TV Guidance Counselor
TV Guidance Counselor Episode 15: Ryan Walsh
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. Hello and welcome to another episode of TV Guidance Counselor. I am Ken Reed, your TV guidance counselor as always. My guest this week is Mr. Ryan Walsh. Now Ryan is not a comedian. He's in a great van called Hallelujah the Hills. If you haven't heard them, definitely check them out. They actually have a new record that came out yesterday called, "Have you ever done something evil? You should definitely buy it. I think you'll love it," and they're on tour this week on the West Coast, a rare West Coast appearance. So go to hallelujahthehills.com. You can check them out. I know Ryan, he actually emailed me years ago. He had seen me at the Comedy Studio and he had me open for them on one of their old record release shows, which was a lot of fun. He's a funny guy. He's a smart guy and a really talented great musician and songwriter. It has some great stories about growing up and television. So please enjoy this week's episode with my guest, Ryan Walsh. Mr. Ryan Walsh always said, "I'm good, how are you? Thank you. Good. Thanks for welcome to my house. Thank you for having me. You're welcome. Thank you for the read manner. You had mentioned that you saw a hobo on your way here. I did. There was a man with a traditional stick and bindle, which I think is the term. And I've never seen either and I was shocked by it. It was a good one. Yeah. I think all towns shoot out. You have a town crash. You have an official town hobo. You said there's no trains here, so you don't get hobo's because they're only... Yeah, we don't. They're not riding the rails. Yeah. We have very few crazy people here. And in Melrose, we had a woman named the quarter lady who wore winter outfits all year around and we'd just be like, "Got a quarter? Need a quarter? Got a quarter? Got a quarter?" And there was all kinds of mythology about her where people were like, "No, I heard she's really a millionaire and she's just good jars and jars of quarters." And we had all kinds of people like that. I assume you probably had that in your town. Oh, plenty. The big one was the guy who wore the dress and he was an older gentleman and there was a lot of lore. Right. His wife died. His wife's dress. He saw someone murdered. Hey, you always had a dress on? He always had a dress on. And they said his wife died and that was his way of remembering. I think a lot of people create stories just to soften the blow of that person's real. The guy just likes one. Yeah. And he's got some real issues and problems. It's easier to be like, "Well, you struck by lightning that killed his wife and he survived." This house actually was struck by lightning twice. How do you know that? Well, we've lived there five years and we didn't really talk to our neighbors very much. But we got invited to a July 4th party and the neighbors were like, "Oh, you guys know about your house?" And we're like, "No." And the lightning. Yeah. They got struck by lightning twice. One of them, the guy was on the toilet and he had just got up and the lightning hit the toilet and hit the house and exited the toilet and exploded it. And he was okay. Exploded just the toilet? Yeah. Because it went through the water pipes. Both toilets exploded apparently. And this guy had literally just got off the toilet and those people moved. So I don't know if I should be more nervous or less nervous like that this house has gotten it out of the way. You put a lightning rod up there? We don't have a lightning rod. I think you should have been. I'm scared of lightning rods because of something wicked this way comes. Wait, whoa. The Ray Bradbury story and film. There's like a lightning rod man in the movie played by Royal Dano and he comes to a very bad end. And for some reason I associate that with lightning rods. I don't know why. That's it, Gary. Okay. I agree. So you picked a TV guide from the week of September 8th, 1990 and I think I know exactly why you picked this but you can go ahead and tell everyone. Twin Peaks is on the cover. What's the headline there? It says, "Best selling author tells how we'd resolve the Twin Peaks mystery." Ah. That's a real precursor of the internet right there. Yeah. Like conjecture. Yeah, conjecture and how to fix your favorite show. Yeah. And this isn't just the Twin Peaks cover. It's the ladies of Twin Peaks on the cover. But that's interesting because it's not the traditional three that they would trot out for the sex appeal because Laura Palmer is not there. No, I'm sorry. Actress that plays Laura Palmer? Yeah, that's right. She's dressed as Maddie. So she's got the Maddie. That's the Maddie guy. Did you ever hear how she got cast for that? No, I don't think so. I forget if she wasn't an actress and was just a model or David Lynch saw her somewhere. Yeah. And he went up to her and was like, "I'd like to wrap you in plastic on television." And she was like, "Okay." And the guy who played deputy, he was the limo driver. He was the limo driver. He was the limo driver. Yes. He was like a bunch of people picture. And then Peggy Lipton. Yeah. Peggy's the oddball there because they used to put the three younger girls around the cover Rolling Stone. Yes. So you're missing... Cheryl and Fett. Cheryl and Fett. But also... Magic. Magic's there. No, that's Laura Flynn Boyle. Oh, Laura, okay. So you're missing Magic. Yes, you're missing Magic. This was... Who I thought was the best... The most attractive. Did you... She was in a remake of Fantasy Island that was awful in about '97, and she was also movie Sleepwalkers. Did you ever see that? The Stephen King. Yes. Yes, I think it did. That was their attempt to really break her as a movie star, and it didn't work. But I always liked her. I don't know why that didn't happen. Yeah. A lot of people had weird careers after Twin Peaks. I didn't watch it when it was out. I was too young. That's because I'm younger than you, and I watched it at the time, which I think probably says something negative about me and my family. But I came to it, like, my parents rented the pilot, which they wrapped up into like a movie. Yeah, so what happened with the pilot was that it... And this happened a lot. A lot of television did this, where if they had a two-hour TV movie, or even the first two episodes of a TV series, they would edit it into a movie and release it in theaters in Europe. Right. It happened all the time. Yeah, yeah. It's like Salem's Lost. It came out as a movie in Europe. Since it was an open-ended ending, because it was a pilot, they shot an ending and released it to theaters in Europe, and then the only version of that on video here was the one with this ending. Right. Which makes no sense if you've seen the rest of the series. The fact that my parents hated it, they rented it, they hated it, but I became instantly obsessed. Right. But then began my journey of how do I see it all. Right. And I was driving to like regional coconuts, looking for the weird VHS releases that they did, and it was only season one with certain VHS. Yeah. It was a box that was very hard to find. For me to see all of them, that doesn't happen anymore. No. You can find, you can watch any of them. Oh, I'm interested in Twin Peaks. Oh, here it's on the phone. I have all of it. Yes. I have all of it, and I can watch it in my pants. Yeah. And I just have really fond memories of like, "Well, I'm going to drive out on Route 9. There's a coconuts there. They might have the episode 9 through 10." I did the same thing when I was in my truck rock band in the 90s. We were tour, and I made, they hated me. I made a stop at every video store we saw, and every coconuts, tower records, every single store like that, and Twin Peaks is one of the things I was looking for. I found the box set, the full box set, on clearance at a tower records in Long Island, and it was like the greatest thing that ever happened to me. Yeah, it was a real triumph, isn't it? It was, yeah. And now you can get it on pretty much any format. Exactly, yeah. I remember I bought the laser discs from Japan. Yeah, I remember those, like, there was, if you loved the show, you knew all these weird things. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That pilot, it ends weird because of the European funding. You become, like, an executive, like, learning all these business details? I had a subscription to the official Twin Peaks magazine for Captain Plaster. Yes, I had a few issues with that. Great magazine. Yeah. Obviously, the reason why you would pick this. Also, this was Peggy Lipton's sort of resurgence, because she was on the mod squad. Oh, was she? Yes. That was what she was known for, and this was sort of, she had kind of dropped out of acting for us. She's Mrs. Quincy Jones. She's Rashida Jones' mother. Really? Yes. Yep, it's Peggy Lipton. Wow. Yeah, you can see the resemblance once you know. That's true. But that is her mother. Yeah. Wow. Fun facts, blowing minds. All right. Interesting. So let's get right into it. Saturday night, 8 o'clock, what'd you go with? I chose Golden Girls. Golden Girls is a good move. This is 1990. The show never had a bad time. It was a Secret Service agent played by Tim Stack, who played the dad on Parker Lewis and was also on the show Son of the Beach. Okay. He was a writer. He started as a writer. He played a Secret Service agent in a bunch of shows, weirdly. That was, like, a role he often played. Being out the girls before a possible presidential visit gets an earful about Blanche's fun times. Rose's Saint Olaf and Dorothy's temper, part one of two, and then the conclusion airs in an hour. So we'll see if you watch the second part. Oh, I didn't catch that. But I noticed that that plot came up in many shows where the president was going to visit and the Secret Service had to come interview the people. I've never, I know a lot of people. I've never heard of that happening to anyone I know, and I can think of probably four shows when that happened. I have something, I used to work for the American Repertory Theatre, and Colin Powell's daughter was in a play, and he came to see it. They had to check everyone's background. It's not like they pulled you in a room and talked to you that I think they just walked around. Right. But