everybody. Melissa Gilbert, Dan Hagerty, Chorus Leachman, Christy McNichol, and Jimmy Walker, the world team. And this is very strange. The world's team includes Levar Burton, for some reason. Britt Eklund, that makes sense. Fiona Flanagan, who I'm unfamiliar with, Rich Little, who I assumed did a variety of racist accents through her. Dudley Moore, Victoria Principal, William Shatner, and Bose Venson hosts Gabe Kaplan, who they called Gabriel Kaplan. Ed McMahon and Ted Knight, events include kayak racing, swimming, and running relays. So the prospect of watching one, watching Gabe Kaplan talk to Ted Knight, and also the prospect of like Chorus Leachman trying to throw a javelin? Do anything athletic. Yeah, anything at all. It seems like a clincher. And in the ad, excellent, excellent cartoon depiction of the people. Yeah. Compared to what else was on, which is the paper chase, which does have a special guest appearance by Mary Lou Hinner, who I do it in like, I would definitely have gone with this as well. I think that was, that was the right choice. And that's two hours. That's the whole night. It's Saturday night. You're missing love boat at another clock. Well, I thought I might switch to love boat. I think an hour of, uh, yacking with fake athletes seems like plenty. Yeah, I would agree. And this was sort of the height of love boat. 1978. This was right in the dead center of love boats fame and power. And this one is one, a contest to find an ambasagress. A phrase I've never heard in my life. I believe they meant the ambasagress. Um, for the cruise line decorates the ship with a bevy of beauties and to a proud black. That's how they actually say a proud black is offended by the Uncle Tom Foolery of another black. Played by Skatman Carothers. That's very seventies to me. That's very seventies. But that's one of the most racist. Speaking of the shining Skatman Carothers. Right. And then three, a muck raking reporter played by Vicki Lawrence falls for a disgraced Congressman played by my least favorite of the Dynasty family's Dick Van Patton. Yeah. And Maureen McCormick is in this episode as well. So that's a pretty good one. That's a pretty great ridiculous episode. Tom Foolery. Well, that's... I'm pretty sure I'm not positive, but that show is probably how I learned what an Uncle Tom was. Yeah. And I think, I think I was pretty heartbroken that it was Skatman. He's great. Have you ever heard his record? I have not heard Skatman's record. He has, he had a small musical career. Okay, I believe this. Yeah. Did he do Skat? Okay. Yeah, that's where he got his name. All right. And he started by joining and following after Slim Gayard who has a 40s sort of like jump blues guy who makes up words a lot. Okay. He's a supporter of Skat. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Slim Gayard just invents languages for himself. One of the whole languages is Vouty. Okay. So anyway, Skatman would, he played a lot around California. Yeah. He basically toured out and then stayed and played around California. And he has fantastic records. He has a really, really good version of Ghost Riders in Sky. I don't think I've ever heard a bad version of Ghost Riders in the world. It's a hard song to ruin. It's a hard song to ruin. That to me, that's why you can like Christmas carols and many other songs. That's true. Because they're hard to ruin. The interpretations are endless. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So Skatman, I really only knew from the Shining. So I would be on board for this and there's really nothing else there. I watch, aside from the 1961 English giant monster movie, Gorgo, which seems great, which is a great movie. It's basically an English rip off of Godzilla. Yeah. How could you know? Very, very strange. Great episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 as well with Gorgo. So let's move on to Sunday night, eight o'clock. What'd you go with? Well, Sunday, I decided if the theme was going to be inflammatory, I might as well go with roots. Yeah. Roots, I believe, premiered this week in 1978. And that was a big, big deal. Oh, it's huge. I can remember school teachers telling kids to watch it. Yeah, the TV miniseries in general. You just stopped their lives and watched them. It was a huge event. In a lot of ways, I sort of feel like we're moving almost back towards that with the sort of more cinematic television series like Mad Men and Walking Dead and these sort of things that are limited to 13 episodes of series. People seem to treat it more like a miniseries. You can make a really good argument that, like, Louie is an art house version of that. