- Wait, you have a TV? - No, I don't like to read the TV guide. Read the TV guide, you don't need a TV guide. ♪ Come on this planet ♪ ♪ Come on this planet ♪ ♪ Come on this planet ♪ ♪ Ah ♪ (upbeat rock music) - Hello, everyone, welcome. It's Wednesday, it's time for a brand new episode of TV Guidance Counselor. My guest this week is fellow New Englander, Laura Crawford. She ran away from New England to pursue her dreams of comedy in Los Angeles a couple of years ago. But the last time I was out there, I grabbed some of her time and we had a very sex heavy conversation when I was re-listening to it. There's a lot of talk about the general sleaze and sexual nature of television in the late '80s, early '90s, which I hadn't really thought of that much until this discussion, but it seems legit. Laura's very funny, I will put links up to all her social media stuff. If you're in the Los Angeles area, try to see her, she is out and about doing comedy all over the city. And I think you'll enjoy this episode. So please listen to this week's episode of TV Guidance Counselor with my guest, Laura Crawford. (upbeat rock music) - Hi, my name is Laura Crawford, hello. - Hi, I'm Jen. - Thanks for doing the show. - Thank you. - You're welcome. You are living out here in the West Coast now, we've been talking about the ups and downs of that for way longer than I feel bad. - And appropriate amount of time. - Okay, I've imposed myself on you here, where she was nice enough to allow me to upload my episodes as I'm very paranoid that I will lose everything that I've recorded out here. - It's not in the same fear, technology, advantage, or all the time. - It really does. - So I gave you a selection of TV guides from the Trunk OTV guides that I'm driving around Los Angeles with in my rental car, like I'm even a tech. At least I have a reason for it. I bet there's someone else in Los Angeles driving around with a Trunk full of TV guides who doesn't have a podcast about TV guides. - She'll not get them here. - Yes, yes. - Yes, no one will take these from me. So you picked one from the week of June 3rd through the 9th, 1989. - That's right. - And I think I know why you picked this one, but what drew you to this particular issue? - There was the Oprah on the cover. - Yes. - Oprah is wearing a very spangly outfit on the, she looks like, almost like a drum major. - It's a very sassy thin Oprah. - It's, she's very thin and she's very proud of herself and she's doing the Kardashian hands on the hips. - Hands on the hip. - Pose to make the waist look smaller. - Slightly tipped. - To keep the arms at a nice angle with the basic glimmer. - The shoulders. - Yes, the full triangle. It looks, she looks like she's in the band Striper. - Yes. - It's very black and yellow. - Yeah, it's very, very Striper. - It's very, it's very Pittsburgh. It's very. - And you used to watch Oprah? - I did watch Oprah. I watched a lot of daytime TV as a kid, especially in the summer. Oprah, but more so like Jenn and Jones, you're. - The super-trashy stuff. - The super-trashy stuff. - Richard Bay. - Richard Bay. Who was the other, who was the other woman who was not Jenn and Jones? The other one. - Sally Jessie Rafael. - Sally Jessie Rafael watched a lot and then there's another blunt, Liza Gimmon. - Liza Gimmon. - Liza, yeah. - Liza, yeah. - That was, she's a really terrible show now on some Christian news network. - For sure. - But. - And, Maury. - Maury, there was just, just so many of these talk shows. - I took it on top. - Yeah, in the 90s, they really replaced the game show as the daytime TV and there was probably literally like 25 talk shows. - Yeah, and it was such a huge variety of personalities that would have been on these. And they, 'cause sometimes they tried to be news. - Yep. - Sometimes they tried to be celebrities. - Celebrities, sometimes they just tried to be trendy. They were just very weird. - I don't know. - I would have loved to work on one of those shows. - Doing what? - Anything, wrangling, guests, coming up with topics. I would love to come up with topics for TV shows like that. - Yeah, I mean, we had more than Donnie Jr. - More. - There was Gordon Elliot, Ricky Lee. - Aw, Ricky, yeah, Ricky, I wish I watched. She was more urban, for some reason. - And you're a racist. - I am. - Urban. - Yeah. - Right, right, right, right, right. - But for some reason, this fat white girl, she healed to a lot of young black women who were supposed to be into Ricky. They'd be like, "Come on, Ricky." - Well, she was sassy. Oh yeah. Yeah, she was sassy. - So you would watch like that and Live in Single. - I love Live in Single. Did I have the same taste as a young black woman? - I feel like that's how they were marketing those programs and you would watch the two together. - Yeah, I think that makes sense. I mean, a friend of mine actually got on the Ricky Lake show with a lie. - Oh, of course. - And they asked like, "Do you lie to pick up women?" Call Ricky. And so he called up and said he lies all the time to pick up women. So they had him go down there and with a hidden camera and try to pick up these women at a bar with a lie. But what he did was he called two female friends of his and told them to go to this bar. So he walks in there and he has this ridiculous lie. He told them he was in a car's cover band called The Boston Traffic. - Ah. - And then he left with both girls. So they have him come back out and Ricky's like, "What happened?" He's like, "I did both of them." And then came out and she was like, "Oh my God." It was very, very funny. It was very funny. I used to have that episode on tape. - I still should attempt to 'cause I used to also, like, I love those. But I still love to end DV dating shows of anyone. - Like singled out. - Siggled out. And even then later, date my mom, room writers. This is good. - I'm not familiar with those ones, yeah. - These are like-- - Date my mom. - Date my mom was just a show where a guy, instead of going on a date with three girls, he goes on a date with three different moms. Three different girls' moms. And then the mom-- - And then he has to determine based on his interactions with the moms, which of the girls he would want to go out with. But I haven't seen their daughters. - Did anyone ever pick the mom? You're like, "I think I'd rather just go with the mom." - There was a lot of-- - That would probably happen to me. - There was a lot of flirtation and there was a lot of-- - That's very creepy. - It was creepy. - That's a creepy segment. - It was a creepy segment. - It was a very creepy show. - And these shows, and sometimes the mom is better looking than the daughter. - Well, that's often the case. I don't know, it's not a, it's not almost another case. - Yeah, no, that's not my thing. One of the topics that they were always doing on these shows was the zero to hero or the loser to hot. They would remake these people. - That was a big one on Jenny Jones. - Yes. - She wrote us to, "I used to be a geek and now I was hot." - Right, I used to be fat and now I'm all that. - Yes. - That came up quite a lot. If you could used to be anything that rhymes with what you are now, they would do that topic. - It used to be a slob and now-- - I have a job. - I have a job. - Yes. - It would be that. - A lot of them, they would be like, I used to get called Oreo mouth because my gums were dark. - What? - And it looks like I even eat Oreos. - We had a girl. - There were so many things that people were-- - Oreo mouth. - They used to be like, I used to have ears that stuck out and all these people were very like, a lot of big bad teeth were a thing that was very-- - What was the meanest nickname that someone from your high school had? - I don't remember any particular one nickname. I do remember that there was a girl who was just high school with, named Laura Story, I'll just put this on. - Okay. - And she had the widest ass I've ever seen in my life. - Okay. - She just had like a big dog, like a huge butt. - Right. - Like very wide, but like normal, otherwise, and me and my friend Ashley would joke about it together and her giant, giant big dog. But mine, I went to school at suburban Massachusetts, like you. - Not too far from where I did. - No, we have one kid who's a Jewish kid in Misha, and people would just say, "Misha, you're a Jew." - Yeah, that sounds about right, that sounds about right. - Misha's a Jew. - Yeah, they are. - They were just like, "You're a Jew, Misha." And they were just like, just yelled and he was a Jew after all the time. - Yes. - The incredibly worldly and tolerant Massachusetts suburbs. - Not like anything, like they never were caught up a height. I don't think they knew slurs for Jewish people. - Right, right. - They just call them a Jew like that. If you say it like that, it becomes a slur. - Yes. - We had a kid. - Thank you. - We had this kid, Chris, who was very sickly looking. - Yeah. - And everyone used to call him, not me, but everyone used to call him boy with AIDS. And sometimes they would call him BWA. And they would call him that like, when they would pick teams and gym, they'd be like, "Ugh, I guess I get boy with AIDS." And he would like answer to that. Poor kid. Poor kid. - I love that. - And then the other one that sticks out was, there was a kid who had a birthmark on his face that was vaguely round. And someone one day said it looked like someone had burned him with a hot donut. So people used to call him donut burn. And then kids used to call him DB. And like, I didn't know that's what it was from. And I thought this kid's name was DB, like DB Sweeney or something. - Well, there was this kid-- - DB DB Sweeney's first name is Donut Burn. - Yeah. - His kid I went to Milton with, his name was Guthrie Gordon. And he-- - Gee. - He loved, like, corn and bands like that. - Okay. - And slipknot and he would wear braids and some people wouldn't make fun of him. - Well, that seems appropriate. - Like he's asking, he was kind of asking for it. I gotta