they're always in the shows. It's like, it's an excuse for flashbacks or a story to character development. But I was wondering, is Blanche the prototype, was there ever a character before where it was like she's super promiscuous and that's her thing? Yes. I mean, weirdly, Betty White sort of played that kind of character on a bunch of shows before that. That was the sort of character she was known for. So on Mary Tyler Moore and a bunch of other shows, she was kind of like a, a middle lady, I guess, people would call it a cougar now for that short term. But she always played that character. So it was really weird and against type than she was playing the dumb one on that show. And normally she would have been playing the Blanche type character. I mean, Blanche was more over the top and much more because the 80s were a bit a little bit more permissive on television. But there was some precedent for that kind of character. You also had Mona on who's the boss who was sort of a similar kind of character. Yes. Yeah. So that, I would have gone with that, that pick absolutely. I ate 30, what'd you go with? I didn't see, I picked something called Haywire, which I don't know, but the description of this episode caught my fancy. Yes. This is a sort of a stunt, hidden camera type show. Okay. I don't remember. Do you remember it? I don't remember it. This, there was a resurgence of this in the late 80s, early 90s, you had totally hidden video, America's Funny Some Videos was big, America's Foneys people got big, they tried to bring back, candid camera and a bunch of these other shows. And then MTV eventually had Buzzkill, if you remember that show. So this show was people are offered $10 to cut off a lock of their hair. Dog owners compete with their pets in an ice cream eating contest and people see what they can get for free in Seattle. This, I would watch this now, I'm going to try to hump this down. I think that's a great pick. I will mention though, on USA Saturday Nightmares, a movie called The Unnameable is On, which is based on HP Lovecraft in the 90s. I took a screenwriting night class at Harvard and it wasn't, it was on campus, but I don't think it was officially with Harvard. And the guy that taught that wrote the movie The Unnameable Two, which is really not a great movie. Was that his first credit? That was his only one. That he would trot out? Yes. And he was like, wore a sweater and had a pipe coming to the guy. And so we had to, we all wrote a dream place. You ever see Unnameable Two? You ever see? Well, when I wrote Unnameable Two, uh, he shortened it. He didn't. He should have. You two. When I wrote you two. And the first one's not bad, but, so in this screenwriting class, we all, you'd read one person wrote a script in a week, you'd all read it, the next week you'd talk about it and it was that kind of thing. So this guy wrote one of the worst scripts I've ever read in my life. And it was basically a retelling of the patty, her story. And this woman is kidnapped by some sort of terrorists. They rape her and then she falls in love with two of them. It was awful. So it's like, any one of any comments about the script that no one says anything. So I'm like, I don't care. So I'm like, yeah, it's really bad. Yeah. And the guy was like, excuse me. I'm like, all right. Page eight. This guy's licking her and she's crying and screaming. Page 10. They're engaged. And it was like this, it made no sense and then as soon as I said that, everyone just piled on and just started hammering this guy for being the worst script ever. So when I graduated college, I went for a job interview at this production company and they're showing me around and they're like, we have an arcade and a pool table and we have a chef and I'm like, wow, this is great. And they take me to the office for the guy I'm interviewing with and it's the guy that wrote that script. And I sit down and I go, I'm not getting this job. Am I? And it goes, absolutely not. You were eating? Yeah. You need to refresh the memory. He was, yeah. He goes, he knew exactly who I was and he goes, and we're going to sit here for 20 minutes because I have to make it look like I interviewed you. So I had to sit in silence in this office with this dude for 20 minutes. Wow. It was very awkward. You know, those like classroom feedback classes for creative things, whether it's screenplays or those are like such fragile societies. Oh, yeah. Like, it just takes one to break down into, into really cruel kind of, um, I don't like your face. Yeah, it gets, it gets nasty quick. And I had a creative writing professor, someone finished a short, oh, a girl classmate finished a short story that she wrote about like breaking up or, or refusing the advances of a guy. Okay. She finishes the story. There's silence. And the teacher just goes, you're all the same. Oh, you women? Women. Serious issues with women. It was. That's astounding. You're all the same. It's burned into my. Oh my God. I, my favorite thing about this, this screenwriting class was this guy wrote a script about giant mutant salmon that had mutated due to toxic waste or something. And there was an older guy in this class who's probably in his late 60s, early 70s and he used to work for a mob owned distribution company in Boston in the 70s called Hallmark Pictures that actually produced the last house on the left and a bunch of porno movies and all this stuff. And he looked exactly like you would imagine this guy looked. And so like anyone have any comments about the script and he goes, all right, son, let me tell you something about giant salmon pictures. As if this is a sub genre he goes, I financed a similar picture about giant salmon in 1971. You know who wanted to see it? Nobody. I put in a ton of tits and nobody cared. And salmon pictures just don't work. It was like the best, I'm like, this is the best bit of advice I've ever gotten. It's all worth it. Just to hear this guy. Anyone referring to movies is pictures. That's a win. Yeah, absolutely. I can't get enough of that. You know what annoys me when people call it a show that would just be a show? Yeah, yeah. Like you always have like industry people who are like, oh, I worked on this show. Oh, I don't know. Yeah. That sounds obnoxious. I listen to like commentary tracks and stuff and that that comes up a lot. Yeah. Like industry people. I've been working on that show. One more aside, I went to BU for film. Okay. And one of my professors had a theory that all superstars look like cats. That's very odd. And he was like Mel Gibson, tiger. He would like go through, I don't know if I have grew that very, but I love it. But I love it. But I love it. I was batshit. A friend of mine went to BU for film and the professor got Tony Todd who played Candyman in the Candyman movie to come in and speak to the class. And he was going to teach, talk to him about like he does a lot of Shakespearean acting and he's on all these things. And the professor was German or some sort of he had an accent. And my friend kept saying that he wouldn't call him Tony Todd, he kept going, I have a question, Candyman. No. And Candyman. And then the guy got, he just got really mad and stormed out. Have you ever seen the documentary overnight about? Yes. Both the guy that made Boondock Saints. I'm in that movie. Are you in the movie? If you recall, he goes to a BU class. Yes. That's my class. It was Ray Carney who was like the world's expert on Casa Vettis. Okay. Yes. So it's totally the wrong class. And he let this happen because he was like, I'm going to teach these kids a lesson about like assholes. Right. And just let this guy go wild and just like, you know, looking at us all. And he, they cut to the class and I'm just looking very confused. Yeah. I will have to rewatch that now. Right. That guy's band is awful. Yes. Oh, and the other fascinating thing, he, that movie was at the time a promo piece for how great he was. Yeah. It didn't turn until he was such an asshole that even his buddies making the movie hated him. So they showed us a two minute like sizzle reel and it was the same footage, but it was all like the greatest guy on earth. I don't know. I don't think anyone could have filmed all the footage, the raw footage for that movie. And then like the only thing we can do is make him look like an asshole. There's nothing we could do with this footage where he doesn't look like an asshole. Yeah. I do not say this is such a bad, like everyone's like, oh, my favorite movie is probably Boondock Saints. I'm very confused by that. I already understand it. It's, it's such a litmus test for complete dicks. Yeah. I, when I was at Northeastern, which was all I could do for college sadly, we, I took a horror fiction class and we had Dean Coons come in. Oh. And Dean Coons has written some stuff that's pretty good, but he also's written some absolute garbage. He's written a lot. A lot of garbage. And we read the book Hideaway, which is not a good book. I don't know if you've read it. It actually literally ends with a DSS Machina, an actual angel comes in at the end of the book and fixes it. It's ridiculous. It was made into a movie with Alicia Silverstone and Jeff Goldblum, which is better than the book, but still bad. And so again, it was some more situation. He's like, anyone know have any comments about this book? And no one has anything. He's like, come on. I'm a big boy. I can take it. And so I go, this book is awful. And then he's like, excuse me. And I go into the whole thing about how a literal angel comes in and it was, you know, why it was bad and the metaphors were awful and blah, blah, blah, blah. And he goes, yeah, well, you know, millions of people have bought this book. And then I went, yeah, but they bought it before they read it. And then he was like, I don't have to take this. And I was like, what this is. That's bold. Yeah. It's intense of a piece of art with, it's sold a lot. Everybody bought it. Yeah. Everyone likes boondocks. That is sequel. So nine o'clock on Saturday night, I'm guessing that you went with Twin Peaks. I did go with Twin Peaks. So this was a repeat of the pilot. Oh, is it? Oh, wait. No, this isn't. It's two hours long. It's an expanded episode. Okay. So they've, I don't remember them doing this. They must have edited together two episodes. The season two opener was a two hour thing. So this must, but it says it's a repeat. So this must be the last two episodes of the first season as what I'm assuming they did to catch up. Let me read here. We have an expanded episode. The officers going to the woods meet a mysterious minor bird and here with the log ladies log has to say, leader, later Cooper and Ed poses high rollers at one eye jacks. Audrey seeks a job at the perfume counter, James and Donna meet Madeline, Hank rumbles into town on the Pearl and Josie's got thorns that Truman doesn't know about. Uh, yes, this is, uh, this is the finale of the season that has a cliffhanger where Audrey's, uh, at one eye jakes as a hooker. Right. What I'm trying to figure out is did the show, was that when this TV, you know how it said they should fix it on the cover? Yeah. Does that mean we're, we didn't know who killed Laura Palmer at this point. We did this point. We didn't. We didn't. It was midway through season two. So it wasn't bad yet. So it wasn't bad. He said the mania was still pee. Yeah, I was still huge. Once you found out, did you, were you surprised by who did it or did you think you knew? I remember being fairly surprised. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think so as well. It was, it was pretty shocking. But it made sense. Uh, yeah. Once you got the stuff in about, uh, windamirl and the, uh, alien tanks and just that it got pretty bad. Yeah, it definitely did. Uh, so Sunday night eight o'clock would you go in Sunday at eight. Um, I, I picked a, I picked a question, a questioner in competition. Yeah. So this is highlights of the 1990s, governor's cup, speedstakes, horse jumping competition in Bartlett, New Hampshire. Yeah. Are you a fan of horse jumping? No, I just, I thought there was nothing else that caught my eye. Even cardiology update on lifetime. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so you passed up in living color. You passed up, uh, America's Funniest Home Videos. There's not really a lot on aside from those two shows, which were just huge at the time. In truth, I, I would, would have really watched home videos. Yeah. And this was the $100,000 grand prize edition. So this was, this was a big one. It's the world series of getting hit in the balls. Exactly. Exactly. I, I would have gone with that as well. I don't know if I'm a big equestrian fan, um, eight thirty, would you go with? Cops. Cops have to go with cops. This is when, uh, Fox tried to start airing it on Sunday nights instead of Saturday. Very short lived. Didn't last very long, but cops is great. This one is Deputy Gene Birch, processes suspects at San Diego, county jails, central jail. A deputy stops an alleged drug user who was once a model and a transvestite is arrested and released. I always love that they bothered to put descriptions of cops in there. Like someone's going to be like, oh, she was a model. I'll tune in for that. Like it's just like what, it's cops. You know what you're getting. One of the production assistants, they were like, your job is to summarize these for TV. Yes. Still, I'd like to talk to someone who worked or works at TV Guide at some point to find out how, like, would they get preview tapes? Would they get summaries from the network? I guarantee with them. It's the latter. You think that the, no one's watching this stuff? Yeah. They get, they have, it's like, you want to be listed, provide a summary. Some of them are so pithy, like, I'm like, some of them are kind of bitchy and I'm like, I don't think that the network would have sent me. You sent us a little bit editorializing. Yeah. There's definitely some editorializing. With cops, I have a friend who is now a Boston cop. Okay. And since, I've known him since second grade, he obsessed with being a cop. So we were watching the show, he was watching it like a training. Taking notes? Yeah. And so, he was so interested in every facet. There's a line in the theme song, bad boys, bad boys, what you're going to do. Why Inner Circle? Inner Circle. I had the cuz single. It charted for a while. It did. It was a hit. What you're going to do when the sugar drum rum come for you? Yes. Sugar drum rum. We were going back and forth. What is the sugar drum rum? Yeah. We didn't know. And my friend called the police station. He called the cops and asked what, he didn't download one ice. No, no, no. It was just the normal dead and police office number and he said, yeah, we were watching cops. And the theme song mentioned sugar drum rum. What's that slang for? And it was just like, you know, he got you. He just hung up. Oh yeah. Yeah. It would be funny if they're like, we get a lot of calls about this. Let me transfer you to our sugar drum. I have a pre-recorded message for you. I'll send you a card. Never find out? No. If anyone knows what sugar drum rum means, please write in to Canada. I can read.com and I will let Ryan know who can pass it up with a cop friend. I think the context suggests it's just some kind of cop slang, right? Yeah. Well, I assume it's probably Jamaican because there's, you know, rum runners and stuff. So maybe it's some kind of Jamaican slang. The sugar drum rum. We might have to travel to Jamaica to try and find out. Let's do it. Let's do it. Yeah, I always love the episodes they would do in Boston. There weren't a ton. Actually, the only time anyone who has ever shot on cops was in Boston. Really? Yeah. One part of Boston. They were actually in East Boston and this guy came at him with a knife and they shot him. Wow. And in the same episode, they go to a guy's door. The guy opens the door. He is covered in blood and they're cleaning him up and the cop makes a joke. He goes, even got any diseases like AIDS and nothing do you? And the guy goes, I have HIV and the cop freaks out because this is like 1989 or something. He completely freaks out. But my second favorite, Boston, one, actually my third favorite, I won't get into the first two. But this guy is in South Boston and he goes to a clam shack and it's now run by Asians. So he's clearly racist about them. And he called the cops because he's saying they quote, "Screwed him out of his fried clams." And he's like, "I used to come here for $10. I'd get a huge thing of clams and he's trying to screw me." And the guys are like, "I have you not a right number of clams." And he's like, "The cops are like, 'All right, let me see if I can sort this out here.' And I'm like, 'That's what cops should be doing, this is serving up fried clam arguments.' Nine o'clock, what'd you go with? I went with Mary with children. I show that I watched at the time and as I've mentioned many times, I can't really watch it too much now. I don't think it holds up. I don't think it holds up. I don't think it holds up. It's so cartoonish. This one Peggy spends $2,800 in an effort to get elected queen at her high school reunion. But she may be outdone by her arch rival. This is part one of two. Classic Peggy. Classic Peggy. I did like Peggy. Oh yeah. If the show was more Peggy-centric, I probably would have enjoyed it. Absolutely. You've mentioned this in earlier episodes, but the business about being confusing that... Yes, Peggy's very attractive. Peggy wanted to get it on and Al wasn't having it. Yeah. I'm like, "What?" She's cool, man. She's hot. She's very attractive. Now, do I have a false memory or would a lot of times he come out of the bathroom you'd hear the toilet flushing and that would get an applause break? Yes, absolutely. Okay. With the newspaper under his mouth. Oh, with a magazine used to read, which was called "Biggins." If you remember. Oh God. "Biggins." I remember, you know, I don't think I was allowed to watch it explicitly, but I caught, you know, it here and there. I just remember, even as a kid, having some discerning like, "This is trashy." Oh, absolutely. Yeah. It looks trashy. It just is. Now, did your parents have a lot of rules of stuff you were and were not allowed to watch? See, my dad, no, but my mom tried to enforce rules. For a while, there was a ban on the Simpsons, because if you remember the Simpsons, when that started, it was this whole, like, they were directly tying it to kids' graffiti. Right. El Barto. El Barto. Talking back to parents. Yeah. So, but as soon as my dad realized that show was funny, we used to watch it. It was okay. Did you only have the one TV? Oh, this is, we had a living room TV, and then that was in color. Okay. So, in the hallway, we had a black and white TV that was not plugged in. It was just on this kind of pedestal in the hallway. As a display. I don't know what they were doing with that, but I started to, I had to be very quiet, and it was a heavy black and white TV. Yeah. But if I snuck it into my room, I could plug it in and watch late night TV. And they never noticed you're like, "This is like a 19-inch TV that weighed like 30 pounds." The place we lived, it was, the bedroom's really spread out. Okay. So, if I got away with it, they really wouldn't notice. I think the first time I did it was I was interested in pen and teller, and I heard they were going to be on the Tonight Show. Yes. Yes. So, I snuck the TV into watching. Oh, and late night. Yeah. Wow. So, that's, and they never noticed. That's very, that's two odd things, that you're sneaking a full-sized television in your room. And then you're done. You've got to get it back. You've got to get it back before they get up. Wow. Wow. So, I wouldn't have watched "Merry With Children." I probably would have watched the network television premiere of "Little Shop of Horrors," which was on ABC. Okay. I love that movie. I've never seen that movie. You've never seen that movie. No. It's really great. I love Rick Moranis. I'm a huge Rick Moranis fan. Yeah. And people don't really realize how musical he is. He puts out albums to this day. He's got a new album out now of Jewish holiday songs. Really? Yeah, he puts out country record. I thought he didn't do anything anymore. He puts out albums. That's all he does. He does music. Full-time. Wow. And he started as a DJ and a musician before he got on SC-TV. So, he was a friend of Dave Thomas's from SC-TV, and they both worked in radio together. So, he recommended him for SC-TV. And all the cast members of SC-TV thought that he was a real weirdo. And he would do most of his stuff on his own. So, if you see a lot of his sketches, it's like a one-person thing. Yeah. He would just film them on his own and they wouldn't see them to like the show aired. And they're like, "I guess this is one of Rick's weird things." Really? Yeah. He's a really strange guy. Yeah. His new album is all Jewish holiday songs. And you can buy it with autographed Yamakas on his website. He sells the albums with the autographed Yamakas and Rick Moranis. Good for Rick. Yeah. So, he's great. He loves. He's great in the musical. And I'm surprised he wasn't in more musical films, because he sings well. What year did he just stop? He kind of stopped acting, I think, around the early '90s. Or he might know, was he in Big Bully with Tom Arnold in the late '90s? But that was the last thing I really remember him being, it was like parenthood or something. Right. You didn't do much after that. And I just kind of retired. So I would have gone with that. Now, with you correcting me here, do you off days there ever been a guess to every selection you're like right on? Someone won this? No. There's no real winning or losing. And I would argue that if you picked everything I would pick, I wouldn't consider that winning. Sure. You'd have a little tension. Yes. Yes. It would be sad for that person. If their brain was broken the same way mine was. So Monday night, eight o'clock with you. Monday. 