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And you sort of need to make television an event again in order to get people to come back. Pay attention to get off their computer and pay attention. Absolutely. And as people complain about things like spoilers and like, "I didn't watch it. It's not my DVR." There's still that pressure where they sort of have to watch it live. I got to find out what happened. Right, which is unusual now because you almost have to watch it as a form of self-preservation so the ending is a ruin for you. Sure. And it's funny how these things sort of swing back around. But roots with Foreigner LeVar Burton, as we've seen earlier in World Terrier. And Foreigner Victoria Principal, that was a unusual one. And Ben Vereen, who many people would confuse for Robert Guillen over the years. He is, tonight, the final triumph. Freedom. Through four generations, they kept their dream alive with courage, faith, and hope. Now, as their long-hard struggle comes to an end, they find a new life and a new beginning. I have tried to watch roots, and I've been very bored. I hate to admit it. I imagine, I can remember being bored by when I was eight. And I, you know, I thought Scooby-Doo was very entertaining at that point. And then when I watched that, when I was 20, it seemed released. Not very small. Well done, but it just seems like a bum out. And, well, maybe someday I'll be mature enough to watch roots. But I would have gone with a show I had never heard of before called Sword of Justice. This was the debut of Sword of Justice. This was a sneak preview of a new series, starring one of my favorite named actors of the 70s, Dak Rambo. We all love Dak Rambo. I don't know anything about Dak Rambo, other than that his name is Dak Rambo. That's enough. I would like to know if that's his real name or a stage name. But he plays Jack Cole, a desolate playboy by day. By night, he's an anonymous crime fighter helping the feds get the goods on white collar crooks. The pilot opener accounts how Jack got that way. His family's ruined, and his trumped-up conviction and prison term, all at the hands of embezzlers, and his sweet revenge on the same. So he's like a paper version of Batman? Yeah, so this is like an office of a man? This is like an office. This is white collar Batman. And Christina Ferrari is in this episode, who I absolutely love. She's sort of a forgotten 70s ingenue. And then she was hosting daytime TV like home again and stuff like that in the 80s. She wrote a crazy autobiography that's very good. Also Larry Hagman was in this and June Lockhart from Lassie. Nice. So I have never heard of the show. I really would like to hunt this down because it sounds horrific, horrifically good. Yeah. And in the ad in the TV Guide, there's a picture of Dak Rambo with a full tennis pro outfit on, sort of cradling a tennis racket and then also with just a three-a-clubs card and a turtleneck. So it's like an Olin Mills or Sears photo of it? Yes, exactly. So nine o'clock, what'd you go with? Nine o'clock on Sunday. I went with Immar Bergman's The Magician. Interesting, heady choice for a child. That was a very adult choice. Have you seen this movie? I have seen this movie. The movie is, I'm a big fan of Scott Walker. Yeah, so I think that this movie is the basis for Scott Walker's song. That's enough of a reason for me to watch it many more times. Play the game with death? Yes, exactly. Yeah. That's a great record. That's from Scott for, right? I think it is. That's the best one. I love Scott Walker. I also have several biographies in Scott Walker. Oh, nice. We will have to look at this. Yes, absolutely. So I do like Immar Bergman. The Magician is probably not my favorite movie. I don't know if I would have gone with this at this point because I probably would have gone with Lawrence Welk as a poker fan. I'm sure that's what I actually saw on that date. It was a new date and time for Lawrence Welk, so it would have been a big deal. Right. Monday night, eight o'clock. Monday night, as you know, is the saddest night of the week. We've gone back to work. We've gone to school. We need something to really take us away from that. What did you go with? Well, I almost chose the Jeffersons, but then I read the description of the plot for the evening, and I switched to the last minute and decided to go with Welcome Back hard. So this one sounds a little heavy. Is that why you didn't go with it? It just seemed to adult for what I would have liked, even though I just chose Immar Bergman right before that. I got on my adult town for the week and more than Mehr Bergman. That particular movie I remember when I went to college, which wasn't that long ago. I mean, you know, 15 years ago, to watch those movies, I used to have to go to the library at college and I'd fill out a card. They would queue up the laser disc and I would have to sit in basically like a language lab booth with headphones on and a remote control and watch it that way. You got a big list. So in the Jeffersons, George is surprised to see an old Navy chum, a womanizer who considers Louise Fair Game, first shown in 1975. This is a repeat. And it's a classic sitcom episode where an old army buddy makes a move on your wife, which actually was in about 10 different sitcoms for some reason. It took me a little minute to figure out