Cool clip on You Tube/Mising in Action/Stuff We Should Bring Back

I'm cramming 3 post themes into one today because this clip epitomizes several things we need to talk about, like, for example, Ron Rifkin was on One Day at a Time?

First of all, though, where the heck IS One Day at a Time? When I was growing up, it was a fixture on CBS' primetime schedule, and it was even in daytime reruns. Somehow it fell off the national landscape after the series ended in first run, and apart from a run on E! (doesn;t that seem odd now?), I haven't seen it on a national platform in decades. I think one of the Chicago versions of Me-TV ran it, so it's presumably not in some kind of TV limbo. Yet it only got one DVD release--its first season--and although just about every other big Norman Lear sitcom has appeared on Antenna TV, ODAAT has never showed up.

Seeing this clip of the sixth season intro reminds me that the show was on a long time. In fact it was on a really long time--9 seasons. So if the sight of a sixth season jolts you, well, there were 3 more after this one, pal. Also, I just don't remember as much about this sitcom as I thought. For instance--well, let's just wach this clip:

Wow, where to begin? Well, let's begin at the beginning! That telop of Archie Bunker's Place is exactly what I was talking about last week when I said we needed to bring this stuff back. It's just beautiful.

Then, due to the kindness of this fantastic uploader, we see the classic CBS SPECIAL PRESENTATION bumper, perhaps the single most fondly remembered several seconds of television from my childhood. I find it amusing that a one-hour episode of One Day at a Time gets this treatment. I guess the "Special" in 'CBS Special Presentation" was a bit more loosely defined that I would have recalled.

The song itself is great. It's one of the most underrated theme songs in sitcom annals, maybe because of its limited exposure in recent years. It has energy, it sets up the premise. and it still feels fresh 30 years later. Watching more "One Day" openings on YouTube, you notice that it's one series that did not feel compelled to screw around with its theme song just for the sake of change. I respect any series that has the discipline to resist commissioning an "updated" (usually worse) version.

Now look at who is and who is not in these credits. Mackenzie Phillips, evidently in one of her dark periods at the time, is not there, but Ron Rifkin is. Ron Rifkin? Holy cow, I forgot he was ever a cast member. I remembered the rise of Michael Lembeck and even Boyd Gaines, I remembered the Glenn Scarpelli phenomenon, and if pressed I could have recalled the Howard Hesseman era. But Rifkin?

Wait, I just looked this up: Rifkin was the father of the Scarpelli character? And he was KILLED OFF after this one season? Bummer. OK, that makes sense.

Towards the end we see the credit of producer Bud Wiser, and many of the YouTube commenters express their amusement. I wish I had something witty to say, but, nah, I just chuckled at that myself.

The most fascinating credit is the co-creator one for Whitney Blake/ THE Whitney Blake of "Hazel" fame? Indeedy, and she based the series on her experiences raising Meredith Baxter. Wow. See, there is a lot going on here, and this is just one opening of 9 seasons' worth of show. Maybe someone should put this series back on so we can explore the Schneider thing again.

MIA: The Baseball Bunch

Ready to play
We're learning the way
To do it right
We're the Baseball Bunch

Let us talk about the power of Cultureshark. You will remember that some time ago I wrote about the mysterious disappearance of "Gimme a Break" from the pop culture landscape. Mere months later, Nell-a-holics--or is it Breakers--must be giddy with the show's surfacing on TV One. Perhaps today's post will be a lucky charm to resurrect this program: "The Baseball Bunch."

When I first thought about this 1980s Major League Baseball production, it was when baseball season was starting up, and I looked on YouTube for episodes and found virtually nothing. Now there is at least one episode available, but it doesn't have the theme song. I appreciate the upload, but The Baseball Bunch without its theme song is like Ozzie Smith without his glove. Hey, guess who just happens to be in that episode?

Yep, it's the Wizard of Oz, who gives the kids some fielding tips and is showcased in a montage of his fantastic defensive plays set to the music of--ah, ah, ah, I'm not going to say it for the same reason I'm not linking to that episode. Why give someone another reason to yank it? Suffice to say the song is a soft rock staple of the early 1980s, a mellow tune with a title spot-on for a sequence of Ozzie Smith plays.