make fun of a lot in middle school. - For what? - In high school. Well, it was in high school. I would get called a bitch, a lot. - A were you a bitch? - And a dyke, no. - Not the were you were less than the guy you think about? - No, I was pretty, I was okay. I was just very opinionated. - Yes, yes. - And I was pretty-- - People don't like that. - No. - When I was like in freshman year, I started, no, it's not when I started at my new school, a new high school. And I was getting signatures on a petition to lobby Congress for better comprehensive sex education. - Okay. - 'Cause you wanted to know more? - No. - No, I tell you. - I was like, this is an out of control problem that we need to address. - Right, so you are socially active. - Yes, which is annoying to children. - Yeah, children don't like that. So let's jump right in. So this is a central edition TV guide. So we're starting our prime time at seven o'clock. And what did you go with? - On basically that night, I went with Robot Revolution. - Robot Revolution, which is something I am unfamiliar with. This was a movie? - It was a TV show, I think it's on Discovery Channel. - Okay, that makes sense. If it's on Discovery Channel, Robot Revolution sounds like a thing that would be on Discovery Channel, I'm guessing it's a show about robots. - It's probably about robots. It's probably just like robots making cars. - Yes, it's a 60 minute edition of the show Adventures. And it has to be about the Robot Revolution. I probably would not have watched that. I would have had a difficult time choosing between two movies on that night. One was the network television premiere of Real Genius, maybe my favorite comedy of all time. - I like Real Genius. - And-- - It's a Jew joke in Real Genius, isn't it? - A Jew joke in Real Genius. There might be a Jew joke. - Or I might think, no. No one I'm thinking of, what's the one with the robot? - The Revenge of the Nerds? - No, or it's-- - Deadly Friend. - No, where's it the Dads and the Robot? - Oh, you thought your parents were weird? - It might be, yeah. - With Dale and Thick. And his dad dies and comes back in a robot. - And a DMD. - Yeah, are you thinking of not quite human? Brown Thick, Invents a Robot, played by Jay Underwood. - Oh, I've seen that one. - Yeah, yeah. He was also the Invisible Kid. No, Real Genius is Val Kilmer. It's great, really, really great to have. - Oh, yeah, it's a different one. - Yeah. Or Night of the Creeps was on USA's Saturday Night Mares, which is one of my favorite horror movies of the 80s. So you went to all the way to 8 o'clock, 'cause you're watching now on a long show. So what'd you watch at 8? - Hot Dog of the Movie. - Hot Dog of the Movie. Have you seen Hot Dog of the Movie? - No, I just was so entranced by the title. - Yes, so it is not about Hot Dogs. There was a movie called Hot Dog of the Movie and a movie called Hamburg of the Movie that were unrelated, but came out the same year. - A skiing? - Hot Dog was skiing, yes. - Wow. - Yeah, it's a skiing sex movie, basically. It's like a teen, a titty movie and about skiing. - A teeny movie. - Yeah, it is very, very dirty. - Yeah. - There's a lot of nudity in it. Shannon Tweed, it is in it, who is with Gene Simmons. - Yeah, she's in this fight. - Hamburg of the Motion Picture was about people going to a college for opening hamburger, fast food franchise chains, and has a very dirty oral sex joke that was very awkward to watch with my parents. But Hot Dog of the Motion Picture was on HBO all the time, all the time. I'd seen it many, many times. I probably would not have watched it that night, 'cause I'd seen it probably a hundred times then, but did you watch a lot of those teen comedies? - I've seen a few of them. A lot of them, I would see them like comedy central. I didn't have HBO, so I kind of watched that. But comedy central. - Seems to be edit versions. - Yeah, kind of central. I would definitely see Love Letter. Is it the one? - Secret admirer. - Secret admirer. - Secret admirer. - Yeah, that's a real farce movie where it's just like a series of misunderstandings. - It's almost like a French kind of... - I wouldn't go that far, but Lori Loughlin's in it. - I love Lori Loughlin's. - Yeah. - She comes out Lori Loughlin. - Yeah, Fred Ward. - Yeah. - It was very good in that movie. And of course Mrs. John Travolta, Kelly Preston, isn't that funny? - Yes, she is. She's very pretty. - Yes, she is very pretty. That's all we can say about her. - And then she also, she was involved with a few actors. I think she was also involved with Charlie Sheen before she was involved with John Travolta. - Yes, she met John Travolta in the movie The Experts. - Yes, I like that movie. - That's a great movie. - It's a really funny movie. - I talked about that movie with a friend of mine, and then I discovered it. - This is another guy who's the other actor who's named. - Oh, Ari Myers, Ari, yeah, yeah. - 'Cause he was also in the first season of Ellen. - He was, and he was in "House 2", the second story. - Yeah. - Which is a fantastic tagline for a movie. He was also in a great movie shot in Providence, Rhode Island, called The Matter of Degrees. That was sort of about college radio and Providence in like 1989 or 1990. That's a pretty good movie. - He was so funny and so popular. - Yeah, yeah. The last thing I saw him in, he played a murderer, a secret agent murderer in "Burned Notice". That's the last thing I saw him in "Burned Notice", I love "Burned Notice", it's such a great show. - I know, I feel like I've never seen it. - It's basically the A-team with Bruce Campbell in it. And Jeffrey Dunham and the main guys from Massachusetts. He's very from Massachusetts. - Oh, yeah. - Super interesting. - So yeah, I love that show, but at eight o'clock, I probably would've gone with the Golden Girls, 'cause I am a big fan. And then it, or cops, which are very similar things. - Oh yeah. - This edition of "Cops", domestic crisis calls include a fight between two sisters, a young mother and child living in a crack house, and a suspected prostitute. Those are three different stories. - Suspected. - Suspected, yeah. - I've had two friends of mine being accused of being child prostitutes by the Boston police. - Really, what context was that? - They were walking in the streets at night while we were in college together, and the cops were like, basically talked to them, and kind of hinted at that they thought that they were processed. - Were they like dressed in booty shorts or something? - I think they were drunk, just slightly sexy, they were in college, girl, whatever. - I love college, yeah. - But they looked very young. - Gotcha, wow, wow, how did they prove they weren't? Just saying, no. - They were like, no, get away from me cops. - Right, right, which is what a teenage prostitute would say. - Get away from me, cop it. - Get away from me, cop. And then at 830, I would have gone with "Beyond Tomorrow", a science magazine show. This was the Fox Americanized version of the Australian show "Beyond 2000". - It sounds exciting. - It was great, it was science for the future. I'm a sucker for those kinds of shows, which is weird that I wouldn't have watched the robot show. - Yeah, but do you watch like ancient aliens now? - No, no, my dad's big into that. I like stuff where they're like, here's what, here's medical breakthroughs and that kind of stuff. I like your like real science. - What about those shows where they were like, these people are like real superheroes, people who have-- - Oh, like Stan Lee's. - Crazy ability. - Yeah, someone's stuff's okay. I mean, that was more stuff like real people and that's incredible and we could believe it or not. I would watch those sometimes, but for some reason "Beyond Tomorrow" and "Beyond 2000" was so much better for me, where they were like actual innovations. And it's interesting to watch those now. Some of those segments are up on YouTube and I have some of them in the read archives and see sort of what ended up happening with some of that technology. - Yeah, and that's very interesting. - I remember watching an episode from 88, that was about HDTV and it was funny because we didn't get that for like another 15 years or so. - Yeah, yeah. - So this particular episode, segments include a flight simulator that reproduces windshield conditions, a card that measures exposure to cigarette smoke, glass windows that change from chance loose into transparent and preventing beach erosion using lasers to remove skin disfigurations and a diving suit that enables divers to descend to 1,000 feet. I mean, that sounds exciting. - Yeah, lasers, skin. - Yeah, and I've seen, they do have those windows now, the gas filled windows that you can go opaque and clear, which is pretty cool. So moving on to Sunday night, the Lord's Night, what'd you go with? - Gary Shandling and Tracy Omen. - Perfect. It's Gary Shandling Show is a really, really great show. I liked it better than Larry Sanders. - Really? I've never seen that. I love Larry Sanders. It's huge, Larry Sanders. It took me a while to get into the show. I was not hooked immediately. - They're very different, but they sort of do the same thing. So they're both very knowing and winking about the shows that they are, except it's Gary Shandling Show is more about sitcoms and Larry Sanders is top shows. But, and it's Gary Shandling is a sillier show by far. - See, I like how much Gary Shandling and Alan Partridge are the same in that. They both, you both can really, and it's kind of like there's kind of that trio of unlikable, but very vulnerable. - Yeah. - Maybe guys of Alan Partridge, Steve Grell in the office, and Gary Shandling. - But I think like most of Steve Coogan's characters on Partridge, especially there, they have an ego that Gary Shandling doesn't. - Gary Shandling does have an ego, as-- - I'm sure he doesn't realize. - Larry Sanders. - There's Larry Sanders, but not on the Gary Shandling show. The Gary Shandling show, he was definitely