that Louise was wheezing. They always call her Louise in TV Guide and it's so respectful, but confusing. Yeah, it's very confusing. Yeah. You passed up Little House in the Prairie, which I'm very proud of before. Walking at Carter is a show that I absolutely hate. I cannot get into it. It's just, it's almost everything I dislike about the 70s wrapped up in. I can understand that. I don't think I liked the show that much at the time, but it did set really strange expectations for what I thought school would be like. Yeah, I could see that. And it also set strange expectations for what I thought New York City was like. Yes. I can remember coming home and being very angry that my school didn't have lockers like they had on lockers. You didn't have lockers? No. I went to school in the 70s. So it was, it was just like open space and like a cubbyhole. Yeah. Every classroom could be broken down and the walls turned around and my high school in Melrose was designed by a gentleman who designed prisons. And it was built in 1970s. And it was very, it looked like you could film a dystopian 70s sci-fi movie. Sure, sure, sure. And so they had a thing called the open space and it was in the middle. And it was basically eight classrooms in one big room and they were separated by Japanese screens. It was incredibly distracting. You heard all the classes at once and no one could justify the purpose of it. It was a mess. Yeah. In my school, all the classrooms were three walls and the missing wall opened out into the library. So the library was the loudest place in school. I would imagine that would be very distracting. If you were in the library, it would make it look like a strange zoo. It did. Like you're just going around and see the different exhibits of students. Yeah. And that's pretty much how I thought about people. Was it a large class? No, it wasn't a huge school. Okay. It was, you know, just a tiny little school in the suburbs. That's very strange. So this episode of Welcome Back Carter, student unrest marks the start of the series fourth term. Woodman has been appointed principal and the sweat hogs are angry that Gabe has taken the job as his assistant. I remember that episode very well. I do. I remember because it was a big social issue that Gabe had sold out. So this was the 60s coming home to Roost. It absolutely was. Well, I guess I just didn't under. It's just not for me this show. I couldn't get it. No, it's a weird one. Wait 30, would you go with? I actually, I think I skipped 830 actually. Okay. So you passed up Good Times, which is a show that I didn't enjoy. Yeah, that's a great show. I got to meet Norman Lear once actually in Aspen. He was there for a comedy festival and I said, Mr. Lear, I'm sorry to bother you. And he goes, well, you already have my picture with him anyway. That's excellent. Nine o'clock. What'd you go with? Nine o'clock. I went with Monday night football. Are you a football fan? I was at when I was eight. I feel like in Colorado, you had to be a football fan. It was very, very huge. Very important. And this Monday night football has the Broncos. Okay, Denver Broncos versus the Vikings at Bloomington, Minnesota. I assume the Vikings are Minnesota. I don't know what supports Frank Gifford, who I know was married to Kathy Lee Gifford, a former player announcer, I guess. Yeah, Howard Cosell, I do know. Don Meredith, I don't. And so did you watch this with your parents every week? Oh, yeah. My parents, when my parents got divorced, they fought over the season Broncos tickets for probably six months. Jeez. It was a very big deal. But you, they were like, you take it. That's fine. Yeah. That was no big deal. Yeah. Denver was a town that was very Broncos oriented, especially in the suburbs. The whole place to shut down. You couldn't buy a can of soda pop during Sunday, because everybody was just stopped watching. I mean, I do remember every store had an orange section. Any kind of stories of the colors of the team. Yeah, I was going to say that there's surely there had to be some foreign people who didn't care about football, but as we've established, there wasn't. No, there weren't. No, there's still art, as far as I know. No ethnic foods. No, well, a little bit. There's, there's a large Hispanic population. Okay, well, that makes sense. So you can get tamales, tamales, but like pizza didn't come into Colorado till 1987. Something like that. So this, this is a really tough call for me. There's, there's not that many things on. I would have gone with once upon a classic, which is a children's program. I know nothing about, but my only other options were Monday night football or mash and mash always bought me out as a kid. Mash was super fun. Although I recognize totally quality show. Yeah, but as an adult, well, a lot of shows that my dad liked when I was a kid, I recognized that they were good, but I still didn't want to watch them. You try to pretend like you got what was going on so that your dad would think you