American Life Television: Thursday and Friday

American Life's Thursday night lineup is composed of juvenile 60s sci-fi (Land of the Giants, Lost in Space, Time Tunnel, and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea) and it would be easy to knock their predictable plots, cheap sets and poor acting but they have a nice energy and I don't think anyone's expecting too much when they put these shows on. They are what they are and it couldn't of been easy putting together 39 hour-long shows every season on a tiny budget. At the end of a long day I'd be perfectly happy to crack open a brewski and veg out in front of any of them. But why the producers of Time Tunnel thought it was a good idea to put Lee Meriweather in a lab coat and stick her behind a desk I'll never know.

Why are these shows on Thursday night? Because if you combine the creepiness of Land of the Giants, the technology of Lost In Space, the time travelling of Time Tunnel (three shows about people who can't get home) and the ocean of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea you get Lost.

Friday night is 60s Icons Night meaning Batman, The Color Honeymooners and The Green Hornet. I don't believe any of these shows are 60s icons. Let's examine these shows one by one.

Batman: An eternal classic, one of the all-time great TV shows. It was always in reruns when I was a kid and I kept falling in and out of love with it as I got older. First I liked it for itself, then I didn't like the camp, then I did like the camp, then I didn't like it and now I like the whole thing. Batman isn't a 60s icon, he's an eternal icon. Here's a story from Mark Harris' excellent book Pictures at a Revolution: "Other directors assumed [Spencer] Tracy was simply no longer functional; at the time [Stanley] Kramer approached him, the only other call he had gotten for a job was from William Dozier, the producer of ABC's campy, popular Batman series. "[He] said, 'Didn't I have a grandchild who'd get a kick out of seeing grandpa as a cameo on Batman,' " grumbled the actor. "Wasn't even one of those villain things." Spencer Tracy knew there was a Batman show and knew there were guest star villains, that's awesome.

The Color Honeymooners: I can't get past two minutes of this show without wanting to pound my head into a wall and end the pain. Take a claustrophobic show about people yelling at each other and pad it out with songs. Great. The Honeymooners are 50s icons if that.

The Green Hornet: I coudn't wait to see The Green Hornet. I'd seen the crossover episode of Batman where the Green Hornet is introduced many times but I'd never seen the show until American Life started running it. This is a terrible show. Every scene seems to take place in muddy day-for-night lighting and there are endless fights and chase scenes which are endless themselves. I think there maybe was a 10-page script for every episode. But the show's biggest crime is undoubtedly the waste of Bruce Lee's talents. Bruce Lee playing Cato is like keeping Michael Jordan on the bench or building an atomic bomb and never testing it. I still get worked up just thinking about it. Bruce Lee, people, Bruce Lee.

Anyway, Green Hornet is a 30s icon, if that.

I hope you've enjoyed my look at American Life Television, they have a bizarre and entertaining website you should check out. If you love Susan Sarandon, Bobby Nystrom and lorem ipsum it's not to be missed.

Bruce Lee, people, Bruce Lee.

American Life Television: Tuesday & Wednesday Nights

Tuesday night on American Life is "Greatest Generation" night and I've never watched and don't have much to say about any of these shows except if you didn't grow up with Rat Patrol reruns on at 4 A.M. on weeknights and 5 P.M. on Sunday afternoons you didn't grow up in America, buddy.

Wednesday night is the best night of the week because it's Spinoff Night! The spinoffs are are Lou Grant (spinoff of Mary Tyler Moore) and Trapper John, MD (spinoff of MASH). Lou Grant was on for five seasons and Trapper John for seven, numbers that shocked me when I looked it up. It seems a show would have more effect on the popular imagination if they were on for so long but I guess not. I probably never would have remembered there was ever a Trapper John, MD show if American Life hadn't of started showing these reruns. Both are pretty typical shows for the late 70s-early 80s with issue-oriented episodes, stuffy authority figures (why do they hate you, Dr. Riverside?), undeveloped, too small supporting casts and cheap sets. Both are hour-long dramas and not half-hour sitcoms like their original shows.

The Wife and I love the kitschy appeal of Trapper John, MD but most of all we love the theme song. Let 'er rip! Pretty good, no? This is the jazzed-up second-season version. It's funky, exciting and has nothing at all to do with the show. Maybe they wanted to wake up the audience of people watching TV at 10 P.M. waiting for digital cable to be invented. And to make it even better the musical cues during the show are all riffs off of the opening theme. So you get to hear sad, tense and bouncy versions of the theme during the episode.