more of like a schlub. Like he was like, mmm, I'm kind of an idiot, and I'm obsessed with my hair, and it was like much more self-deprecating. Whereas-- - I can't imagine being a man, all of your attractive values, so much of it is based on hair. - All right, is that directly aimed at me? - No. - Are you trying to take a dig at me, Lauren? - No, you go great hair. You go great hair. You don't ever have to worry, 'cause you have great hair, but I mean, as a man, being attractive, it's like, you either have great hair, or you have okay hair, and such a decided women base so much of it on hair. - Do they really? The hair factors them a lot? - The hair factor's in a huge amount. - Is that why I've been mobbed so much out here? - Yeah, exactly. - Yeah, I've need to forget to my car to this place. I need to ask, like, a police head escort right now. - That's crazy. - It was mostly-- - I mean, you're married. I'm sure you don't get a lot of playing Massachusetts girls talking to you after shows. - No. - Yeah. - You don't project that vibe. - No. - You don't project, you project the very married. - Oh, I don't project just a completely asexual vibe. You project a real tend-all kind of vibe, or just, you know, genital, yeah. - You're married, unavailable. - Undercover called. - Yeah. - You would, either like you would be, totally understood in other women, or you would possibly want to hurt them in some way. - Oh, okay, so I project a real serial killer kind of thing. - No. - Is it the trunful of TV gods? - Yes. - Yeah, no, I did, I was not aware that the hair was a major factor. - But hair in women is so much of a, but look at the men who were considered attractive. - You're talking head hair, not body hair. - No, head hair. John Hamm. - Yeah. - Beautiful hair. - Yeah. He's also just a handsome guy, and in good shape. - He could be attractive, but if he didn't have good hair, like when he has his normal hair, that it's like brushed down. - A little floppy? - It looks like shit. - Yeah, well that's also in style now that, this haircut that I've had since I was 12 years old has come back into style. - The thing that's more in style than, if you took your haircut right now, but if you were to buzz the sides, we aren't, that's the more popular. - Get along to cut. - The more of the Nazi look, where it's tighter on the sides, it's still long on the side. - That's why I've gone away from that, because it is too much of a Nazi look. Although a stranger the other day here in Los Angeles, unsolicited, sent to be, I had a real boardwalk empire look, and I don't know what that even means. - That's the 20s, 30s. - I was, to be fair, I was guessing people's weight for money on the sidewalk, but I didn't think that was any sort of. - I was also calling, you were probably also calling Black guys, boy. - Well yeah, yeah, but that guy was working for me that day, I paid him. So you went with those two shows, and Tracy Omen was a great sketch show. - She's a very talented performer. - Absolutely. - I'm not wild about some really things. Tracy takes on. - Yeah, she takes on was her HBO show. Tracy Omen's show was a better show. I actually enjoy her records as well. - She's his heir. - Yeah, I don't know about us. - They don't know about us. She did a bunch of great songs. I probably would have a family ties in 1989, though I will say. - I understand. - Huge family ties fan. This is after landing a job with Ohio's top fashion design firm, Mallory Feels Reluctant, to always start an anger, yeah, Ohio. There's only one. To voice her anger when the star designer steals her ideas, I think we can all identify with that. - The star designer in Ohio still-- - Ceiling your ideas? Yeah, I mean, my design-- - Calm forward at Ohio. - All over the Midwest for years. I invented these pants called, you know, in hip hop, people used to wear big pants. - Pair of shoe pants. - Yeah, so I invented these things where the pants were normal sized, but the pockets were oversized. So the pockets actually came out at the bottoms of the pants, like they were twice as long as the pants, 'cause the idea of being like, you got so much money. Regular pants came out-- - That's cool, yeah. - And I called them hip pockets. - Hip pockets. - And they stole that idea. - That's insane. - I was the first girl that I went to school with who ever wore a shirt that had things written on it in glitter. - I'm glad that you followed that with that had things written on it in glitter, and not just that ever wore a shirt. It was a topless high school in this very, very good. - And it's a rock star, and people would say, people would be like, "What's that?" - Did you make that shirt? - No, I got it at like a hot topic. - Okay, fair enough. - And people would be like, "What?" - What's a rock star? - Rock star, why are you wearing that shirt? Like, it doesn't make sense. And then later, everyone with the glitter, right? - Yeah, yeah. Everyone with the glitter writing, you should sue them all for copyright. - It should. It's such a bad precedent to set. - It really is. Then I would have gone with day by day, which was the spin-off of Family Ties, with Julia Louis Dreyfus and Courtney Thorne Smith and other women with three names. And Thor Burch was in this as well. And this one, an overprotective dad pulls his son out of preschool while Ross is pushed into a date with a daughter of one of Eileen's clients. Controversy. - Take any questions to face. And then at eight o'clock, what'd you go with? - Duet. - Duet was another Fox show. So this was not the most popular Fox show. It was a bit like Matt about you, but not nearly as good as Matt about you is. And it was about people dating-- - Matt about shoe. - Matt about shoe is Elizabeth shoe and Andrew shoe. Just being angry at each other. - Brother, is this your team? - Just fighting the whole time. Duet was a show that I definitely watched. It's not a bad show, but it's also not that great either. It aired on Lifetime for a long, long time after that. - It's correct. And there's not really that much else on besides Duet, but I think I probably would have gone with Star Search. - Sir Hershey's a great show. - Yeah, always entertain. - Always entertain. - Yeah, it's great. - And then at eight 30, what'd you go with? - Whitey Herzog. - Whitey Herzog. - It's for the name. - That is a show, it's baseball. So it's Whitey Herzog, baseball. It'd be funny if that was just Verner Herzog giving a character. - I would love a match up show of Whitey Bolger and Verner. - Yes, Whitey Bolger and Verner Herzog. - I'm surprised there's not someone on stage in Los Angeles right now doing that as a character. - The crime, some Whitey Bolger, a purple examine. - I don't know if I would have watched that. I probably would have gone with the full hour of Star Search, but also DC Follies was on at that time, which was Fred Willard and a bunch of puppets. - Wow, do you think actually Ed McMahon knows anything about other forms of entertainment? - Well, he's dead. - He's dead now. - Yeah, I mean, Ed McMahon from Lowell, Massachusetts. - I did not know that. - Yes, there's a donut shop that my wife and I go to frequently in Soggis, Massachusetts, and it's kind of an old man donut shop. And literally you walk in there and all the tables are just filled with Ed McMahon. There's like 12, all these just old men that all look and act exactly like Ed McMahon. - Jesus Christ. - See to me, Ed McMahon was the talent on the Tonight Show. He was such a better. - He's so much fun. - Yeah. - You didn't know about old men. Old men love sweets and the older you go. - They do. - The older they get to do the more you lose your testosterone and the more the sexes kind of start to look like each other. - Right. - Old people, old women start to look like each other. And the more they become kind of similar 'cause I feel like young men don't really like sweet sperm. Are you a sweet sperm? - Oh, I've always loved sweets, yeah. - You love sweets. - Yeah, I love them. - But you don't drink booze. - No, I don't. But I'll eat booze in a sweet. - Yes, but guys drink booze and they get a lot of sugar through that. They're unrealized. - Yeah, and maybe, yeah. I remember I was in a place called Cardulos in Harvard Square. - I love Cardulos. The owner Frank Cardulos, he would dress and drag and work at the store to strike. And he was a terrible drag. - Yeah, oh, I remember. This happened with him one day, actually. So I was in there and I was at the counter. They would sell those little chocolates that had booze in them, you know, like Malibu and all that stuff. And so I got like a coin troll and a Malibu one or something. And then he goes, it looks at me and he goes, come on. And I'm like, what? And he goes, are you a guy? - Ah! - And he made me buy a Jack Daniels one instead. Like I'm buying-- - And he's wearing a dress. - He's wearing a dress. - And I'm buying chocolates shaped like booze bottles. And he's like, come on, be a man and get the Jack Daniels. - He would not affect a feminine voice at all. - No. - He would just be a scruffy face. And then we had a, I knew a guy, when we got on a day with a guy who worked at that store. - Yeah. - And he would show up to meetings sometimes in drag. - Never mention. - Yeah. - And then sometimes non-drag. - They got great cheese there. Great cheese. - It's a great store. I love their stuff there. But he was very much an anomaly and interesting cat. - That's Cambridge Mass for you. So, yeah, I don't know. - She's talking about how a guy had a dress in a shitty blonde wig. - That's what happens. I, yeah, I love sweets. And so maybe that's why my hair isn't losing. Maybe that's the secret. - Yeah. - Yeah, or genetics. - Or genetics. - To genetics. - Monday night, the saddest night of the week. - Yeah. - What are you picking at today? - Night court. - Night court. A show I absolutely love. Did you watch Night Court frequently? - No, no. - You never watched Night Court? - I watched Night Court a little