were like more adult. I didn't have to because he was never home. Oh, there you go. There you go. So Tuesday night eight o'clock, what'd you go with? Okay, Tuesday night at eight o'clock, I went with a made for TV Spider-Man. Yes, so this aired, I believe six episodes. This was a huge bomb. And so this starred Nicholas, who's his name, Nicholas Hammond, yes, as Spider-Man, who actually I thought was a pretty good Peter Parker, but the budgetary limitations of NBC in 1978 just killed it. The seventies were rife with bad Spider-Mans. Yeah. Oh, the Japanese one is amazing though. That one. I don't think I've ever seen that one. There's a Japanese Spider-Man that was made around the same time as this and it goes crazy. So one of the big problems with this Spider-Man was that they didn't have any supervillains. So he was always fighting, not even like diamond thieves. It was like a really case of the week sort of Star Skiing Project, so that just happened to have a spider-man. With costumes. Yeah, exactly. And it kind of worked for the incredible Hulk because that was more, you could go more of like a sci-fi angle. It wasn't really a superhero, but Spider-Man just didn't work. Yeah, they were probably thinking of Wonder Woman and trying to do that. Yeah, and Wonder Woman was so kitschy that intentionally. It was great and that survived changing networks and changing eras. So the first season was set in the 1940s as a period piece if you remember. And then when it moved, they made it updated to the seventies. It was very disco. But this one, Julie's life is endangered after she inadvertently photographs the mastermind behind the theft of a top secret government document. See, it was very not good, but I definitely watch it. It takes out the best part of Spider-Man, which is the anti-authoritarian. Yeah, exactly. And this sort of wise-ass teenager aspect. Yeah, really bad. And just two years later, we'd have Spider-Man as amazing friends on Saturday morning, which was such a better adaptation of Spider-Man. Yeah, absolutely. I remember the USA Network re-aired the Spider-Man and made a big deal out of it in like 1989. And all my friends at school were excited to watch it, and everyone was like, "This is the worst thing I've ever seen." 'Cause I didn't really have a concept of stuff being old that they've ever heard of. Sure, sure. So they were like, "Wow, for a new show, this is terrible." But I would have watched it. It's Spider-Man. I mean, huge Spider-Man fan, why not? Nine o'clock, what'd you go with? Nine o'clock, I went with Three's company. So Three's company, one of the sleaziest shows ever in the show television. I did watch this all the time. This episode, Jack Fain's illness to break one date so he can entertain another in this third season opener, but he's too convincing and gets more company than he'd like as everyone insists on nursing him. That's a perfect Three's company episode. I can't think of a more archetypical Three's company episode than that. Two dates, a lie and two dates. A lie and two dates and mistakes ensue. You know someone went in the wrong door. That had to happen at some point in that episode. Yeah, I would have gone with that. Nine 30, I'm assuming you won't taxi? I sure did. Taxi, great show. This was actually the debut of Taxi. This was the first episode of Taxi. So Alex Rieger fends off New York traffic when he's not fending off. Wise cracks from the gang at the garage. Fellow cabbies include a would-be actor, a hard luck boxer, an aspiring art dealer, a dispatcher who's downright hostile and a mechanic who would like to be libidinous but can't speak English. In the opener, the crew helps Alex reunite with the daughter he hasn't seen in 15 years. Now, the weird thing is they don't really mention John, who was played over Randall Carver, who is sort of the audience surrogate character in that first episode. And when you first start watching Mash, you go, "Oh, this is the main character of this show." And it's interesting to read this description because they definitely say the main character is Alex, which you wouldn't get by watching that first few episodes. I remember that the show started out seemingly too heavy. It was like a show that seemed like it had already been running. Nobody could forget what to do. It had a real lived-in quality then. Yeah, yeah, already. But I remember, I think the thing that clinched it for everyone was they held off on bringing Danny DeVito out of the cage. And at the end, it was a huge reveal at the end. And when that happened, everyone just lost their mind. Yeah, it's like a three-minute standing ovation list. Absolutely. People stood up in their houses. Yeah, it's a taxi still continues to be a great show. It's past 10 o'clock, but I just wanted to mention that Starsky and Hutch this episode. They describe it as dazzling disco dancers disappear, Starsky and Hutch in a fever. So that'll tell you what year this was. And there's also an ad on Wednesday night here for