'80s

Every once in a while I like to go hunting for old network promos, just to see how they sold their fall lineups. (This is actually the start of midseason, but elaborate midseason promos are rarer.) This time I came across ABC’s promotions for its 1980-1 season, its attempt to recover after some of its key shows suffered big ratings declines the season before. So of course they kicked off their fall launch, and the all-important promotional video for the advertisers, by having all their stars dress up in white and black clothes and disco dance, just as disco was dying. This is probably not the right way to get a network back on track. But on the bright side, they did discover Tom Hanks that fall.

I’m not saying that this is the title sequence that defines the early ’80s, because, well, I’ve never seen a single episode of the show it belongs to. (Wikipedia says it aired in syndication in 1982-3, just preceding the glut of first-run syndicated comedies.) But come on: a show starring a wisecracking puppet, supported by Corey Feldman and the other girl from Vega$? With a peppy theme song and credits that tell us what everyone’s relationship is to the puppet? This was TV circa 1982.

Hollywood is transforming those awful 1980s children’s shows into box office gold

I’ve been having a surprisingly good time in a talking-back-to-the-screen sort of way with the season 1 DVD of Hotel, due out July 21. The show is really terrible in a lovable kind of way, perhaps the worst-written of Aaron Spelling’s successful series (and anyone who has ever watched a Spelling show knows that this is saying something). It was Dynasty meets The Love Boat: after Love Boat was canceled past its prime, Spelling bought Arthur Hailey’s novel Hotel and used it to carry on his favourite format, the guest-star vehicle. As on the Pacific Princess, a mix of old, young, famous and semi-famous guest stars would have various romantic problems, one of which would involve one of the members of the permanent cast. But because Spelling’s most successful show at the time was Dynasty, the problems were mostly soapy and sensationalistic.

(Hey, it counts as CanCon because Shatner is involved.) The intro to the Aaron Spelling/William Shatner collaboration TJ Hooker was selected earlier this year by The Popcorn Trick as the awesomest of all ’80s action-show intros. The author gives it the following score on the ’80s action scale: Action: 9; Sexiness: 9; Cheesiness: 8; Homoeroticism: 9; Intangibles: 10; Total: 45, beating out the runner-up, Riptide, by 5 points. And, indeed, the intro to TJ Hooker is always glorious; in every version looks like somebody took every disreputable television show ever made and mixed it all together in a cocktail of shirtlessness, bralessness, toupees, stunt doubles, flipping cars and Mark Snow theme music. But we can’t just leave it there, because this show ran for five seasons, and every one had a slightly different intro. So which one is the greatest triumph of all that makes television Not Good For You?

Long before Shout! Factory announced that they’d acquired the DVD rights to Mr. Belvedere, I had noticed that it was probably one of the most-requested TV titles — constant message board posts all over the place demanding to know why Mr. Belvedere wasn’t on DVD yet. Ironically, this announcement means that it’ll come to DVD before the movie it’s based on, Sitting Pretty (unless Shout! includes the movie as a special feature, which would be cool but might not be possible).

…While I’m working on something else, I need to put up a clip or something, so here’s my pick for the ultimate American ’80s action-show intro. Not the best intro, by a long shot (though I always liked the fake Beach Boys middle section of the theme), not even in the top 20 best intros, but it’s got everything: helicopters, casual use of firearms, car crashes, explosions, male bonding with gratuitous shirtlesness, robots, Mike Post music, and a female character who got dropped after the first few episodes (how could they do that to Honey West, even a middle-aged Honey West?). If Ben Silverman really wants to retool Knight Rider into an ’80s type of show, he needs to have the producers watch this intro over and over and take notes.

This is one of those Weekend Viewing posts that gives us a chance to see a beloved TV star Way Back When, in this case, Alyson Hannigan (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, How I Met Your Mother). This was the first TV show she was in, a Sunday night sitcom that ran on ABC in the 1989-90 season, and following up on her role in My Stepmother is an Alien, this one could have been called My Nanny Is a Witch. Yes, in a strange mish-mash of Bewitched, Nanny and the Professor and Full House, a widower with three kids, one of them being Hannigan, gets a new live-in nanny who is actually a witch, sent to live with this family for reasons that aren’t entirely clear. The three kids know she’s a witch; the dad doesn’t; every week a spell goes wrong in some wacky way; in this episode, Hannigan is accidentally turned invisible; you know how it works. Corinne Bohrer, whom you know best as Veronica Mars’ mom, played the witch. Yes, we’re talking bad ’80s sitcom land.