bit, but I wish I watched them more as a kid. - What, so you probably watched it when reruns then, it wasn't, yeah. So this is actually a rerun. They've moved the schedule around a little bit this week because it's the first week of summer and they're airing baseball. So Night Court was a great show. It got very silly later. But in the early years, it was very, very serious. I would have gone with the special broadcast premiere of Fox of Big Trouble and Little China. - Well, 'cause it's highly advertised. - It is highly advertised. Big excitement, big adventure, and big fun. - Big fun. - But, and you pointed this out when you were looking through the TV guide on the opposite page. There is an ad for a Billy Graham TV special that just says AIDS with a guy with his head in his hands. And underneath that is a baseball arena for some reason, and it says sex could destroy our civilization in your lifetime from Billy Graham's message tonight, AIDS, sex, and the Bible. - I know I should watch that 'cause I should definitely learn more about AIDS, sex, and the Bible. - Well, I think we're-- - AIDS is even in the Bible. - Yeah, AIDS mentioned in John 3 16. And I think we all remember, do you remember in the mid 90s when sex destroyed our civilization for a couple of years? - I do 'cause there was a show Sex and the 90s. - Yeah, on MTV. Yeah, that was chronicling the post-apocalyptic sex world that we lived in after that. Yeah. - I feel like Sex is ruined society now. - Yeah, it pretty much is. This is, topics include AIDS, sex, and the Bible, but songs include Let the People Rejoice. - Why is it a bit of a thing that doesn't really mix together? - Sex is ruined society. - What'd you go with at 730? - I went with Elf. - Elf. - I loved Elf. I still love Elf. - Do you re-watch it and still love it? - Yes, I love it. - What did you like about Elf? - All right. When I was a kid, I loved Elf so much because he's like, is there a cuddly? He's almost like a muffin. - Right, right. - For a braggle. It's really sweet. He gets sweet eyes. - Right. - I remember being, I think I was maybe three or four and I went to a parade, a Halloween parade and there was a guy dressed up as Elf. - Yeah. - And I flipped out. I had him as a kid. - Okay. It's like a lisp. - A lisp and I just mispronounced. - Okay. - I said, I called him "elp." - "elp." - I'm gonna pee. - Right. - He said, "elp shook my hand." - Yeah. - "elp shook my hand." And I freaked out about that. - Well, Elf has good hair. - Great hair. - And ladies love that. - Ladies love it. He's very silly. - Yeah. - He's very snappy. He's got great comments, very snarky. And Wally is just such a dork. - Yeah. - All the conflicts there. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - And then the loved. - Willy. I'd say Wally's not Willy, Willy. - Willy. - Willy. - That's my elf. - Yeah, it's a pretty good elf. That's a pretty good elf. - Thank you. - Yeah. - Thank you. And the teenage daughter, he loved. - Yes, yep. - You know? And I like that kind of conflict 'cause they can never really be together. - So you actually thought that Elf and the teenage daughter had like an unrequited-- - Yeah. - Unconcentated love. Yeah. - You're the only one that's out of this world. - Sweet baby. - You're the only one who's out of this world. I'm shocked that we both just pulled that song out of nowhere with no preparation. - I'm feeling it in an orbit, I ain't never been in. - Yeah. - You're the one who's-- - I made, when I was in college, I had to do a film project for my production class, which I've used so much in my adult life, my production skills. But I made a short film called Alien Love Form. And it was about a guy who was sexually obsessed with Elf and then killed himself. (laughing) It was like this black and white, like dark, dark, like a very artsy thing. And then he would have these dreams at night that were clips from Elf. And I used a lot of that music video in like slow motion. - It's so great. - Yeah. And maybe I'll-- - It's very much like Eddie Money. - Eddie Money, how so? - I feel like it sounds like an Eddie Money song. - Oh yes, not just the concept of Elf isn't very much like Eddie Money. - No, no, no. That's something in particular where I'd say a minute. - Yeah, well that was the zeitgeist of the time, was the Eddie Money style. So I probably would have watched Elf if I was a little bit younger, but I don't know about it this time. And then what'd you go with at eight o'clock? - Frugal Gourmet. - The Frugal Gourmet was-- - Let's show it that I watched as a kid. - I watched it all the time. My dad loved the Frugal Gourmet. - My dad loved the Frugal Gourmet. - It was one of the, it was like the second or third major cooking show. It was on PBS. And obviously, Julia Child sort of invented that genre and was huge. - She did. - And was based out of Cambridge, Mass. And I used to see her shopping all the time. - Yeah, she would go to a lot of markets around there. - And the Frugal Gourmet was involved in a sex scandal. - Sex scandal of molestation children. - And he was also like a preacher or a chicken or something. - Yes. - His name was Jeff Smith. - Jeff Smith. - And he had a beard and he's a Frugal Gourmet. And we watched it every week. It was like, it was one of the few things we watched as a family. My dad and I, we would sit. And we would watch the Frugal Gourmet. And we would watch a Yankan cook. - I watched Yankan cook. - Which were back to back. - Yankan cook. You had two. It was like very, almost racist. - Yeah, but we should mention that he was an actual Asian guy. - He wasn't just a white guy since speaking like that, which would be very racist. But Jeff Smith, now my dad, he completely got rid of all these cookbooks and stuff when the guy got, I don't know if he was ever convicted of that. - No, he was nuts. I just looked at him. Seven men accused him of it. - A molesting of his children. - Yeah, when they were teenagers. Teenagers. - Every year. Every year for Christmas now, I get my dad a Frugal Gourmet book. And he gets so mad. He gets so mad. I always get, like, for the used books, it's like 30 of them. I get it from the end of his book, so I get him a Frugal Gourmet book. And then he opens it up in front of everyone. And I'm like, you love him. You love that guy. He's a gurid asshole. You got, you got, it's very fun. It's fun for me. That's important. - That's great. That's awesome. - And then finally, what's your last half of that night? - Murphy Brown. - Murphy Brown is a great, great show. Did you watch this every week? - No, I did not. - Have you watched it now? - I've watched it a little bit now and more so. See, I was born in late '86. - Okay. - So. - I like how you said late '86, like that makes a difference. - It does. - If it was early '86, I would've watched Murphy Brown. - November '86, I'm practically 87. - Right. - A month away from '86. - That's '86. Wow. I mean, I'm only six years older than you, but I feel like a lot older than you. - Yeah. I understand. - Yeah. - I watched a lot of '80s programming that I mean. - Well, it re-aired a lot. I mean, they were still airing all that stuff all the time when they were growing up. And when you were growing up. Especially in the Boston area, W-L-V-I-T-V-56 was the big one. The kids club. - They did. - What was the big after school thing you would watch? Would you rush home to watch something after school? - You know what's weird? I remember in middle school coming home and watching the kids in the hall after school was on Central. - I'm coming to Central. - Yeah, it started at three o'clock for an hour. Oh, yeah. You were not alone. - Dario, I watched a lot of Dr. Katz. - Yes, Dr. Katz was fantastic. - A lot of Dr. Katz. And yeah, I watched a lot of programming on Comedy Central. I watched some game shows. Then around like six or so, I would watch Simpsons. - Yeah, three runs. 'Cause you're a huge Simpsons buff. - Huge Simpsons buff. - Is that your all-time number one favorite show, would you say? - Oh, yeah, yeah. - Yeah. - You're on about five seasons of it. - Right. - And I don't really own a lot of shows. - Well, it's on so much though too. It's easy. You can probably watch it at any time. - Yeah. I don't really watch it on TV. And then I think maybe like two years ago, I've re-watched seasons like three through 13. I think we watched all of them. And then watched them again with commentary. - Yeah. - And there's certain seasons I've probably seen them all the way through like seven or eight times. - Wow. Wow. - So, like pretty hard. - That's just the thing that I'll just go to watch. Like, I don't watch a lot of TV. - But that's your comfort show. - Yeah, I'll just put it on. If I'm gonna eat a meal or something, I'll just put it on something. - Yeah, but they're cleaning the house and just throw it out. - Yeah, just put it on and be like, "Oh, I haven't re-watched season. "I'm in a wash and watch stuff." - Everybody has a show like that. I think that it's like the sort of their comfort show. - It was also Larry Sanders, one of those. But then they took off Netflix. - Oh, but you could buy the whole box, eh? - I know. - I should. I should, I need to fill out some cash. - So, Tuesday night, seven o'clock, what's your pick? - A current affair. - A current affair. So, this was hosted by Maripo Vitch. - Yes. - And it had that amazing sound effect at the beginning. - Boom. - It was like a-- - Yeah, it was like the triangle. - Yeah. And this was one of the first tabloid TV shows. - Yeah, and they make fun of this. It's called Rock Bottom. - Yes, yeah. They would do a lot of news stories that were pretending to condemn something. So they'd be like, "These women are now wearing really racy bikinis, and we don't like it." But then we just used as an excuse to show like Butts for four minutes. - Yeah, it was very condemning, but also like, "Ooh," it was very leering that show. - It was a leering thing. - Yeah. And that was really when TV started to get, around '87 actually, it happened, and I'm not blaming your birth. But I think that '89, it really started to solidify where the sleeves really started infecting everything. - There is a lot of that. And then it's funny because re-watching, like, Olta and I live from like the '88 season, they have one sketch that's kind of like the section, they're just like, "Sex, sex, sex, sex, sex." - Yeah. - And I'm like, "How sex is this? It's sex with that." - Yeah. - And they have a lot more, there's a lot more emphasis on sex scandals. - Yeah. - Gary Hart and all that stuff. - Oh, yeah. I think we started talking about sex a lot more on TV in the late '80s, and there were a lot more titillation. And I'm sure someone's written a very good thesis on this, that will be much more eloquent and well thought out in research than the point I'm about to make. But I think because sex became less something, people were doing so much, and because of AIDS, and more, so people needed this sort of other outlet, and it became like, "Let's talk about it a lot more." - There's like bone-sex law. - Oh, yeah. Yeah. There was a lot of 900 dollars. - And, you know, VCRs. - Yeah. I mean, believe it or not, pornography is a thing we can thank for most technical innovations. The VCR was really popularized because of pornography, and the same with the Internet, and a lot of other things, which is something- - It's like download speeds got better. - Yeah. I mean, it's glossed over, but that's really- that's what drove these things that are these great innovations. And I think that a lot of that was probably because people, you know, with the permissive '70s, people weren't just going out and swinging. - Yeah. - And, you know, so we talked about it a lot more on TV. And it- - You're like, "I want this in my house." - Yeah. And it factored a lot more into these sorts of shows. And then there was also, we were talking with this earlier, when we were talking about James Jones, there's that- that show was pretty sleazy. I think Richard Bay was the worst, I would say. - They were all very sleazy. They had a lot of strippers on those shows. - Yes. And the excuse to have a girl come out and strip was all the time. - Yes. There's a lot of strippers. And there's a lot of girls who are strippers, or male strippers even, too. There's a lot of male strippers on them. And there's a lot of, like, sexy scandals and stuff, and paternity tests. And Oprah even was the same way, she talked about sex at time. - I always am amazed that Oprah was able to pull herself out of that ditch and be like, "No, I'm serious." And I'm respected. When I was like, "Your shows used to be just as sleazy." - No, really. Yeah. They were really sleazy. She used to do all the same shit. And it was like, "Yeah, she was talking about affairs and all that stuff." And then she would do the same thing later, but then she got more kind of academic or journalistic or kind of empathetic. But I remember her like in the 2000s, she had a pedophiles on her show and she was talking to them about it. - Donna, you did that a lot, weirdly. For whatever reason. - Who's always like, "Hey, women are having sex!" - And the world is spinning, I don't understand, but yeah, yeah. I don't get to do my Donna impression very often these days, people don't know what I'm talking about. So I wouldn't have watched the current affair at this time. I always would feel like I was going to get in trouble for watching that show. - Yeah. - Who's the boss? - Oh, yeah. - A show that I always watched, but never really liked. And in this one, Angela makes a big splash after she dips into the spiked punch at Tony's first frat party. - What? - I don't know why Tony's going to a frat party when he's like 40 years old. - I know. - Yeah, that would have been something we could have explained in this episode. - He's got a drug at a frat party, but he loves frats. - Oh, they absolutely do. I don't. But they do. I do because I always feel obligated to read a MacGyver synopsis whenever it's in here because they always amuse me. This one is Matlock gets, which is weird that they had. Oh, I'm sorry. No, it's Matlock. Not MacGyver. Yeah, I was like Matlock's on MacGyver. I apologize. So what are you going with at 730? - I went with Arthur 2 on the rocks. - Arthur 2 on the rocks. Have you seen that movie? - No, but I've seen Arthur 1. - Right. - It's really terrible. - It's really terrible. And the second one's even worse. It's Dudley Moore as the lovable drunk Arthur. - He's not lovable. - They think that he is. - They don't love him. - If you get cut between the moon and New York City. - Yeah, the Arthur's theme. I think you involuntarily had to sing along with that. Like you should have looked at her face like, "I don't want this to be happening. Stop." Yeah. Yeah. I think you could go into any bar just like singing that and everyone would sing along with you. - Yeah. They would be a forest. - I remember when. - I can't believe they remade it too. - Yeah. Which is even worse. When Dudley Moore died, I was in Brighton, Massachusetts, which is a very heavy Russian population. I mean, there's a lot of them, not fat ones. There's a few fat ones. - They're risky. - Yeah. And I went into this ice cream shop and ordered milk, a frappe, which is a milkshake to most other people, which is ice cream blended with milk. And if you order a milkshake in Massachusetts, you get milk and syrup, just there's a hint for you. - Yeah. And the guy was watching the news and there was a story about a war in Russia. There was some kind of conflict and he goes, "What's this with them?" This was 2001 or 2002. - Yes, sir. - Yeah. I might have been judging me or something. And he goes, "Oh, great. World is going to hell. Russia will be gone in two weeks." Yeah. And then I'm like, "Oh, sorry. Can I get a chocolate frappe?" And he goes, "Everyone come in here for chocolate frappe today. Why everyone wants chocolate frappe today?" And then I'm like, "I don't know. It's like a nice day." I just said I was walking by and I saw he did fraps. And then Dudley Moore, the news that he died came on and he goes, "Midway through the frappe." He stops and he goes, "My God. The world got to shit. Dudley Moore dead now. Russia got to war. Everyone wants chocolate frappe." He put them all on the same level. Like the three worst things that happened today was a war in Russia, Dudley Moore's death, and everyone wanting a chocolate frappe. - And it's probably a little bit more work for them to make. - Yeah, but I mean-- - But not much. - It's making money. - Yeah. - He's bringing joy to the world with chocolate fraps. - Oh, my God. - So now Dudley Moore, every time I see him in anything, I'm like, "Oh, my God." "Oh, good. Everyone wants chocolate frappe today." - I definitely would have got that. I would have watched 30-something, a show that was inappropriate for me, then, and probably more inappropriate for me than-- - 30-something. - I am 30-something now. I have a weird thing where people never guess my age right. They always think I'm either a lot older or a lot younger. They're always not even close. - That's annoying. - Yeah. And I don't know which one of those is more offensive. - People always say they're like, "Oh, you look like you're like 23, but you act like you're divorced, say, who's like 50 years old." - That's what they say about me. - That's what they-- - That's what they say about you. - They're really self-involved. - Yeah. Yeah. They could be a 23-year-old divorcee. - Yeah, if I were like Mormon. - Yeah, or Southern. - Yeah. - Or Southern Mormon. - Southern Mormon. - So Wednesday night, seven o'clock, what'd you pick? - I picked exploring psychic powers. - And this is a discovery channel. - Yeah. - This is exploring psychic powers. - 'Cause I love psychic. I love anything to do with psychic powers or mind control. - Do you believe in that stuff? - Yes. - So mind control was an actual thing. - Oh, yeah. - It was an MK-Ultra project that the government ran for years where they were developing LSD for mind control. - Yeah, mind control is very real. We can control people's minds. It's the same effect. - Oh, I don't think we can actually do it, but it was actually something people were searching for. - Well, when you think about the fact that, I mean, why do people under duress confess to crimes and they never commit it, that's mind control? - I suppose, but that's more like they just want to get out of there. - Well, they started to believe that they actually could have done it. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Yeah. - I mean, we have a lot of cases of people who have had their minds really controlled by other people. Like, ADHD, you have Stockholm Syndrome. - Right. - It's all a form of mind control. - But not the way that the government would have liked it to have been, but not a mentoring candidate kind of. - No, no. - And do you believe in psychic powers as well? - I do believe that people can do things with their minds. - So yeah, I mean, I don't, but I believe that intuition is more powerful than people give it credit for and that some people are better at it. So like, for example, the people who do cold reading about, you know, I'm talking to your dead aunt, I can do that to people and it's- - I think people can read people better than us. - Yeah, yeah. - And I think a lot of people who do stand up can do that as well, but I mean, I, it's a fun trick to do where you can freak people out by, part of it's just being confident and they're only remembering the things you said that were correct and not their guesses. But I don't believe in psychic powers. But this, actually, on the long lines of that, this is a two hour special and it's hosted by James Randy, who is the world's leading skeptic of these sorts of things and debunker of these. And I love James Randy. He's like one of my personal heroes. - I like to believe the bottom because I think that anyone, when I say believe in psychic powers, I believe that we have more mental powers, some people have more mental powers than others. - We're not using the full capacity of our brains. - No, no. Some people are more charismatic and we use them, we have to manipulate people. But I think anyone who makes money off of making people believe something that they're dead relative is evil. - And they always justify it, like what does it matter if making them feel better? - It's awful. - And it's like, yeah, you know what else would probably make them feel better? - Harrelin. - Yeah. - They'd probably feel great on that. - Yeah, just jerk them off. That's illegal too. - Yeah. - For money. - Is it illegal? - Jerk, happy over money is illegal. - Oh, for money. They pay you or you pay them? - I don't know. I think only really weird gay men are paying to jerk people off. - Oh, is that true? - Yeah. - Times have changed. - I've never been paying to jerk people off. - No, no, no. Well, there goes my summer job. But this one is an investigation into the supernatural features magician James Randy who examines the claims of people professing to have paranormal abilities such as dowsing, channeling, ESP, and telekinesis, included psychic Yuri Gelly, mathematics, and memory experts. I mean, Yuri Geller is such a sham, that guy's such a piece of shit. - He's such a sham. He just made all of money up for Michael Jackson. - Yeah. And also, speaking of those talk shows, like Sylvia Brown and all those people were always on those things and it was horrific. She hadn't edited together when she died, thank God. An amazing sort of super cut on YouTube of just everything she got wrong over the years. Just the most wrong things. Yeah, like someone's daughter was killed and she's like, or she died in like a boating accident. And she's like, "I'm seeing your daughter. She's got a gunshot wound in her chest." And they're like, "No, she died in a boating accident." She's like, "No. She was shot first." And they were like, "No, she wasn't. There was no. That didn't come up." She asked that you should do another autopsy. Yeah, she was definitely, she was like, "Do you believe your own bullshit?" And you're going to argue with these, "Oh, it's just the worst. I'll get on my high horse about it." So you're watching that all night. I'm going with Growing Pains and this is a news of her homecoming queen nomination as Carol Bissett by nightmares over her in-crowd status and the effect of her reputation as the brain. - How was the door? - She was. But she started getting cool in season three. - Okay. - Yeah, she was pretty and she hung out with the pretty girls. She was dating the Capitol football team, Bobby. - Yeah, Bobby was hot. - I thought he looked like a frog. - They had these nasty girls on these TV shows where these super home keep boyfriends. - Yeah, that's how real life is, right? - Yeah, I wish. - Yeah. So then at a 30, we're going ahead of the class, because speaking of Russia, this was the two-parter where they went to Moscow and this was the first US television series shot in Russia. - Holy crap. - Yeah. Everyone wants chocolate threat. - I would love to talk to those people about that experience. - About the chocolate threat experience when they went to Russia? - When they went to Russia? - Yeah, well, one of the people that was in it was Dan Schneider, who basically runs Nickelodeon now. - All right. - And Moscow Samuels insists on study for an academic meet while Charlie lobbies from more personal, cultural experiences, a really fun show and was actually a legitimate big deal at the time when they did this. It was a huge, huge thing. - Yeah. - It was read for the fall of the Soviet Union. - Did you see when the creator, Ray Romano, he did the whole thing where he went to Russia to try to bring the show there? - No, no. - That was super interesting. It was a pretty good documentary about that. - I did see when Billy Crystal did his back in the USSR special. That is terrible. Is there anyone who likes Billy Crystal stand up? - No. He's a piece of shit. - I mean, I know it might have been movies sometimes, but I'm not a fan of his comedy, in quotes. - No, I can't believe he was just so associated with all that stuff in the '70s. That was so cool and so groundbreaking and he was like, "Wasn't the 40s called? Fuck you." - Yeah, but also I think Billy Crystal was a lot of red place right time. - Oh, it was, huge red place right time. He just had the showmanship thing. - Yeah, yeah, not a Billy Crystal fan. - There's no woman I hardly want to fuck Billy Crystal. That was so stupid. - That's not true. I bet we could go outside Hollywood right now and find at least five or six people. - The money. - Well, it's illegal to do that, you said. - Yeah. It is. But when Harry Met Sally were supposed to believe they make Ryan could be sexually interested in the sky. - Are there women like guys with a sense of humor? - I said you have to be like exactly that's why she wouldn't like Billy Crystal. - Just terrible. - Yeah, he does seem like an unbelievable romantic lead. - Yeah. - Yeah. - So Thursday night, seven o'clock, what's your pick? - I picked the grassy junior high. - Did you watch that at the time? - No, I feel like I missed out on a huge amount of TV from not watching the grassy ever. - So you don't even watch the modern degree? - Oh, no. I want to go back to the beginning. The grassy is an interesting show, so it started as a thing called the Kids of Degrassy Street, and it was about elementary school kids. And it was almost like a documentary, but it was a fictional show, it's Canadian. And then they did the grassy junior high following the same kids, went to Degrassy high, and then the show was off the year for about 20 years, and it brought back a new Degrassy where it was continuation of the old one, and the kids from the original series now had children at Degrassy. So it's not just a remake, it's an actual continuation of the show. - Interesting. - And it's pretty well done. And that was the first show that I remember where kids looked like kids, and they had acne, and they were fat, or they were in a wheelchair, or they were not white, or mixed race. - Yeah, yeah. - And that was interesting. And it seemed like we had to be Canadian to do that, because there weren't US shows doing that at the time. And it was awkward. - The kids from Rosanna feel like we're fairly accurate looking. - Yeah, I mean, more so than everyone else, but they were still TV kids, and they were definitely TV kids. These kids did not seem like actors in the least, and there was AIDS on the show, there was suicide, there was teen pregnancy, and it was a great show. And it was a show that was on PBS, so you could kind of get these salacious self-opera elements and kind of justify that it was a quality television show, 'cause they would show it to us at school. - You watched "The Grassy" once a week in health class. - Well, yeah, I remember it. Yeah, people told me that they had that experience. - Very, very weird. I would have gone with "The Grassy" at 7.30, what'd you go with? - And with Florida's Phantom Panthers. - Wow. - Florida's Phantom Panthers. So I'm guessing this is a Discovery Channel show about these Panthers that may or may not exist in Florida. - Panthers. - It's exciting. - Yeah. - Small Panthers. - I believe they exist. - Stupid, violent, really sex fucked up Panthers. - Yeah. - And I'm sure that people brought them as pets and let them loosen the swamps in Florida. - Yeah, I mean, I would love to see something like that. I mean, are we going to see footage of Panthers? Are we not? - No. - Are we going to talk to Florida weirdness? - Yeah, I know. I seen this Panther. He was all black. - Oh, Panther. I'm all back yard. - It was like a black cat, but like a bigger-- - Yeah. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Eight feet long, three feet wide, claws like that. - I was like a devil. - I don't know if you remember this because Lauren and I grew up basically one town away from each other, but we didn't know each other. - I swear it. - Yeah, it's really, really weird. But every night I would sing somewhere out there. I don't know if you did that too. Yeah. It'd be very funny if anyone ever did that. - But-- - You were nice in the mood. - Yes. Somewhere. I'll meet this person. But when we were growing up in the '90s, a bunch of wallabies escaped from a zoo. There's a zoo between our two towns. - Yeah. - The Stone Zoo? - Yeah, the Stone Zoo. - Stone Zoo. - And which is actually named after someone whose last name is Stone, and not named because it's in a town called Stoneham. - Weird. - Very weird. And these wallabies escaped and were living in the fell's reservation woods for years. - Oh crap. - And people would see them. There would be just this colony of wallabies in this wooded area in Massachusetts. - God. - And I remember them saying, "Well, they won't survive the winter and we can't find them." But they did for years. They definitely saw them hopping through these woods. It was very weird. - They were freaked out. - Do you remember that? - No. - I mean, they weren't swamp panthers or anything. - No. - Around that same time, they found a dead guy in those woods, and he was a homeless guy. - Did he kill by wallabies? - He was killed. I sensed a bullet wound to his chest. - No. - I sensed a voting accident. - Yeah. He had a voting accident in the woods. No. I don't know what killed him, but he had no skin except for his tattoos. And the animals wouldn't eat his tattoos. They ate everything but his tattoos, which is how they identified him. So it was just like a skeleton with tattoos. Yeah. These woods sound pretty exciting now. - Oh, they're going to hang out in the stone zoo. - Tattooed skeletons and wallabies. It's like adventure time. - It is, yeah. - What was your next pick? - Um, coming after that. Cheers. - There's two things, and I think I mentioned this in every podcast. There's two universal rules I've discovered when doing this show