something called Wednesday Night Fever. And it says, "Disco, a transparent dance floor pulsating with laser beams, sizzling with non-stop music, an hour of non-stop hits. Dance contest. It's hot city. The hottest place in town." That illustration, you should definitely scan and share because that is terrifying. It looks a bit, actually speaking of Spider-Man and his amazing friends, it's a bit Firestar. If she was a demon, it's demon Firestar, I should scan that. It's like the Firestar oil. Yes, it is. The oil slick Firestar. So Wednesday night, eight o'clock, what'd you go with? Wednesday night, eight o'clock, I had to go with Eight is Enough. Eight is Enough. Before I mention that, I just wanted one thing to caught my eye here at one o'clock on that day Wednesday. There's a show called For You, Black Woman. And it's For You, Lipses, Black Woman. Muhammad Ali talks about his life here. For You, Black Woman. Eight is Enough is a show that I used to watch, but absolutely hate it. Yeah, it had its... The one thing that I liked about it was that there was someone who was my age aunt who was realistic. I liked the kids on The Little House on the Prairie, who everyone hated. And your age was Adam Rich, Nicholas, who was the most messed up on that show. He went to jail for biting a hooker's face off or something horrific like I remember in the late 80s. Do you remember that? No, I don't remember that. He had some real substance abuse problem and he beat up a hooker or something along those lines. And of course, Williams, who went on to Be In Bible Man, the show he produced himself. And Dave Van Patten pops up yet again. Yes. I would have gone with, there was a special this night that was Popeye. There were four new tales featuring Popeye, including the gang disco dancing. So once again, disco has even infected Popeye this night, which is crazy. So Eight is Enough is An Hour, so you passed up everything at eight thirty. What'd you go with at nine o'clock? I went with Charlie's Angels, especially this Charlie's Angels. It has Dean Martin. Dean Martin, this is a two hour season premiere. And this one, Dean Martin, looks to the Angels for help. In the first case of their third season, he plays a Las Vegas casino owner. Someone's trying to ruin filmed on location. This is the Jacqueline Smith, Cheryl Ladd, Kate Jackson, Europe. Vic Moro is in this episode. It's Jennifer Jason Lee's father who died in the Twilight Zone movie. We also have Dick Sargent in this episode in Scat Man Corothers. Again. Again. This guy's everywhere. He's playing a character named Jip Baker. Jip Baker, played by Scat Man Corothers. Now we know why, why I was a racist child. I'm sold on that. Yeah. It was a racist time. It wasn't just Colorado. So Thursday night, eight o'clock, what'd you go with? Thursday night, I went with Mark and Mindy. Mark and Mindy set in Colorado. Is it set in Colorado? I never heard of it. In the opening sequence, Mark jumps up on the goal post of Mile High Stadium. Okay. Where the Broncos played every week. Yeah. And Mindy runs across the field to try and get him to come down. Yeah, that makes it. What a weird place to set that show. Colorado was everywhere. Was there pride in Colorado like being like, yeah, Mark and Mindy takes place here? Did you know where that took place there? I was completely aware of it. Did you think you would like run into Mark and Mindy places? No, I didn't think that. But I was aware that I thought Colorado was, I probably just thought it was the center of the universe. It was where the shining happened. Yeah. And it was where the Broncos played. And it was where Mark and Mindy took place. And, you know, things like that all sort of came together. Absolutely. So this was actually the debut of Mark and Mindy. This was the first episode of Mark and Mindy. Robin Williams is Mark sent by his planet, Ork, to study primitive human society, much like you did by watching television. Exactly. In the opener, Mark meets Mindy, a 21-year-old who's taken aback by his peculiar Orkian habits and kindly takes him in to teach him proper Earthling manners. Henry Winkler and Penny Marshall are Fonzi and Laverne in this episode. This was a big deal. That would have gotten me alone. I loved Fonzi. Yeah. I think that's why many people probably tuned in to this show. And he had been on Happy Days beforehand. Yes. They spun off so many things from Happy Days. Man, the time frames got very nebulous. Was it actually in the 70s now? It was very... No, no. No, I'm intrigued by a TV movie. This is a pilot movie that I'd never heard of. It's a show called The Clone Master. Already, I'm sold just on the name of it. Yeah, the name is very good. He created life. Now his own was in danger, combining science fiction, espionage, action, and tongue-in-cheek humor. Clone Master concerns a biochemist who creates 13 replicas of himself, then uses them to foil a spy plot. I don't know why they... It makes no sense. So it's not the island of Dr. Moreau. It's like Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Mission. Exactly. But with all the guys. Yeah. I would want to see this remade now. I really would like to see this. Yeah, that'd be a great one. First of all, Clone Master is just a great name for anything. 