What was the last TV show you watched?

Fading Fast · Apr 27, 2017

Based on someone's comment recently on Fedora, I watched, for the first time in a long time, "Carrotblanca," the Looney Tunes take on "Casablanca."

A lot of good stuff in there, but my favorite moment was when a very angry Bugs as Rick popped up immediately after Daffy as Sam hit one note on the piano (one single note) of, we assume, "As Time Goes By." The ability to accentuate the crazy in humans is one of Looney Tune's great skills and insight.

Doctor Strange · Apr 27, 2017

A 1995 cartoon, this wasn't made by any of the classic WB animation staff, they'd closed up shop back in the sixties. It was done by WB's TV animators (of Animaniacs, Tiny Toon Adventures, B:TAS, etc.)

Just putting that out there, because "Looney Tunes" conjures up the great days of WB animation, when guys like Tex Avery and Chuck Jones were creating amazing little masterpieces. This is a different crew in a different time. I'm not saying it's not a funny short, just pointing out that even though it was released as a Looney Tune, it's not of a piece with the classic shorts that the name implies.

I know: I'm being pedantic. But I don't take my position as a cartoon expert lightly!

Ernest P Shackleton · Apr 27, 2017

Doctor Strange said:
Agreed that Helen's father (*) is a major nightmare... but he didn't personally break up a marriage and screw up four kids' lives over a waitress. Then screwed up her life (even more than it was). Then screwed up a visiting French professor's life. And so on.

Helen is a rich girl, and she definitely has some of the issues that come along with that privileged upbringing. But she usually puts her children's needs first, unlike walking-disaster-area Noah. WORST. DAD. EVER.

(* That the same actor plays a scary mob boss on Gotham doesn't help!)

Helen continues to do quite a number on Max, their mutual college friend (who is also a scumbag), and she's busy doing a number on Vic. Like many of us, we genuinely care about others, but we always come first. I need to re-watch the pilot, but I believe before the affair with Allison, Noah was shown as a great father. My point being is that he wasn't always like this. And this season, they've backstoried how he was a good son in a terrible situation with a dying mother. Midlife crisis? He certainly turned a dark corner.

Zombie_61 · Apr 27, 2017

Fading Fast said:
Based on someone's comment recently on Fedora, I watched, for the first time in a long time, "Carrotblanca," the Looney Tunes take on "Casablanca."

A lot of good stuff in there, but my favorite moment was when Bugs as Rick popped up immediately after Daffy as Sam hit one note on the piano (one single note) of, we assume, "As Time Goes By." The ability to accentuate the crazy in humans is one of Looney Tune's great skills and insight.

Doctor Strange said:
A 1995 cartoon, this wasn't made by any of the classic WB animation staff, they'd closed up shop back in the sixties. It was done by WB's TV animators (of Animaniacs, Tiny Toon Adventures, B:TAS, etc.)

Just putting that out there, because "Looney Tunes" conjures up the great days of WB animation, when guys like Tex Avery and Chuck Jones were creating amazing little masterpieces. This is a different crew in a different time. I'm not saying it's not a funny short, just pointing out that even though it was released as a Looney Tune, it's not of a piece with the classic shorts that the name implies.

I know: I'm being pedantic. But I don't take my position as a cartoon expert lightly!

I had never heard of or seen Carrotblanca before reading these posts, so I found it on You Tube. I think they did a fair job of re-creating the "flavor" of the Looney Tunes cartoons, but Mel Blanc's brilliant vocal talents and Carl Stalling's encyclopedic knowledge of music were noticeably absent to me. Definitely worth watching if you're not as "nit picky" as I am. Besides, I can think of far worse ways to spend eight minutes.

MisterCairo · Apr 28, 2017

We just watched a couple more episodes of Once Upon a Time, a rainy day (suddenly came up on us, quite stormy!) break. It's a really fun, entertaining show!

Stearmen · Apr 28, 2017

Bear Story. A nice short film, just 10 minutes, but it took four years to make!

Ernest P Shackleton · Apr 28, 2017

MisterCairo said:
We just watched a couple more episodes of Once Upon a Time, a rainy day (suddenly came up on us, quite stormy!) break. It's a really fun, entertaining show!

until the Frozen character is introduced

MisterCairo · Apr 28, 2017

Ernest P Shackleton said:
until the Frozen character is introduced

Crap, really?

I'm not one for spoilers, but tell me she dies...

MisterCairo · Apr 28, 2017

After the girls went to bed, my wife and I watched last night's Supernatural, an excellent episode that's setting the tone for the season finale and next season, then this week's Big Bang Theory.

Benzadmiral · Apr 28, 2017

A local Christian station runs Bewitched (yeah, I know, right?) on weekday afternoons. They just finished the run of the first season, and I was astonished to see that it had 36 episodes -- running from September of 1964 all the way into June of 1965! I know seasons were longer then, but I'd thought by that time they'd settled down to 29-30 episodes!

Fading Fast · Apr 28, 2017

Benzadmiral said:
A local Christian station runs Bewitched (yeah, I know, right?) on weekday afternoons. They just finished the run of the first season, and I was astonished to see that it had 36 episodes -- running from September of 1964 all the way into June of 1965! I know seasons were longer then, but I'd thought by that time they'd settled down to 29-30 episodes!