and talking to people. The first thing is everyone that used the free TV week out of the newspaper also owned a toaster oven. Yep. Did you get a TV guide or did you use the TV week? - No. I wouldn't get any sort of publication about the TV. - Nothing. - How did you know it was on TV? - I don't know. You just... - How did you know what to watch? - You just spitballed it. - Did you have cable? - Sure. - We had Disney. - Okay. - We had proper cable. - Did you have one TV? - We had two TVs. - Okay. So you had two siblings. - Two siblings. - You had like a living room? - Yeah. - Like a living room. - Was it a finish basement? - No. There was like the front room that you walked into and... - Like an enclosed porch kind of. - A den. - Yeah. - It was kind of like a small living room. - Okay. - We had a computer in the air. The computer room. - Yep. - And then we had like a baby living room sitting room family. - Okay. Yeah. A reception area. - Reception area. - Yeah. So did you have a lot of fights with your siblings about what you're going to watch or kind of you're the oldest, right? - I'm the youngest. - But you're the youngest. - I'm the youngest. - You were the youngest. - Yeah. I mean, when I was alone at your school, I could watch what I wanted. - Right. - I mean, we were in conjunction a lot of the time. We often wanted to watch, I remember some of my favorite shows being, I watched The Real World. - Oh yeah. The first few seasons were great. - The Real World's plays. - Yeah. - New York Undercover. - Okay. That's an unusual, that's a curve ball. What was the best show that like your siblings introduced you to? - Probably The Real World really, or that my dad really liked Fox Sunday Night programming. - Okay. - And mom would be working on Sunday nights and we'd watch them living color. - Yeah. - And we'd watch Ryan with the children and the Simpsons. - So your dad liked the sleaze? - Yeah. - What's your favorite season of The Real World? - Oh, definitely, oh God, it's hard. I love San Francisco and I also love Boston. - We used to go to the house in Boston. Did you do that? - No. - It was to the firehouse and Beacon Hill and it was where they shot the show Spencer for Hire as well, where we would go and I remember these punk rock kids would throw bricks through the windows. - Oh, Jesus. - Yeah. - And also love Seattle. Those are my three. - Yeah, Seattle is when it started to turn for me as getting a little bit more fighting fucking for every episode. What about who's your favorite all time Real World cast member? - Oh my God, so hard. I really loved, Jesus Christ, so tough, see I loved, I loved the drama that Pat caused. - Yeah, but he was the asshole. - And I loved Montana on Real World Boston because she was a firebrand. - She was really weird. She's still like, she was 50 years old. - She was 50 years old, she was so fun to watch, but she's like she's 50 years old. I loved her and I also loved David on Real World, see I like who's from Boston. - Because he's from Boston. - He's so talented. - I thought he was a little chrome magnet. - He was so handsome. He had two different colored eyes like he was a Bowie, gray hair. - Do you rent 10 things I hate about you, Jesse, you can see that clip of him in that? - Yes. - Yes, yeah. - Yeah, I love him. - I like Neil. - Neil, it's really funny. - I think London was my favorite one. - I watched London very little, they were really boring to me. - Nothing kind of London. - I did live in London. I think part of the reason I moved was because of that Real World. I loved just Cindy. - I like LA, too. - LA was fun, would you store it? - Yeah, sorry. - John granite, yeah, the first four, the first four or five seasons I chose for it. - I worked for Crocke. - Oh yeah, Dominic. - Dominic. - Yeah, but he was a writer for Spin. I mean, he was a good music journalist, they were more interesting people and it really started to try and kind of tip it in the store. - No, but why used one there really? - Well, yes, but a roofie. Yeah. The last one I remember watching regularly was I think New Orleans. - Yeah, I liked New Orleans, I think that. - Yeah, I remember I always wanted to be on the Real World. - Oh my God. - Which, if you know me, that doesn't make any sense. - My dad wanted me to be on the Real World. - Why would I? - He was an idiot. I don't think he understands. - Yeah. - He didn't understand. He didn't understand. He just thought he was a good exposure, he didn't understand. - It certainly is. - He didn't understand the context of this show. I remember I bought the book that the guy from the Miami cast wrote Living in the Real World. - Yeah. - Like the expose a book and I had him sign it, I went to a signing of the book. - The Joe? - Yeah, Joe. Yeah. I bought that book. He was, he sucked. He sucked. - He's boring. - Yeah. - Hot girlfriend is stupid. - Yeah, and he was like three feet tall. - Yeah, he was short and had his face. He was like, "Yeah, I love you." - Yeah, I love you. - No joy. - No. - Yeah. - Real World changed the world. - It did. - So what was your next pick? - NBA Finals. I would catch the end of the NBA. What basketball? - I feel like, I feel like in '89 it would have been really interesting because you would have probably had some, like, who's playing that night? - I don't know who's in the finals, so they wouldn't have known yet when they printed the TV God. - Yeah. - But I, I wouldn't have watched because it would have been the end of it. It would have been exciting. - You were sports fans? - Yeah. - I watched it a bit. I work in a bar that has a lot of TVs that play sports. And I'm into sports culture, like I really like NBA 30 for, like, I like 30 for 30s. All those sports don't be greats. - Did you like that when we were growing up? Because obviously in Boston- - No, it did not like heck right now. - You- - It did not enjoy it at all. - I don't like sports. I don't like sports is a thing to watch or be you know thing. I like sports culture, like watching 30 for 30 or like I read the ESPN. - So you like the, you like the stories, not necessarily the culture? - And then the last time it's an NBA game is exciting. - Yeah, see, cause I, I don't know if part of this is going to be in Boston where like if you're not a sports fan, people just assume you might as well be eating children. - Yeah, I hate that shit. - Yeah, or that you're the frugal gourmet or something. But it's very off-putting. And it really- - I had to get away from it. I spent years hating. - Yeah, so you needed to, you needed that sort of distance in order to be able to start going. - But I do like going to baseball games. - It's so boring. So slow. - You just drink beer. - Oh, there's the other problem. - There's the other problem. - It's the shit on people who are around you. - Physically? Cause I've seen people do that at baseball games. - Just make fun of everyone around. It's just an experience. - Yeah, I mean, I tried to go to some games and just, I couldn't get anywhere. I definitely wouldn't have watched this at all. - I assume that's much. - It does say who the announcers are. They're Dick Stockton and Hubby Brown. - Hubby Brown. - Hubby Brown. - This is the one named Hubby Brown. - Hubby Brown and Dick Stockton. - Hubby Brown. - I would have watched this show called At Issue, Teen Pregnancy. - Yes. - In this segment. - It was very high. - It was very high. - In the late '80s. - But it got much higher during the Bush era of the early 2000s. - Well, yeah. - The absence of its only education. - Yeah, they knocked it down a bit in the '90s. And then it got back up and now it's going down again. - Are you, were you making puns there? - Yeah. - They knocked it down. - They knocked it down. - They knocked it back up. - This says, "At Issue, Teenage Pregnancy Discussed Efforts to Lower Teenage Pregnancy and Peoria Programs to Help Young Mothers." That's it. - You know, it's one of the people who took on Teen Pregnancy a lot, is Jane Fonda when she was married to- - Yes. - Ted Turner? - Ted Turner. - Ted Turner. - Yeah. - They lived in Georgia. Georgia had one of the worst Teen Pregnancy programs. Her mission to decrease it, she really did a good job to put in a lot of programs. - Oh, one of the best Teen Pregnancy Rits in the country if you ever did that. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Yeah. Georgia. So the final night of the week, Friday night, what are you watching at seven? - Perfect strangers. I love perfect strangers. - I love perfect strangers. - Do you still watch it? - Balke. No. - It's very silly. It's a good show for a child. This is the conclusion of a two part perfect strangers. Longest in the wilderness, the campers wonder if it's just Nietzsche's way of saying they shouldn't have embarked on the trip with Larry as their guide. Larry did get them screwed over a lot. - Yeah. - Yeah. Larry was almost a proto version of almost all the characters we have in TV now where they're just so self-involved and not a good person that they, why would you even be friends with them? - Yeah. - There's no redeeming qualities about them. - I can understand that. - I probably would have watched this, but there was a movie on TV that night which is a great movie called The Wraith. - The Wraith? - The Wraith. - The Wraith? - Yes. - Like W-R-A-I-T-H. - Correct. - Okay. - It stars Charlie Sheen, and Cheryl and Fen, and Randy Quaid, and it's about ghost drag racers. - What? - Yeah. Oh, and also has Ron Howard's brother Clint. - Oh nice. A little bit. - Randy Quaid really went off the race. - Randy Quaid really did. But I enjoy them and things. This is a group of drag racing auto thieves are threatened by a mysterious teenager and his turbocharged race car. - Oh, what? - Who wouldn't have watched that? - Yeah. I don't know. I really fucked up. - You really did. You can go back and change. Also, Highway to Heaven that night, two high school reporters feel certain they're found their own Watergate when a girl demanding anonymity