21 Jump Street. 21 Jump Street. Did you watch it all the time? I liked the show. I have a super distinct memory of my sister and I insisting that we get to watch it while spending the night at my grandparents, okay? Okay. Old school Irish Catholic. The show mentions condoms. Yes. I'm not talking to them, or maybe my sister's. What's a condom? And grandpa Harry just turns to me, Barbara, I told you we shouldn't let him watch this fucking show. Oh, wow. Just live it. But now grandpa's going to explain condoms. Which he did not do. He did not do it. I didn't imagine. My grandfather was an angry man from Norway and I don't know if I've told this story on the show before, but my mother would have me him watch me like a couple of days a week when I was a little. And he was in hindsight extremely depressed. He worked in the boiler room at Uville Veterans Hospital in Cambridge, which was the most like Freddy's boiler room. It was like four stories under this hospital of just like scaffolding and boilers. And the hospital was a veterans hospital, so it was like guys with no legs screaming. It was just like the Metallica one video all day. And so they dropped me off there and I was just terrified all the time. And then I'd go to his house, all he would do is sit at the kitchen table in the dark. He would never turn the light on. He would smoke and eat just the chocolate and vanilla out of Neapolitan ice cream. So in the freezer, there was just bricks and bricks of just strawberries left and he would just smoke and there was a smoke ring above where he sat and he would leave the living room for three reasons. Yeah. I mean the kitchen for three reasons. To watch people's court, to watch Price is Right and Hawaii Five O which he called his Hawaii program. So my mother would just rent me a stack of movies and I would sit in the living room and watch movies till I got picked up. So I love no harm movies. My parents didn't really scream when I watched and one day she rented the Exorcist. So my grandfather did grow up fairly religious in Norway. So I've never seen the Exorcist on maybe six. And the crucifix fuck me seeing his mom. My grandfather, he was a giant man, like he was a big Viking dude. He was like six, six huge hands. He runs into the living room. He shoves his hand into the VCR. Doesn't he? He shoves his hand into the VCR, rips the tape out and then smashed it against the wall. The shattered into a thousand pieces. He never says a thing. He turns around, goes back into the kitchen, sits down and lights a cigarette and just goes back to just sitting there and I was just terrified. I didn't move or say any more. Scariors in the movie. Yeah. And my mother came in and he didn't talk for like six months and we had to pay for the tape. It was like $200. Yeah. So that was... Yeah. The rental tapes prices for purchase were insane. I used to work in a video store. Okay. What video store did you work at? Is it local? PM Productions. Okay. And Dedham. Nice. Yeah. Did people have weird excuses for destroying tapes? Like leaving it in their car, but they would try to argue about like what happens? This tape just melted on its own, man. Oh, yeah. I don't remember too many destroy tapes, but I remember a lot of people at this store had like some kind of credit agreement. Okay. Paul knows I'm good. Yeah. Just like... It knows me. It's fine. Trying to figure out who I needed to police to actually pay up. Right. It was like a weird... That's stressful. It was a little stressful. Yeah. People would take advantage of us teens working in the counter. We would rent movies at this place called Delaney Superette, which was like a little convenience store. Yeah. A lot of... If you didn't have the video store, you had that convenience with the video corner. Back a corner. Which was always sad. Oh, yeah. But this one got all the really sleaziest horror movies, like pieces and all these weird things. Very weird. I remember pieces, the tagline was, "You don't have to go to Texas for a massacre." Still remains true. So this episode of 21 Jump Streeters from last season, Penn Hall and Hoffs, who were Peter Delouis and Holly Robinson, befriended a group of homeless teens while undercover. This is a pretty fun episode, but I want to point out that the guest cast is three characters played called Bonzo, Wannabe, and Moho. And Moho is played by Bridget Fonda. Wow. Now, Mrs. Danny Elfman. Oh, is she? Yeah. Didn't know that. She is. So I probably wouldn't have watched 21 Jump Street. Normally, I would have, but for good reason, at eight o'clock is the debut of Uncle Book the series. Yeah. I... You know, when I saw the ad for that in the TV Guide, I had this thing where it's like, "Well, I kind of remember all of pop culture." Yeah. You think you kind of remember it all. And then you see this. You realize that... This was a show. Kevin Meany. Yeah. Kevin Meany played Uncle Book. Uncle Boston was Uncle Book in the TV. Yes, he was. And this was the season of two different television shows based on John Hughes' movies. So... Oh, well... There was a few of those on after this. Okay. So this is debut of Uncle Book. Comic Kevin Meany plays Uncle Book, a diamond in the rough, who hopes to keep custody of his late brothers, three children, despite his lack of polish, and the kids disapproving Jim of a grandmother based on the 1989 comedy. So they upped the ante with this one and made the parents dead, which was slightly different from the movie. Little dark. Yeah. Because they're like, "My dad..." Well, I had to keep it going. Exactly. Exactly. You couldn't just be babysitting them. Did you watch this? I did. Because I loved Kevin Meany. Sure. Loved him. Yeah. He had big pants on him. Yeah. Facebook friends were Kevin Meany. Oh, never met him in real life now. Nice. But I... And I thought this show was good. It was actually produced and written by Tim O'Donnell, who was my favorite writer for growing pains. Okay. And also wrote for just the ten of us. You have a favorite. Yes. I have a favorite writer. Well, he's one of the first guys that I realized I was like, "I like this episode and this episode. What's the same?" And then I realized the same person who wrote them. And then I'm like, "Oh!" That is very, very astute. Yeah. I used to ask my dad, I would notice there was a difference between video and film. Yes. The look. Yes. And I remember asking about that. He didn't know. But I was like, "No, they look different." Yeah. What is that? What is this? The British shows and US shows, because the British shows always look different because they're in a different video format. Right. Oh, yeah. That's true. And my dad goes, "Ah, it's film stock." That's the difference. Well, that's pretty close. Which is pretty close. That's pretty close. So this was actually a pretty good show. It was one of the better television show adaptations of a movie. It's fairly funny. Kevin Meany is good in it. My dad was completely obsessed with what he called Uncle Buck Pancakes. Oh, right. But you should remember the movie makes a big one with a shovel and my dad literally spent years trying to recreate that. He couldn't get the structural integrity right, so every time he tried to flip it, it would break apart. Yeah. And I'm like, "It's a movie. It wasn't real." And he's like, "God damn it. I can do this." And he'd spend literally years. He never did it. Do you know how long this show lasted? This was one season. It was only about 13 episodes, so it was not a hit show. What, in your opinion, is the greatest movie to TV conversion of all time? Fast Times. So there was a Fast Times at Ridgemont High television series at Fast Times 1985. And I loved the movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High, but I think the TV show was better. What? Yeah. I think it was better. It was Amy Heckerling did the TV series. Really? And it was almost the entire adult cast was in it. So Mr. Hand and Vincent Savelli and all the teachers were in it. Forest Whitaker was not because he was a teenager at the time. Don't fuck with it. All right. My favorite thing about that is in the TV version he goes, "Don't fool with it." We could talk all day about swear replacements for a TV airing. Yeah. Fuzzy Nerd is the replacement for fucking Dick. And Fast Times Ridgemont High is a Fuzzy Nerd. But the Fast Times TV series is really, really good. It was only on for eight episodes. It was like a dramedy. It was almost like freaks and geeks. No laugh tracks, shot on film, single camera, a half hour, but funny and bittersweet and really good. Nobody ever remembers it. I might have to watch one of those. Yeah. I have them all. I can copy some for it if you want to. And it had an on-go-bongo theme song called Fast Times. Wow. That was really good. And I made a title sequence. Interesting. Do you have a favorite TV series based on a