The premise of "The Baseball Bunch" is simple: Hall of Fame catcher Johnny Bench hangs around with a bunch of kids and teaches them lessons about baseball and sportsmanship because...well, he's not their coach. He's not related to them. He's...He's...Hmm, maybe the premise isn't as simple as I thought. But it is a lot more innocent than I just made it sound.

The episode I watched recently had all the elements I wanted to see besides that theme song, though. There were some good tips, a cameo by a star player, and most importantly, Johnny Bench being exasperated by the San Diego Chicken. Come to think, he kind of comes off as a bit of a jerk. You spent a decade sharing a clubhouse with Pete Rose, but you can't tolerate the lovable Chicken's zany mix-ups? What we DO miss in this episode is Tommy Lasorda as a genie (I don't remember ever cursing a Dodger Blue streak on the mascot on the show, but if he did, someone send me the audio). You just don't get those kind of hijinks from Joe Buck and Tim McCarver.

In fact, you don't get this kind of show, period, anymore. I wouldn't want to see MLB try to do this today, as it would probably be lame and forced. The Bunch appeared in first-run syndication from 1980 to 1985, and these days game shows, courtroom shows, and talk shows rule first run, not shows that are...good. There IS one remaining bastion of syndicated kid-friendly programming, though: the numerous weekend and early-morning E/I slots waiting to be filled by TV shows that somehow trick the FCC into believing they are educational. I'd like to see reruns of "The Baseball Bunch" fill some of those E/I positions. I mean, Jack Hanna can't take care of all those hours, can he?

The least Major League Baseball could do is just make those episodes available on its own network. MLB Network runs the same talking heads shows over and over again, especially during the offseason. I think it could spare the time to run a few "Bunch" episodes. A DVD release would be welcome, too, something like the surprise 1978 season set of "This Week in Baseball" they quietly introduced last year. Actually, the LEAST MLB could do would be to just dump them up on YouTube, and I'd be fine with that. I just want to see Johnny Bench, the Chicken, and Spike, Katie, Butch, Donna, Red, Myron, Darnell, Christina, and Th'Qaar VI (OK, I may have fabricated the kids' names) released from captivity so they can teach me and my kids the right way to play.

We've got a hunch you'll love
The Baseball Bunch!

Missing in Action: Gimme a Break

OK, so today's post is not about a classic, nor even a show I really--what's the word for it?--like, but what better way to get the blog going again than by exploring a mystery? Last time I did a "Missing in Action" post, I wondered why the "Carol Burnett Show" was absent from DVD and from the airwaves, and since then Time-Life stepped up and delivered a big box set. The complete series "Gimme a Break" is available on DVD, but through a Canadian company (it was too polite to leave fans hanging after the first seasons) , and it never seems to turn up in national syndication these days. I'm not sure why.

It was well regarded enough to be a constant in the 1980s and 1990s and I am sad to say, I watched it a lot. I watched it an awful lot considering I never even really liked it, and in fact, I grew to despise it in its later seasons. Yet I watched it first run, I watched a bunch of the reruns, and likely saw many episodes more than once. Why? Well, because it was on. I'm not trying to weasel out of admitting past enjoyment of the series--after all, really how much "cooler" is it to confess to consuming a ton of episodes of a program I didn't even like--but rather I think I genuinely just kind of...absorbed it.

You remember this sitcom, right? It was a Nell Carter vehicle all the way, a showcase for the multi-talented star of Broadway and other mediums. Of course, there was nothing "medium" about her presence on the small screen. (Hey, at least I avoided a cheap gag on "broad"). I could be imagining this, but I recall Carter as one of those performers who was always described as a "force of nature." Ever notice how that term is invariably used to describe someone who is fat and/or loud? Isn't nature ever subtle?

"Gimme a Break" stars Nell as a live-in housekeeper/cook/all-around busybody who somehow managed to find herself in situations in which she has to sing every other episode (much to my annoyance). Someone should apply the prodigious statistical analysis we see in baseball these days to a study comparing Carter on "Gimme a Break" with Linda Lavin on "Alice" to see who gets more singing time and is therefore more (or less, depending on your POV) valuable to her sitcom.

