WKRP In Cincinnati

The DVD release of the cult rock-n’-roll sitcom is much better than fans expected.

There is a garbage strike in Toronto, and for those who are trying to figure out what to do with their trash, I have no good answers. But despite my admiration for Dr. Johnny Fever, I would not advocate the solution he came up with when Cincinnati garbage collectors were on strike against Mayor Jerry Springer (really, he was the mayor at the time), dumping garbage on the steps of City Hall. It does nothing to resolve the strike, and only leads to plot contrivances, the ensual (ensuing?) of hijinks that are frequently wacky in nature, and late-period Bob Dylan songs.

I didn’t have time to seek out something to embed this weekend, so in honour(?) of Jerry Seinfeld’s “The Marriage Ref,” here again is the famous 1980 WKRP episode about a network reality show where the hosts make fun of ordinary people with imperfect marriages. Replace Peter Marshall with Jerry Seinfeld and you’ve got the future of NBC. Incidentally, it seems like in the late ’70s and early ’80s there was a lot of worrying, in popular culture, about reality television and its inherent cruelty. Albert Brooks’s Real Life, which undoubtedly influenced this and a number of other TV episodes, and Stephen King’s “The Running Man,” which was published in 1982. So reality-bashing isn’t exactly new.