movie? Well, the one that came to mind was just "Mash." Yeah. "Mash" people love. I could never get into "Mash" mostly because it just seems so sad and adult and I don't like war stuff. You know what's crazy about "Mash" is the laugh track policy. Yes. That drifted in and out without warning. You know, you would get like 10 minutes of very serious and then suddenly it's yuck time. Yeah. It was really weird. It was like 20s. I did get into it for a couple of years when it was like they would show four at 11 p.m. Yeah. And you'd just be in for the night. Yeah. Come on board. Yeah. I would like to revisit "Mash." I haven't really seen it that much as an adult and I assume that I would like it but it's been sort of daunting. It had some great moments. So 8.30 would you go with? We're on Monday night. Oh, you know what? I thought 21 Jump Street was an hour. What is an hour? You're correct. No, you're correct. And you call yourself the two. I know. I know. So you passed up "First Bueller," which was the other show that was based on and was on a different network than Uncle Bock, actually. Right. And it is awful. It was awful. It was really bad. I tried it. Really bad. "First Bueller" was put by Charlie Schlader, who is incredibly unlikable. No charisma. No charisma. That character is all about. Yeah. It's terrible. He was in the movie "18" again with George Burns with four places. Really bad. And this was the season that Parker Lewis can't lose started as well, which was more Ferris Bueller than the Ferris Bueller show in a great way. Yeah. What a nailed show. Yeah. That was a good show. That was what they paired Uncle Buck with was Lenny Clark sitcom Lenny, which is terrible. Lenny had a few shows, though, didn't he? He did have several shows, and he was on a lot of shows. Right. The best being the John Lara catch show, which I've mentioned here before, which is a great show. He played a cop who the writers secretly wrote as gay, and I don't think Lenny knew. It was just really funny. But this is the debut where Lenny Callahan, played by Lenny Clark, a Boston construction worker by day, doorman by night, and husband, father, and son the rest of the time gives his family a running commentary on life. In the opener, it's about going into debt for the first time, so his father can have an operation. I did like that this show was very blue collar, and it was about poor people, and I really like shows like that. And it was somewhat realistic. I'm a sucker for anything set in Massachusetts. But yeah, I've heard you have a just, you know, the poor person minstrel show I think you could. You could call it Mary with children. Yeah. Because it's so cartoony. So who got it right? I think Lenny probably is a better representation. Roseanne is one of the best ones of a blue collar family that has real money problems. You know, whenever most children, someone has money problems, it's like, we're on friends and we live in a giant apartment in Manhattan, but like, oh, I don't have any money. It's like, yeah, right. But Roseanne, they're like going to lose their house. Their business went under. They, you know, it's like conversations I would hear my parents have. And so that sort of stuff seemed very real to me. I once tried to take issue with, I was on a date with someone and I took a first date and I took issue with that friend's thing, like, how do they afford that arm? And she was like, it's rent control. They got it from the aunt. She like, she had a whole area. Yeah. No, it wasn't. It was like the real reason. It's like. Jeez. Like this is not a second date situation. Yeah. Because if you look at Mary with Children, their sort of view of poverty would was so cartoonish. Like they would be like carving a lima bean for dinner. That kind of stuff where it's like, yeah, it's just silly. Like it doesn't, it's unnecessarily silly. And you're laughing at them instead of identifying with their struggle. Roseanne was so good. Yeah. Sort of the gallows humor of people that need humor in order to get through their day, which is what I really identified with. Not a clock would you go with? I couldn't find anything that I knew of that I was interested in. So I chose a movie called Who Is Julia. Who Is Julia is not a movie I'm familiar with. But this is a lifetime movie made for TV, it's airing on lifetime. It's made for TV from 1986. So I assume it's not made for a lifetime. But this star is Mayor Whittingham, who was sort of the member of the brat pack that disappeared. Oh. She's insane, almost fire. She's in one of my favorite movies in a movie called Miracle Mile with Anthony Edwards. That is really grim. Have you ever seen that movie? Uh-uh. Primness of this movie takes place in Los Angeles. Mayor Whittingham's a waitress at a diner, Anthony Edwards asks her out on a date. He falls asleep, misses the date, and he goes to a payphone to call her. And the phone rings, and he answers it, and it's a guy who works for the government trying to call his dad to warn him that their missiles are coming. Whoa. And he got a wrong number. Yeah. And they're gonna hit LA. And so now Anthony Edwards isn't sure as this real. We need to get out. So he's the whole movie's him trying to find her and get out of Los Angeles because it's gonna be nuked. That sounds pretty good. It's great. And the word starts to spread. Chaos comes out. It has a great, but really grim ending. It's a really underrated movie. I highly recommend people see it. I'm gonna share it. Miracle Mile with Anthony Edwards. It's really, really good. But Mayor Whittingham's in that, and she's great. And this is... This sounds really depressing. Read the description. So this is a medical drama involving a brain transplant, and it's consequences. Which is not a thing. This is science fiction. Not a drama. This should say science fiction. Brain trans... I like that it's a lifetime movie that gets into brain transplant. I bet there are people who's like, "Yeah, you can do brain transplants." What is it? What is it? That's it. That's all it says. It's two stars. It's a brain transplant. And it's consequences. So I assume this woman Julia has her brain in someone else's body and is like, "Who am I now? Is it me?" Who is Julia? Yeah. It's right there in the title. Yeah. That sounds fascinating, but terrible. It's a great way to end your Monday night. It really is. But with some philosophical questions, I would have gotten an alienation in the series. I loved The Alien Nation. That always seemed weirdly. I just felt that I wasn't welcome to that show. Something about it was pushing me away with all the... It had all the mythology. Alien Nation. But you didn't like V either. I know not that I didn't like it. Something about it just was like terrifying. You don't need to... No, I just was never grabbed by you. Oh, you're like I'm not... But I loved like X-Files and so on. It was too much for you. Well, the thing about both those shows is that their science fiction shows with their very ham-fisted metaphors. So V's about Nazis, alien nations about racism and immigrants. It's pretty black and white that they couldn't make a show, excuse me, just about illegal immigrants. So it has to be aliens. But Ken Johnson did both shows. He did V and Alien Nation. And he also was the guy who did The Incredible Hulk for television. That was great. On a side, one of my absolute favorite things in the entire internet is Ken Johnson, on his website, he has an intern or someone put this together, went through every episode of The Incredible Hulk and wrote down what caused The Hulk Out list. So it's the Hulk Out list and it's every single thing and it's hilarious because it's like hit by a boulder, does not have change for a pay phone and they're all real things and it's such a funny list. It's like 200 things that caused The Hulk Out and it's great. And that should be paired with a super cut of the sad walk away. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. We'll look it up after, but if that doesn't exist, I'm gonna... I assume someone probably on the internet also is just taking footage and in one shot, put yackity sacks over it and the other shot to put the walk away music into the tone. It's an amazing world we live in where I can think of a super cut that I'd like to see. And there's a 90% chance that someone's already got through it for. Or it'll be up by the end of the day, just requesting it. So Tuesday night, eight o'clock, what'd you go with? Here we go. Who's the boss? Who's the boss? A show I always watch, but never liked. And this one, when Tony pulls an all-nighter with a classmate, they do more than study, severely testing the limits of Tony and Angela's relationship. Ooh. Ooh. I didn't care about that will they, won't they? This was the first time I remember my dad making fun of a show and pointing out how bad writing is. Yeah. Not the writing's bad, but he was like, "Oh, where are the melons and monas?" Like, "I wish I'd squeeze my melons." Yeah. Like my dad pointing out the weakness of shows. Just bad. He pulled back the curtain through. That was like my entry point into ripping apart culture. Yes. Yeah. I think we picked that up. And you probably went to school and people like, "Who's the boss? It's great last time." You're like, "It was pretty loosely written." Yeah. Yeah. I probably would have watched this, although Rescue 9-1-1-1 was on, which has my all-time favorite reenactments of any show ever. They would play real 9-1-1 calls and re-enact them. Yeah. And this one is, "A second season begins with an abbreviated installment scheduled to feature Florida police officers who had a serious clash with a prowler and a Dallas girl who led her sister in an attempt to escape a fire in their home hosted by William Shat." Did Shatner always host that? Oh, yeah, that's right. That was his show. Yeah. That was his big '90s show. So 8-30, what'd you go with? I went with "Head of the Class." I watched it. I love it. You loved it. I don't remember if I watched it a lot or a little, which maybe the only thing left in my brain about "Head of the Class" is the Russia episode where they try to sell jeans. Blue jeans and Beatles' records. Beatles' records, yeah. I loved that. That was the first US television show shot in Russia. Really? Yes, interesting. It was a big