8.30, what'd you go with? Uh, I... You know, I didn't figure out that there was an 8.30. Nothing, an 8.30. You just reminiscing about more. Apparently, I'm just still thinking about what... Or you could switch to the second half hour of Clone Master. There's not a lot on... You have Merv Griffiths on... Yeah, I didn't see anything good. Yeah, nothing good. 9 o'clock. 9 o'clock, I went with Barney Miller. Barney Miller is maybe one of my top five favorite sitcoms easily. My dad loved Barney Miller. He looked like Hal Linden. Did he really? He either looked like... It depends on how you think of it. Either an ugly Hal Linden. Okay. Or possibly like... I had some Dennis Farino. No. [laughs] No. A very tan Rod Steiger. Black Rod Steiger. Okay, all right. Fair, fair enough. Fair enough. Fair enough. So Barney Miller is a show that I still frequently watch. It's probably one of the best written sitcoms of all time. Yeah. I think anyone who is interested in comedy or writing or characters and hasn't seen Barney Miller needs to see Barney Miller. It makes a lot of sense. It makes a lot of things. It makes sense. One room. I mean, they did over a hundred episodes with five guys in one room. They never went outside. One episode they went outside. There was a hostage stand-up. Oh, really? Only one episode. And I remember they would sometimes go into the backwards. Barney's office. Yeah, but it was still... But still, almost everything took place in the same room. Exactly. Writing and engaging play every week. Yeah. All the humor and all the plot is about the characters. Right. And it's just so well done. It's really ties, like I... Like, well, in order to Scooby-Doo and shows like that, which I think are character studies. You know, you take these characters that you know really well and you just apply them to new situations. Right. It had elements of that, but it also had a plot every time. Yeah, and they seem like real characters. They weren't just caricatures. Sure. And in this episode, the men of the 12th Precinct return for a fifth season and a big case, the kidnapping of a merchant, whose aggressive daughter and decisive son, show up at the station to make sure the investigation proceeds post-haste. Meanwhile, Lojo hauls in a prostitute and her client, a visiting business in from Arkansas, Barney. Hell, Lyndon, Harris, Ron Glass, Dietrich, Steve Laddisburg, and it goes through the whole cast here. I actually really, really love Steve Laddisburg. He was a great stand-up comic. He's probably my favorite character on Barney Miller. And a lot of people didn't like when Fish left for his own series because everyone loved him for Goda, who actually lived Steve Laddisburg. But I actually thought the show improved. I loved the Fish episodes, but it was a rare case of them replacing a key character and the show getting better, which I can think of almost no other examples. That never happens. Yeah. It was a 60-minute Barney Miller, so that brings us to 10 o'clock. Finally, Friday night. Okay, Friday night. Final night of the week. Eight o'clock. Flip over. Let's see what I got. Good to go with. Oh, well, I had to go with the Incredible Hulk. Yes. You know, the unloved drifter. Did you read comics at this time? No, I didn't. I watched TV like 14 hours a day. So you're only aware of the Incredible Hulk through the TV series? Right. So to me, the Incredible Hulk was... He was like every bad male person you ever met, except he had a reason to be that angry. Exactly. Yeah, it was great. I was a huge comic book fan and I watched Incredible Hulk all the time, but the Incredible Hulk absolutely terrified me. As well, he should. He's terrifying. And somehow my parents interpreted this abject terror as me loving the Incredible Hulk. So for my second birthday, they hired a bodybuilder friend and my uncles to paint himself green and combusting through a wall. That is terrifying. I literally shit my pants. I can understand it. And I was screaming and they were like, "We've played this guy a lot. I don't understand why you're not enjoying this." When you're a little kid, busting through a wall is one of the things you're most afraid of, I think. Yeah, especially a green monster. Like, that's terrifying. So this one is two crew members on a 747 bearing the treasure of Tutankhamen, a lot of nice, slight heist. Branding Cruise is in this episode. I love that they managed to get King Tut in there. He was everywhere I think. He was huge then. But this was a huge deal because Branding Cruise was Eddie in the courtship of Eddie's share. The courtship of Eddie's share with Branding Cruise. Bill Bixby and Branding Cruise of course went on to front the dead Kennedy's for a while. Very nice. Branding