Here's the Lou Grant opening and theme song. You get the entire history of a newspaper from tree to birdcage liner. What's the point of that? Why does the theme tell you it all means nothing? That might be appropriate on The Office but why on a show where the main characters battle a corrupt system every week.

American Life Television: Monday Night

Monday night on American Life is their best night. It boasts "The Greatest Comedies" which are Newhart, The Bob Newhart Show, Mary Tyler Moore and WKRP in Cincinnati. This is a very impressive lineup. My only question is what is the Mary Tyler Moore show doing on American Life? It's one of the greatest television shows of all-time. Have DVD shows so saturated the appetite of America no one will pay top dollar for this show? I guess so. When I grew up The Odd Couple, the greatest show ever, was on four times a day and now it's not even on television. Sadly, my children won't know the pleasure of coming home from school, watching Mary Tyler Moore at 4:00 and The Bob Newhart Show at 4:30 (unless something good was on the 4:30 Movie). I look forward to my daughter Gwendolyn's blog in 2030 about how there aren't good infomercials or court shows on television anymore.

There's not much to be said about the Newharts and Mary Tyler Moore. I think they stand the test of time and have great casts especially the underappreciated Ted Knight and Suzanne Pleshette. But like many of my friends I have a special place in my heart for WKRP, the struggling rock station trying to make it in an uncaring, uncool world. If you are now too old for Obama and too young for Clinton or had a zine or liked that band before they hit it big this was probably the show that spoke to you. Anyway, it a great show even though much of the original music has been replaced.

American Life Television: Sunday Night

American Life Television claims to be "for baby boomers and their babies". The Wife and I are neither but we love it anyway. On Time Warner Cable it's on channel 153 and for some reason the channel guide has the NBA League Pass logo instead of the actual logo. They really should do something about that.

There's a continuing cycle in cable television. In the beginning stations start out with cheap reruns of shows and then gradually find a niche or a successful show and build from there. When I watched A&E in 1990 it showed The Second Hundred Years and other shows I'd only read about in Television encyclopedias. Then came Biography and look at it now. The same thing for the Sci-Fi Channel a few years later. They used to buy up any sci-fi show they could find, an all the better if it only lasted nine episodes. Now there is American Life Television.

Every night on American Life is theme night and Sunday night is "Greatest Dramas Night" or as I like to call it "Pretentious 80s NBC Television Night". Back before television got really good about ten years ago there were a few outposts of "culture" that critics and people who watched a lot of TV would point out as important and necessary to save every year when schedules came out. I've never liked these shows.

First off is Hill Street Blues which was a about a "typical" police precinct in a "typical" big city. There were good cops who were somber and filled with self-doubt and the bad cops who were caricatures. And remember when Daniel J. Travanti was a big star? I haven't thought of that guy in years. Go on, click on the link, I know you're dying to find out what happened to him.

Next up is L.A. Law which I watched consistently for a little while. It had a nice technique of having multiple continuing storylines at different stages so, for example, the Susan Dey story might be starting while the Corbin Bernsen and Jill Eikenberry stories were in the middle and the Blair Underwood storyline was reaching it's climax. I watched L.A. Law for a few months until I missed a few episodes and forgot about it. Still, I remember some cringe-worthy "very special episodes" about drunk driving ("I only got off because I'm a lawyer, there's something wrong with the system.") and the Rodney King beating. It might have been a great show if it hadn't of taken itself so seriously.

The final show is St. Elsewhere. I know this is a kind of sacrilege but I can't stand this show. It is that brand of realism where realism is equated with bad things happening. One of the few episodes I watched had a painful reconciliation between father and son ending in the son driving home, falling asleep at the wheel and getting in an deadly accident. I bet they were really proud of that one.

The irony of course is that these shows which were considered so advanced now seem clunky and cheap compared to the best shows of he past ten years like The Sopranos, Law & Order, Rescue Me, West Wing and Lost (and that doesn't include shows I haven't seen but people tell me are great like The Wire, Battlestar Gallactica and The Gilmore Girls) which is why they are on Channel 153 with the NBA League Pass logo.