deal. They actually shot it in Russia. It was supposed to be this big, and it was still communist Russia at the time. Wow. It was that the curtain had not fallen. This is the fifth season opener in the final season of "Head of the Class." Howard Hesseman has left the series and was replaced by Billy Connolly. Right, yeah. And Raine Pryor became a regular cast member as well, Richard Pryor's daughter. And the fifth season opener, the IHP, which is the individual honors program. This was the class that they were in, meets a new history teacher, a lively Scott who gets a warm welcome from everyone. Oh, Sally's interest. Yes, he was. Except Dennis, played by Denshinider, who now owns Nickelodeon, basically. Oh, does he? He created I-Carly. He created Keenan and Kell. Which guy was this one? Dennis Blunden, Denshinider. The fat guy. The fat guy. Okay, thank you. He is a billionaire from all of the television shows he's created for Nickelodeon now. Smart guy, funny guy. Sally Connolly joins the cast as Billy McGregor. I actually liked this season a lot. I normally don't like major cast overhauls, but this one kind of worked for me. I find Billy Connolly incredibly likable, even in Boudoxone's one and two she's in. But this is a pretty good season. Sadly, it didn't work. People didn't like it. Nine o'clock would you go with. Let's see. Oh, Roseanne. This one is, Roseanne has only dreamed of writing until Dan builds her a basement office for her birthday, where she comes down with the writer's block. This was an interesting one too, because to the point where we were talking about before, she had these aspirations to be a creative person. Yeah. It was this blue collar person. It wasn't just a cartoon of poor people. And at the same time, they never were like, "And now she's a famous writer." It never happened, right? It was very realistic of what people do, and you know, you have these people like, "I drive a bus and I read poems," so you know, it doesn't happen. Do you ever heard the story of the multicolored Afghan that's on the couch? Yes. How she's had to fight for that? Yes. In the chicken shirt. What's the chicken shirt? So there is a hideous shirt that's chickens and eggs, and at one point on the show, every cast member has worn that shirt in an episode. Oh, that's cool. It comes up all the time. You'll notice it now. It's a white shirt with chickens and eggs on it, and someone in the cast wears this shirt every time. And she brought that to the thing she did. Just the idea of clothing, drifts around on the outside. Yeah. Yeah, you pick up a shirt wherever whoever it is. That's so cool. Yeah. Great show. 9.30, what'd you go with? Not a lot of choices here. And I blew it. This is a wild car. You pick for me because I didn't write anything down. Well, you have two choices. You have coach, which I would not recommend, and Donna Reed on Nick at night. I would have gone with Donna Reed. I'm going to head to bed. I'm just going to go to bed. Yeah. Put Donna Reed on and go to sleep. It's Tuesday. Fair enough. Saw a good Roseanne and now it's speaking. Now you're satisfied and you go to sleep early. 8 o'clock Wednesday night, what'd you go with? Oh, unsolved mysteries. Yeah. Every week all the time. This one is a news segment examines the search for a man who killed a woman in an automatic teller machine. Also, not in an automatic teller machine, add an automatic teller machine. That'd be really weird if you sucked her into the machine. This one was terrifying because they have a footage of the murder because this was when the machines would take like a picture every five minutes, a picture of the guy looming over her before the murder, and they showed it. I mean, just the credit sequence of this show alone shaped me to my balance. It was with this one shot of a ghost girl like spinning a box. Yes, and she turns around and looks at the camera. Yeah. Just that was it. Every week. I was just haunted. Terribly haunted. I ran up more stairs because of unsolved mysteries. It was really, I wonder if I watched it now, what I would think. You know what? I have a ton of it. I have probably 40 episodes of it, which I'm happy to copy for if you want, but it still kind of freaks me out. Like I've tried to watch it being like, this will be a laugh. This will be hilarious. And I'll watch it late at night. And then I'm like, I don't know, I don't know, I'll be kind of weirded out and a little scared. Update. Update. Yeah. That was the scariest part. And it would be like, update, ghosts aren't real, but you'd be like, I'm terrified to go. The ghost, the ghost stories never had an update. No, never, never. We've found the ghost. Yeah. Yeah. Where's the hunt for a rapist murderer? A Bigfoot. Yeah. Like weird combination. Like people's like real familial loss mixed with like the most approval. Yeah. Centrion oil. And hearsay. Yeah. Very weird. But I'll watch it every week. Absolutely would have watched it here because one of your stack was a great host by the way. He really was. And it's funny too, normally, like he's great in County Shack too, and there's a lot of comedies and things. But that kind of his last hurrah? It really was. Yeah. Also, mystery is probably most people knew him from that. It was absolutely the most famous thing he did. Yeah. But he died hosting the show. Not literally. But I'll update. That was the update, I'm now dead. But that was the last thing he did. And he wasn't the first host of "Unsolved Mysteries." No. Carl Malden was. Who's that? Carl Malden was, he used to do American Express commercials, which most people know him from. But he was sort of a haggard actor. He was in a Dario Argento movie called "Cato Nine Tales" playing a blind crossword puzzle writer. But he was in a lot of '60s and '70s sort of cop shows and always played sort of a detective gumshoe type. And he hosted the first two specials that were the sort of-- Oh, so what was it? Okay. What do you think? Did he get the boot? I think he got the boot. Yeah. He wasn't. It's a much different show because I've also watched the ones after Robert Stack with Dennis Farina hosting. That happened? Yeah. Yeah. And I love Dennis Farina. And it doesn't work. He's just not, it's not scary. It's Robert Stack is like what makes it scary. Farina, I have never seen that. I didn't know that he hosted it. But I can just picture him being dismissive of all the ghosts. We absolutely is. Just like, yeah. So, some ghosts or something. I don't know. Anyway, this guy-- Chicago family claims. Like he's doing a lot. I'm sorry. And it's horrible. I was like, there are a bunch of drunks. Stack was a great blank slate. I have a Roshak test. Yes. I was un-intouchable. And Dennis Farina used to be a cop. He was a real cop. Yes. He was just a cop. So it makes sense that he would host a show like this. But I think that's why it wasn't scary because he was just like, these guys robbed a store. I'm going to go get them myself. Yeah. Like you just felt too comfortable. Yeah. So he was standing TV. It's just another day at work here. He was in one of my favorite crime shows of all time called Crime Story, which was Michael Mann took place in the '60s in Chicago. And he played much like-- it was very untouchables-esque show. But he was like this organized crime buster group. Great show. Really good. What was that one called? It's called Crime Story. Two seasons, '85 and '86. It was Michael Mann's sort of follow-up to the hit Miami Vice set in the '60s. Actually, I'm surprised that it hasn't got a resurgence with everyone's love of Mad Men. It's in the same era. But it's interesting. And Dennis Farina is so good in it. Let me ask you this. Have you had a guest yet who knows as much as about TV as you? I mean, you're encyclopedic. Yeah. It's kind of scary. I don't-- and here's the thing I don't-- and I mentioned this before. I don't do any research for the show. I literally-- the person writes down what they pick. They hand me the TV guide and we start recording. It's not. I don't go and look the stuff up. Yeah, I haven't. And I didn't ever try to learn the stuff. It's just here. And I don't want it. You've raised just your childhood. It's just my childhood. It's just my childhood. Yes. It's exactly-- it's a joke and it's also true. It really is the way it was. And I was just so enthusiastic about TV. And I guess there's probably people who know, you know, who know-- can read a lot of sports statistics or record labels and albums in years, which I can probably do too. But-- and it's not that weird. But this is-- yeah, this is my sort of sports, I guess. It's more-- definitely way more interesting to me than sports. Yes. Not a sports fan. It's terrible. OK, this is-- I did kind of a joke pic by here-- 1960 Democratic National Convention. Yes. A documentary, a retrospective that begins with last minute campaigning and follows developments on and off the floor on A&E, it probably would have been sort of interesting, to be honest with you. Well, I mean, it's not even-- I think '68 is the one in Chicago where things went crazy, right? Yeah. You don't ever hear. I can't remember hearing anything. I don't know anything interesting that came out of the 1960 Democratic National Convention, but you only have their choices were like Doogie Hauser, which I'm not a huge fan of, Jake and the Fat Man, Fennelly Boys. I probably would have gone on a Nick and Knight and Green Acres, which is one of my favorite comedies of all time. Really? Totally underrated show. OK. Really should have a resurgence. It's very, very meta. It has a lot of commenting on itself. It's a smart show. It's really surreal. And one episode, Arnold Ziffel, the pig gets drafted by-- into the Vietnam War. There's a pig named Arnold Ziffel. And he gets drafted into the Vietnam War. And they have to prove that he's a pig. They have to go to the draft board and be like, this is a pig. And they're like, nope, we know. He's going to war. And it's like a whole-- it was a great show. Interesting. Eddie Albert, who's one of my favorite angry actors of all time, War Hero himself, saved a whole boat of people in World War II. Wow. His great hair. I'd watch "Unsull Mysteries" hosted by Eddie Albert. So Thursday night, 8 o'clock, what'd you go? Cosby Show. Cosby Show. This was most people's pics. This