confides that the school bus driver was actually coming onto her when the bus was involved in an accident, and the school bus driver is played by one of my most favorite named actors in the 80s. Back Rambo. - Jack Rambo. - Jack Rambo. - I let it. Jack Rambo come on to me. - Coming onto chicks and then flipping the bus over. - What? - 730. You going to a full house? - Patty Duke. - Patty Duke. - Go throw back. - Is that a show that you enjoyed? - Yeah. - It's a fun show. I still watch it now on MeTV in the morning. - It's like Friday. It's end of the week. You're coming higher? - Yeah, you just want to unwind. - Yeah, unwind. - And then eight o'clock what you go with? - Belvedere. - I love Mr. Belvedere. As everybody knows. - Yeah, Lynn. - Belvedere has a woman's name, but he's all man. - And the best, I think possibly the best her in her life sketch ever. - The Broctoon. - Yes. - Yeah, the Broctoon does come up very frequently when people talk of Belvedere. This particular episode of Mr. Belvedere is Marcia, Eileen Graf, has a secret. She's quit her tedious job at the legal hut and is now a sassy waitress at a trendy diner. - Trendy diner? - Trendy diner. That's right. And she's sassy. - I'm going to law school to being a sassy diner waitress. - I'm a sassy bartender, so I can understand. - Do you think people think that you dropped out of law school to be a sassy bartender? - Um, no. I tell them that I'm a comedian and they're like, "Oh, that makes sense." - That makes perfect sense. And then what'd you go with at 8/30? - Just a ten of us. - I love just the ten of us. This may be my all-time favorite sitcom in the '80s. Easily my favorite family sitcom. Was this something you watched? - No, but it sounds so intriguing. - It's a spinoff of growing pains. It is about an Irish Catholic family with eight children. - Control. No teen pregnancies now on the show. And this one, blessed is Marie, the peacemaker, except when she takes the witness stand in the coach's family court session to determine JR's involvement in a fight with the school boxing champ. This is a very good episode. It's almost like Rashomon, where they're all kind of selling the different stories about how this happened. The event, the inciting incident has already happened and we're trying to get to it. - There's like a great story about that on the world where Dean Kane's on an episode. A different one? - Yeah. This is a different world. - Were they right at the end where it was in his car? - Yes. Yeah, yeah. This wasn't quite as heavy as that. This was a fun show. It was very well written. All the good writers from Growing Pains kind of left the show and went to just the ten of us. It was on for two and a half seasons. It was unjustly canceled. I love the show. It holds up very well. It's still very funny. It's got a great cast that is absolutely the pick. I will always mention that the one show I wasn't allowed to watch was 2020. - Oh, I would have watched that. I watched it and I would get nervous about everything. And this is a report on ethics and honesty in America, producer Bernard I. Cohen or Bick. Says the show will include a Charlotte, North Carolina honesty testing firm. That's great. That's prospective employees for companies across the country, a year-long honesty campaign in Ohio and an honesty expert in which people are given too much change. Yeah, that wouldn't have scared me, but it sounds a little boring. - That sounds super boring, isn't it? - Yeah. As far as you know, the TV guy is not just informative. - No, we have cheers and cheers. - It's opinionated. It has cheers and cheers. - They jeer things. - They jeer and they jeer. It's a 50/50 split this week with two jeers, two cheers. I'd like to read them for you and see if you agree or disagree. First we have a jeers. To CBS's programmers for disrupting wise guy, they pulled wise guy and it got bad. - I would not cheer that. I would cheer it. - You didn't like wise guy? - Didn't know wise guy. Oh, wise guy was Ken Wall, he was an undercover cops, pretty good show, but they messed up the order of the episodes. I withhold that. I mean, yeah, I uphold that cheer. Cheers to Cable's "Nicket Night" for playing tribute in tongue-in-cheek fashion to one of USA TV's forgotten figures. For three years, this unheralded actress was on every episode of the Patty Duke show, yet we never saw her face. The premise of the 60s show, you recall, involved Patty and Kathy identical cousins, both played by Duke. Whenever one was supposed to be talking to the other, the actress stepped into the frame to play the back of Patty Duke's head. She labored in anonymity and she still does. Despite efforts, "Nicket Night" couldn't establish her identity after all these years, so an actress was hired to stand in for the two-hour tribute that was filmed and only from the behind. Perfect. That is amazing. "Nicket Night" used to do such great stuff like this. - That's great. I love winning guys. I watch a lot of stuff like that. I watched, "What is the one with them, Mrs. Beasley, the doll." - Oh, yeah, so "Family Affair." - I watched "The Family Affair." - Yeah. - I watched "Pettico Junction." - Yeah. - I watched "Green Acres." - I watched "Green Acres." Yeah, actually there's a really good book about TV, "Cultural Critique," that talks about "Green Acres" and sort of city-based country politics. - Oh, absolutely. "Green Acres" was actually really ahead of its time, too. It did a lot of great meta-jokes with the opening credits, especially. That were very proto-Simpsons. I mean, very clever and smart. - Yeah, it's a really clever, smart show that examines a lot of anxieties about people during, like, the Vietnam era. - Oh, yeah, absolutely. Even when Arnold Ziffle, the pig, gets drafted into Vietnam. - Okay. - So I agree with that show. - That's hysterical. - Uh, jeers to CBS's Murphy Brown for-- - They're really nailing CBS. - They're really nailing CBS. For its subtle snobbery, brilliant, dedicated Murphy is always tripping over cartoonishly incompetent hired hands, like secretaries and house painters. Do these super-siliest depictions reflect the attitudes of the highly-paid professionals who created Murphy Brown? Happily, the condescension doesn't extend into CBS's next half-hour on designing them in the secretary of the driver, the baddie senior citizen, are all afforded a shot at human worth, cheers to them. - That's a really good point. There is a lot of snobbery calls with snobbery on TV now. I feel like one thing that I notice about TV shows now is kids on TV shows now are always much wealthier than they are more. - Oh, yeah. Well, all TV's aspirational now. There's no blue collar TV. - There's no blue collar TV. Everyone is a computer in the room. Everyone is a millionaire. - Yeah. - Everyone is living upper middle class. The only sure thing is the middle, I think, thing. - Yeah, but even that still. If a teenager has a job on a show now, they're, like, an editor at a fashion magazine. - Yeah. Like, not in the middle. I feel like it was in the last shows. - Yeah. That's true. - Billings are really struggling financially. - Yeah. That's a good point. I always overlooked Malcolm in the middle, but that definitely was. - It was a great show. - It was a great show. - It was the first of shows sitcoms without a laugh track that was on movie talks. - Not necessarily. - Well, that was super popular. - Yeah. - Like, that we did the swoop cut through. - Yeah. - I mean, yeah. - It was before a rest development. - But there was a lot of precedent before that. There was a lot of family sitcoms without laugh tracks. Actually, one of the earliest comedies I remember without having a laugh track is the original Bill Cosby show from 1973. It's shot on film, single camera. It's very, very, very good. It was only on two seasons. No one ever really has a lot to say about it, but it was a great show. And it weirdly reminds me a lot of like a lovable Kirby enthusiasm. It's like a good-hearted Kirby enthusiasm. There's no laugh track. It's a really good show. You can pick up the DVD box. That's pretty cheap. - Bill Cosby show. - Bill Cosby show. Yeah, two seasons. And finally, cheers to Josh Saviano on ABC's "The Wonder Years." As Paul Pfeiffer, Arnold's bespeckled best friend, Saviano brings to the part credibility, warmth, humor, and dramatic talent well beyond his years. There were a number of young nerds on prime time, like Arvert on ABC's "Head of the Class" or Scoopy on NBC's "Family Times," but they're usually pathetic comic creatures. On "The Wonder Years," Saviano breaks that mold with a character who was nerdy, yet still sympathetic and fully drawn. - That's true, but that's more to do with the right-hand character. - Yeah, it's not him. - He was a good kid actor, and then he became Harold Manson, as everyone knows. So I agree with that, but yeah, the writers really get some credit, though. - Well, Laura, thank you so much for doing the show. - Thank you for having me on the show. - You're welcome. [MUSIC] - And then you go Laura Crawford, creator of horrific nicknames, potentially racist and anti-semitic, but I don't let her words judge herself. I don't even think that makes sense, but anyway, really fun episode. I enjoy talking to her as I generally do every week. It's very rare that I don't enjoy talking to anyone. I don't know if that's actually happened yet, but you can find all her stuff on tvguidescounselor.com. You can also find me there. You can find me at tvguidescounselor@gmail.com. Please let me know what you think of the show, what you like, what you don't like. I love hearing from you guys. Go on the Facebook page. You can have discussions with other fans of the show. It's weird that I can say that because there are other fans of the show. Thank you guys for listening and we'll see you next time on an all new episode of TVguidescounselor. [MUSIC] - I used to get called Oreo mouth. I was the first girl that I would just go with who ever wore a shirt.