Cruise. I went to see them with Branding Cruise and I kept referring to him as Mr. Eddie's father. I can't, but he didn't like that. I didn't like that. I'm intrigued though by another science fiction world premiere movie, a.k.a. "Pilot" episode that aired against this. A thing called "Starship Invasions" that was a co-production with Canada. And it's about efforts of aliens from a doomed world to take over the Earth by inducing mass suicide. And it stars Robert Vaughn and Christopher Lee. And it's never heard of this. It sounds like there was a book called "The Screwtape". What was it called? "The Screwhead Screwfly Solution". Okay. Which was these aliens basically infected mankind with men specifically with this. Basically like a rage disease so that they would not mate. And then that humans would die out and they could come in and just inhabit the Earth. So you don't get a lot of TV movies about aliens trying to make everyone kill themselves. TV movies at that time were a really different animal. Just because there was, there were no VHS tapes yet, they barely existed. So... It was a big event. It was a big event when a movie came on TV and it would be edited slightly. But it was just enough so that you could watch it if you were a kid. Right. And so it was the aftermarket for every movie. Right. And you sat down and watched it because that's the only time you could see it. It's the only way we're going to see it. Even a movie that you saw in the theater already, if you ever want to see it again, it was a big deal. Absolutely. So 9 o'clock would you go in? 9 o'clock I went with the movie Grand Theft Auto. Ron Howard. Yep. I believe his directorial debut. Yes, he directed and starred in it. It's a Roger Korman production. And this movie Ron Howard directed and starred in Grand Theft Auto in 1977 farce about the mad pursuit of an eloping couple by all kinds of opportunists who were after a reward offered by the girl's rich father. This is a really fun movie. They put out a great DVD of this on show factory last year. Ron Howard was really trying to reinvent himself at this point. He had left happy days. He was in a lot of movies. He was trying to transition into becoming a director. Right. And he's transitioning into something that is almost the plot of "Cannibal Run"? Yes. Yes, absolutely. He basically made a deal with Roger Korman saying if you'll let me direct this, I'll say anything. I don't care what it is. I'll star and I think it was two movies. And he was in a couple movies for Roger Korman. Yeah, it's a fun movie. And I love the '70s Roger Korman stuff. I mean, this is around death race 2000. Sure. It was a lot of car racing movies at this time. So I think you made a good choice there. Yeah. Also, there's a character named Sparky. That really puts it on the top. Yes. Sparky is played by Peter Isaacson. Not a lot of other names in here aside from Ron Howard is really top billing in this cast. When Ron Howard could top bill a theatrical release. What a time it was. So that is the end of the week. That's a shorter week. There's not as many options here. That's true. And this is predating when TV guys used to cheer and cheer. So do you have a cheer and cheer for this week of television? Let's see. I think. Let me think. What do I think the best thing that I saw was all week on this week? You know, I think it was that episode of The Love Boat. It sounds pretty good. That sounds amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Scammon Corothers was a huge fan of him. And then I'm still a huge fan to this day. You know what's weird? This week of television there was not a disco centric television show starring Scammon Corothers. It was all disco or Scammon Corothers with nothing in the middle. They should have had a disco party where Scammon met King Tut. I'd like to hear him do a, yeah, him and King Tut doing a disco song. Perfect. This could still happen even though he's dead. Yeah. That's what's happening in heaven. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for doing the show. Thank you very, very much for having me. I was so nice to come to your house. I was so pleased to meet your Doc Pete. Yes, Pete is very, very excited about it. Look at the end of the entire time. [Music] There you go. Angela Sawyer. Very fun. Very interesting. She's great. As I said, I've performed on the Weirdo Records anniversary shows before. She does a lot of cool shows in the store. Wes Hazard does one, so as I said, I'll put the links up to Weirdo Records and all that stuff and you can find her online. Anyway, hope to see you later today at the Brattle Theatre for the live edition of the podcast with Eugene Merman, and I will see you again at least from an audio perspective on Wednesday for a brand new episode of TV Guidance Counselor. [Music] I was a child racist. The prospect of like, Chloris Leachman trying to throw a javel, paper version of Bama? >> Yeah, so this is like- >> Office by France? >> A line today, it's a mistake since-