was-- it's a great show, it never went down in quality. Now you've heard me tell kind of a lot of TV-related stories to my dad in this episode. But my mom, this was the only time she got super psyched about it. It's the only show she liked. I have this distinct memory of her sitting my sister and I down and telling us this show was coming out. Oh, she was a Cosby thing. She loved Cosby. And she was like, this show is coming out. It's going to be very special. She was suddenly a vet. Okay. And she immediately starts taping them. Oh, okay. She's got to have these Cosby shows. She still have the tapes? Well, all the labels said, Cosby Show, do not tape over. Okay. Because if you have boys in the house-- They'll tape over. They're taping over shit. Yeah. So those tapes exist. Cosby is not on them. Everything's been taped over. But the first girlfriend I had in college, she had a VHS collection and I found a tape that said Cosby Show, do not tape over from her mother. And to me, this was like-- Mothers just do this. It was like finding my birth certificate in an Egyptian period. Right. I was like, how did this happen? I was like, this is incredible. We're meant to be together. Yes. And I just think that was like, that was a certain type of mom. That's what they did. They would tape it and indicate to children do not tape over this. My mother never really watched TV. She watched sports. She would run Super Bowl. She would literally be a book. Like there'd be bookies calling. We have like swears on the wall. It was like a-- it was like a newsroom in there. But she never watched anything. And I remember she worked nights. She had like two or three jobs when we were growing up. She waited tables on Monday nights. And so that was really the only night my dad, my sister, and I would watch Alf together. My dad loved it. And then Tuesday night he'd tell her all about what happened on Alf. And she'd get like really pissed off. She'd be like, I don't want to hear about this show you all watch together. And then Alf tries to eat this cat, right? My dad loved Alf. Yeah, so this episode is after marriage comes to romance go. An inquiring Theo wants to know. And Cliff, Elvin, and Martin provide the answers via a contest. This is a funny episode I specifically remember. I would have watched this every week. 8.30, what'd you go? Oh, I didn't know the show. But I was intrigued by the ad in the TV guide. Show called Babes. Yes, Babes was it? Did you watch Babes? I did watch Babes. I have all of the episodes of Babes. This was when Fox started sort of developing its reputation for bad taste shows, more than just marriage with children. They basically said, hey, look, marriage with children is our number one show. Was that the very first show? Fox? I feel like-- No. It was in the first year. But actually when Fox first came out, so Fox was the fourth network. And this was a big deal. And what they did was they signed sort of franchise agreements with all of these UHF stations. And when Fox first started, it was only on two days a week. You only had Fox on Saturday and Sunday night. And the rest of the week, it was TV64 or whatever it was in your town. Yeah. But it was only Fox those two nights. Wow. It was sort of an experiment. Yeah. It would be unheard of today if you're like, oh, yeah, it's ABC on Mondays and Wednesdays and then it's whatever. And so then it did very well and they started expanding to the rest of the week until eventually they took over these stations. So their flagship show was a show called Werewolf. And it was an hour-long show about a kid who's a werewolf and he's hunting down the guy that turned him. So it was basically the incredible Hulk. They spent a ton of money on this show, a ton of promotions, and it tanked. It absolutely tanked. To Fox's surprise, their biggest shows were Married With Children and a Merck's Most Wanted. Those were the two shows that everyone started watching. That's what I think of when I think of how Fox came to. Yeah. And those were a little bit later, but the same sort of year, but not when it first launched. And so they were like, we need to do shows like Married With Children. And Babes was one of those shows. So Babes was a show about three fat sisters who lived together. And I mentioned this on episodes before. It was the show that I can think of with the most offensive title and the only show that has a title that is sarcastic about the cast members, like a couple of babes here, big fat chicks. And so this is the debut episode. Three saucy Gilbert sisters stick together through thick and thin, and managed to find room for a few laughs in their cramped New York apartment. First up, a night of romance for Charlene, played by Wendy Jo Sperber, who is Michael T. Fox's sister in the Back to the Future movies. She's sadly no longer with us. She was a very good comedic actress. She's in a lot of movies. You'd recognize her from all kinds of things is interrupted by her blustery, big sister, Darlene, played by Susan Perrettes, who I don't know who that is. She wasn't anything else, whose marriage is on the rocks and by younger sibling Marlene, who's lost her toll collector job to an automaton. Comedian Rick Overton was in this show. It's not a good show. They really promoted it. The three women went on every talk show, Rick D's, they were on all these shows, and they tried to present it like, "We're big women and this is what real America looks like." But then the whole show was just jokes about how they're fat pigs. Really? It was just fat pigs. Oh, Jesus. Yeah. Entertaining as a novelty, but not a quality show, but I would have watched it. Nine p.m. What'd you go with? Cheers. Yeah. I think it's just mandatory. You live here. You got to watch Cheers. Yeah. Great show. I heard your story on an episode where you were brought to Cheers and confused. Yes. I have a question. Yes. No. That does not look like Cheers inside, though. It does. The Bowl Finch? I don't think so. It does. The layout was the same at the time. They actually bought the layout of the Bowl Finch. They may have changed it since. I went there recently for the first time ever. Yeah. And the downstairs was full, and they were like, "There's an actual recreation of the set upstairs, though." Oh. Have you been there? No, no. And I don't think either room quite looks like Cheers to me. I think they've probably changed it a bit. I mean, I haven't been in there in years, but this was the time that that story happened was probably '85 or '86, so I mean, it was a couple years after Cheers started, and it was pretty accurate. I loved the show. It's really... It's a great show. It's amazing. All blue-colored people drinking in a bar. A terrible alcoholic. Yeah. All of them. Yeah. I love that theme song. It's great. And I remember when the show started winding down, in some special, they played an extended version of the theme song. Yes. With the second verse. Second verse. Yeah. A little darker, too. Yes, absolutely. And it's a great song. What was... I saw a tweet by a musician who suggested a spin-off show of what was the upstairs restaurant? Just a show about that happening at the same time. Every episode? Yeah. The other side of the story. That would be fantastic. That would be great. I would absolutely watch that. I'm surprised that hasn't happened. Yeah, it'd be funny to just someone to remake all these classic shows from the perspective of the wacky neighbor, or the fan of the show, and I'm like, "Cheers really did have a sad theme song," which was the case for a while in the '80s, you know, speaking of mash, it was theme song. It was quite a suicide. It's painless. Just take out the words. It's totally fine. Yeah. Taxi is a very... No longer. Yeah. Our Kate Nally, which is a show I absolutely love, has one of the most depressing theme songs. It has the lyrics. "Sometimes tears and sorrow are all the friends you've got." That's in the theme song to Kate Nally, which if you... I gave you that now, you'd be like, "What are you mobanded that?" Kate Nally. Dore Amos lyrics. Yes. But the Cheers theme, it also has kind of a blue collar triumph. Yes. I don't think of it as sad. I think, I hear it and just think of friendship and memories. It's like, "Yeah." I mean, I sort of have the opposite of it because I remember being at bars with my uncles a lot at this time, and I would get dumped at bars a lot as a kid. Absolutely. So I knew all these people. These people to me, I was like, "Yeah, these are all the guys that hang out with me." I'm sure it wasn't intended this way, but everybody knows your name and all that stuff. To me, it was terrifying because I was like, "You're at this bar so much that everybody knows you. You have a problem," which I probably know what else interpreted that as, and it was probably just me. But I think most people probably went with what you're saying. Well, no. It is, no, to break it down is sad, but I don't know. I get a good feel of that. Yeah, and I think that was their intention. I think that that's what they wanted. It was, "Yeah, this is your surrogate family." What's the darkest Cheers ever got? I don't remember Cheers getting that dark in plot. Did they deal with coach dying? They sort of just mentioned it. It was, to me, was almost sort of a realistic way that people who worked with a guy wouldn't mention a guy dying. It wouldn't be a huge thing. They'd kind of be like, "Yeah, an old guy will bummed out," whatever. It was almost like the way Jack Sue's death was handled on Barney Miller. They had a tribute episode to him, but it was kind of like what was the guy we worked with. Let's move on. It was an interesting way to. They didn't Mr. Hooper it. So 9.30 would you go with? Night Court. This episode, I love Night Court, and this episode is one of my favorite episodes. In this episode, Dan Kidnap's Mel Tormei to keep him in the courthouse while Harry tries to prevent a friend played by John Aston, who I absolutely love, was Gomez on the Adams family. He's Sean Aston's stepfather and Mackenzie Aston's real father from being committed. He played a crazy person, and he always plays a crazy person. He's great. Who plays a hilariously insane person better than John Aston? Now did, was that Mel Tormei? I feel like Mel Tormei must have had several appearances