I know what you're thinking--Nell is a force of nature, sings--she's just playing herself. Nuh-uh. See, she is playing a woman named Nell Harper, not Nell Carter. Totally different.

Nell shares the screen with an assortment of precocious kids and seasoned hands like John Hoyt as the grandpa, Howard Morton as a bumbling policeman/friend of the family, and Telma Hopkins as Nell's best friend and former bandmate who also managed to gets in a lot of musical numbers (again, much to my annoyance--tell me again why the hell I watched this so often?), but the co-star is Dolph Sweet as the widower cop who hired Nell. Sweet was a solid pro who did the crusty but good-hearted lug thing well enough, and I remember his sudden passing was a shock. On the bright side, we never had to endure sexual tension between those two.

On the even darker side, though, his absence paves the way for more screen time for Joey Lawrence, plus the eventual ultimate shark-jumping moves like relocating the show in New York and adding an even more precocious kid, Matthew Lawrence. Oh, and might I mention that Rosie O'Donnell joins the series in the New York era? I'm certainly not selling this as one we're all gonna rally around and get back on TV.

If it sounds very generic/sitcommy, well, it is. The only memorable aspects of  the series to me are the two distinct yet equally sassy theme songs (sung by Carter herself, natch), both of which ARE IN MY HEAD THIS VERY MOMENT FIGHTING WITH EACH OTHER FOR MY ATTENTION, and the scenes in the opening credits of Nell vacuuming a goldfish and strangling a scale after measuring her weight.
Still, my personal taste aside--and as I keep saying, I did watch the show--it ran for 6 seasons and well over 100-some episodes, and those kinds of successful sitcoms don't tend to disappear like "Break" did. I'm not surprised that it hasn't been on TBS or something like that in years, but there are a lot of outlets gobbling up cheap retro product nowadays. Maybe the show isn't up to Nick at Nite's standards, but as an ethnically diverse family sitcom, it might have fit in at some point. I'm surprised African-American cable network TV One hasn't given it a shot. Hasbro's HUB network aired "Facts of Life" for a while and might have tried this one. Even the black-oriented subchannel Bounce doesn't air it.

As "Break" was a Universal show, perhaps NBC Universal's new Cozi subchannel will add it eventually. I'm not sure why it's such a forgotten series (yes, even though a few paragraphs ago I just said virtually nothing about it is memorable). It doesn't have a specter of tragedy to keep it in the public consciousness like "Diff'rent Strokes," but is it really so much weaker than "227" or "Amen?" Just because I am not a fan doesn't mean it shouldn't be on somewhere.

Missing in Action: The Carol Burnett Show

I was listening to an NPR interview with Carol Burnett the other day, and she was promoting some book that may or may not be a new one--for all I know, this segment was an "encore presentation" of a 2005 chat--and it made me wonder: Whither "The Carol Burnett Show?"

Is there a more fondly remembered but less seen TV classic around today? Let me mention here that I am not a big fan of the series, but I remember watching it regularly as a kid, when it was on New York TV stations all the time (NOTE: "all the time" may well be an exaggeration based on my distorted kid sense of time), and I enjoyed it here and there. More importantly, I appreciate its place in TV history and respect the love many have for it.

Licensing and legal difficulties reportedly make a comprehensive DVD release of the series impossible, though some compilations and limited direct market video collections have made it through over the years. So if it can't be on DVD, why can't it be on TV?

It just seems odd to me that as visible as Carol Burnett remains to this day, and as many "classic TV" networks are out there now with the launch of Antenna TV and Me-TV supplementing RTV and (let's all hold out noses) TV Land, this show is MIA.

I believe Me-TV in its Chicago incarnation aired the series a while back, but I think the last time the Burnett show was on nationally was a TV Land stint 10 years ago. Did Burnett (and the other owners of the series) yank the show from syndication to boost sales of direct market DVDs? I don't know, but now that the DVD market is fading, perhaps it's time to get the series back out there.