because- He was in that show. Harry was obsessed with him. Sessed with Mel Tormei. That's how I think our generation learned about Mel Tormei. Yeah, everyone knows about Mel Tormei from Night Court. Seinfeld as well. Mel Tormei. Oh, yes. Of course. Yeah. I think that's the time we're seeing. Also, probably before, you know, cable TV, probably the most prostitutes ever got- A lot of prostitutes. Most screen time for prostitutes. Absolutely. A lot of prostitutes on that show. Almost every episode had a prostitute in it. And again, I don't know if I'd consider prostitutes a blue collar, but they were- They were, um- It's the world's oldest. Yeah, I guess. They were handled like real people. Like they would just be- I was trying to remember. Was it cheap jokes? Sometimes it would be Dan would make sort of cheap jokes, but at the same time, they were just- There was an episode where Harry's dating a prostitute. Oh, cool. And he doesn't know. It's a big thing. There's also one where Harry dates a witch, which is very weird, and there's also one where bull dates a prostitute. Yeah. And it would happen. It happened. If they worked in a night. Well, speaking of Barney Miller, there were episodes where the cop stated prostitutes. That's what I was thinking. That's probably the other show. It didn't hit it as hard, but they were a prostitute on Barney Miller. Yeah. They were on there a lot. Jack Sugo's out with a prostitute in an episode. But Reinhold Ouija, who created Night Court, was a writer for Barney Miller. And so Night Court has total sense. Sure. There's a lot of DNA with Barney Miller. Okay. And I always- I used to avoid New York growing up, and I kind of still do now because I'm like, it's like the Warriors in Night Court. That's what New York is like. Friday night, the final night of the week, eight o'clock, what'd you go with? I went with America's Most Wanted. So America's Most Wanted, a terrifying show, in keeping with your other picks. Did you ever see anyone on that show that you thought you recognized? I remember this was a- my dad kind of created the feeling that we were doing work- Good work? Doing social work watching the show. They would flash the mug shot and he's like, no, you know, mentioned like- You know that guy? Yeah, because we grew up a block from a jail, a very old county jail. Okay? And the bars were pretty weak, and people escaped. Really? Yes. Would you have like news flash? There's an escape convict. No, but we were down in the playground once. My dad's pushing us on swings, and this guy in tattered prison outfit. Oh my God, I wish the community house. It's like great expectations. Yeah, like escape prisoners. I can't confirm this, but I remember going down the street as a little kid, passing it on my bike, and people were out in the yard. Oh my God. And with a fence that was no higher than- You just hopped it. I don't, I know. Did you ever have the spotlight go through your backyard or anything like that? I don't remember that, but there was, yeah, the people would escape. And also there was a courthouse pretty close to us. Right. And when they tossed to live feeds, my brothers and I would just bolt- Back dry. To run. One of us would stay, and someone would try to appear in the shot. Is that what you would tape over a Cosby show with? No, we'd never. Put a interview in the back of the shot. If we had the shot, if we had that on tape, it would delight me. That'd be great. I can't even remember how many times we got on. Kids, you know, once it's on, they're going to do it for two minutes, unless they throw back to them. Right, right. But I mean, yeah, America is with life. So you were like, I need to watch this because it could save my life. Totally, it totally seemed like civic duty. So this episode, a man convicted of murder as a teenager escapes from a Florida prison and a Brooklyn native wanted for murder, racketeering, and narcotics distribution. A good show, but there's too many great things on this night. You pointed out earlier that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was on because the new Saturday morning cartoons were going to debut on this Saturday morning, so on Friday night and prime time. We're here in September. Yeah. But also, Tales from the Crypt was on HBO, which I always watched, and this is a great episode. A comic book artist's creation comes to life. I love that show. Watched every week. Absolutely watched it. Another thing to search for, Supercut of the Cryptkeeper's Worst Jokes. Yes, yes. It's got to exist. Absolutely. And then at 830, it would have gotten my Tiny Tune Adventures, which was a great show. Also HBO had Dream On On where Martin and Nina discussed testing for AIDS. This was produced by John Landis and Kevin Bright, who did Friends. It was HBO's original sitcom, had a lot of breasts in it, but it was pretty funny. But Tiny Tune Adventures, I was super psyched for. This was the debut. They aired it in prime time. I taped it. I loved that show. I was very excited. Nine o'clock. What'd you go with? Perfect Strangers. Perfect Strangers for the show. I watched every week. Didn't really like that much, but watched it. In this episode, a state trooper hears differing heroic tales about how, on a chronicle outing, the gang-trapped escaped killer Mad Dog Krauss. Now this episode sounds like it was tailor-made for you, basically America's most wanted love, and it has a Rashomon structure, which is very unusual for Perfect Strangers. This is the ambitious episode of Perfect Strangers. So I probably would have watched this at this time. It wasn't really anything else on at nine o'clock. 9.30, what'd you go with? I had to finish this out with the Twin Peaks and Cop Rock special behind the scenes. Yes. Oh my God. First of all, we got to find this. Yeah, I don't have this, but I do have all of Cop Rock, and I have some entertainment tonight episodes that go behind the scenes of Cop Rock. But not this special. So I'm... Combining them. Combining these two things, on location with the stars and creators of ABC's Emmy-nominated Twin Peaks and the new crime drama Cop Rock, which blends music and action. Cop Rock's a classic failure. Yes. I think it would probably work now, weirdly. Yeah, it would be like a glee thing. Yeah. I think that would work. I think it would be helpful. Absolutely, yeah. But the fact that someone was like... You had such a joke out of the box. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And Stephen Botchko did it, who could do no wrong at that time. And people were like, all right, people who love Twin Peaks, I bet they're going to like this Cop Rock show. Right. They like weird shit. Yeah. They don't have the Twin Peaks portion of this show, but not the Cop Rock portion. Oh, listen, that's all I need. Yeah. So I can cover it for you. Someone made a compilation of TV coverage of Twin Peaks, and I have a DVD compilation. I've already... So I have that. But yeah, absolutely. No question. Do you have the cast on Donahue? I do. That's... Yes. Yes. I have a lot of Donahue episodes, really. So Ryan, that brings us to the end of the week. But as you know, TV Guide is not just informative. It has opinions. It cheers into jeers. Oh, let's do it. So I'll read you the cheers and jeers for that week and see if you agree or disagree. This is a cheer-heavy week, three of the four cheers. So TV Guide is in a good mood this week. Right. So first we start with cheers to the National Geographic specials as their silver anniversary. And then it just says how great they are. 25 years of National Geographic. Cheers. Hate advertisement. Yeah. Yeah. Who got jeered? So we'll go in different on that. Cheers to the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for overlooking a couple of last season's obvious Emmy nominations. Grant Shout and David Klinan, Shout's portrayal of a post-pubescent TV news producer Miles Silverberg on CBS's Murphy Brown is a panic. How old are you if you're referring to something funny as a panic? I actually never encountered that. It's a very 1960s term. Like it's a beat. That's a real panic. He's an absolute panic. The real scream. So it was never heard of that. Yeah. And Klinan's turn as the deliciously maniacal advertising was it was Miles Drentil on ABC's 30 Something Is Nothing Short Of Superb. 30 Something. Just an aging hipster wrote this friggin' enfrey. I'm gonna disagree with this jeers because I just don't like the author. Did you watch 30 Something? I did. I did. I liked 30 Something In Murphy Brown. I don't disagree with his sense of-- Was 30 Something Good? If you liked my so-called life, it has a similar tone. If you watched my so-called life ago, I'd like to see this show just about the parents. It's sort of along those lines. The only thing about it is it's very much about yuppies in white collar people. Yeah. And it gets a little bit annoying. Okay. I definitely watched it at the time, which is weird because it's nine. There's some great episodes, but you've got to be able to stand a lot of sort of white middle-class whining. I think 'cause I'm 30 Something. It might be the time to-- You should check it out. Yeah. There's some good stuff in it, but it depends on you. All right. And we have one more cheers here to the home video release of Charlie Chaplin's work. Cheers. Cheers. Yeah. All right. Fair enough. Well, that's the end of the week. Thank you so much for doing the show. This was really fun. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, sir. [MUSIC] There you have it. That was Ryan Walsh from Hollywood of the Hills. Again, check out their new record. Have you ever done something evil? You can get it on iTunes, you can get it on Amazon, you can probably get it at a real record store if any of those exist near you. Also, if you're on the East Coast in Los Angeles, you should check them out in the next week or two. I'm also there in the next week or two. I have a few shows. You can go to iCanRead.com and you can come check me out on the West Coast. Or as always, email me at can at iCanRead.com. I'll answer your questions. You can tell me I'm wrong. You can tell me pretty much anything you want. And please go on iTunes, rate, review, subscribe, do all that fun stuff. And I'll see you again next time on TV. I'll see you guys next week. (upbeat music)