And now I'm happy if they deign to give us more than 12 episodes a year of a show we like.

Back then, three networks, kinda competitive, but they all did, basically, the same thing; hence, thinking about sunk costs and fixed production costs, probably the cheapest thing was to make a lot of episodes of the same show.

Doctor Strange · Apr 28, 2017

It's amazing in retrospect that the 36-episode season was a standard thing, now that we accept 8-, 10-, 12-, and 13-episode seasons! And 22 is a "long season".

The first season of Bewitched, the b/w one, is way more "adult" than later seasons... The show's comedy became broader and broader, and it turned into a kiddie show by the time second-Darrin Dick Sargent, and little Tabitha and Adam, showed up. Watching the pilot now, it's downright amazing how mature the writing is. (This is a show about a woman who keeps her entire former life secret from her new husband before they marry, and after the revelation, it's about the couple finding a way to make their "mixed marriage" work. Even apart from the show's whole Darrin-can't-control-his-powerful-much-older/wiser-spouse - its proto-Women's Lib aspect - it used fantasy as an avenue to deal with real issues.)

I was entranced as a nine-year-old watching the show when it began. And sure, I eventually stopped watching. But I will never lose my pubescent adoration for Elizabeth Montgomery!

(I just recently rewatched the Twilight Zone episode "Two", made a couple of years before the Bewitched, where she and Charles Bronson play survivors of a war from different sides who must put aside their fear/hatred to survive. She's tremendous in this dialog-free performance - she speaks only a single [Russian!] word - and boy, has she got incipient-TV-star charisma.)

belfastboy · Apr 28, 2017

Watching the original Swedish/Danish "The Bridge" on Netflix, series 2. Euro TV detective shows tend to have very convoluted plot lines and this is no exception but the female lead is one of the most interesting and unusual characters ever. Highly engaging.

LizzieMaine · Apr 28, 2017

In radio a standard season for a weekly program was 39 weeks, with thirteen weeks off for the summer. A 36-episode television season was a concession to the idea of having to produce a whole new show every week for nine months. In the live-TV era, it became common for shows to be scheduled every *other* week, or to use rotating casts, so as not to burn everyone out.

As for Bewitched, it was the only one of those sixties "fantasy" sitcoms I could stand -- "I Dream of Jeannie" made my skin crawl as a kid, and even more so now. What I really liked about Bewitched was how many outstanding character actors it used in its recurring cast -- Marion Lorne, Paul Lynde, Bernard Fox, etc. Even when I was young it was the character actors who caught my attention because they always seemed to get the best lines.

Fading Fast · Apr 28, 2017

Doctor Strange said:
It's amazing in retrospect that the 36-episode season was a standard thing, now that we accept 8-, 10-, 12-, and 13-episode seasons! And 22 is a "long season".

The first season of Bewitched, the b/w one, is way more "adult" than later seasons... The show's comedy became broader and broader, and it turned into a kiddie show by the time second-Darrin Dick Sargent, and little Tabitha and Adam, showed up. Watching the pilot now, it's downright amazing how mature the writing is. (This is a show about a woman who keeps her entire former life secret from her new husband before they marry, and after the revelation, it's about the couple finding a way to make their "mixed marriage" work. Even apart from the show's whole Darrin-can't-control-his-powerful-much-older/wiser-spouse - its proto-Women's Lib aspect - it used fantasy as an avenue to deal with real issues.)

I was entranced as a nine-year-old watching the show when it began. And sure, I eventually stopped watching. But I will never lose my pubescent adoration for Elizabeth Montgomery!

(I just recently rewatched the Twilight Zone episode "Two", made a couple of years before the Bewitched, where she and Charles Bronson play survivors of a war from different sides who must put aside their fear/hatred to survive. She's tremendous in this dialog-free performance - she speaks only a single [Russian!] word - and boy, has she got incipient-TV-star charisma.)

Now I want to see the "Bewitched" pilot as the few episodes of the show I've seen turned me off as, as you note, it was kinda a kiddie show.

"The Twilight Zone" episode you reference is one of my favorites. It's smart, tense and thought provoking. And, yes, her charisma lifts off the screen - her looks and performance are a combination of youth, beauty, intensity and intelligence that is powerful.

Doctor Strange · Apr 28, 2017

Lizzie, don't forget George Tobias as Abner Kravitz!

And yeah, Jeannie is/was nowhere near as palatable as Bewitched.

I recently got the entire Twilight Zone series on DVD (a steal for $50 at Amazon) but have only had time to quickly spot-check a few episodes on some of the discs. Even though I've seen it many, many times, "Two" was the only episode that once I started, I just had to watch all the way through. Definitely one of my faves!

Benzadmiral · Apr 28, 2017

Doctor Strange said:
It's amazing in retrospect that the 36-episode season was a standard thing, now that we accept 8-, 10-, 12-, and 13-episode seasons! And 22 is a "long season".

The first season of Bewitched, the b/w one, is way more "adult" than later seasons... The show's comedy became broader and broader, and it turned into a kiddie show by the time second-Darrin Dick Sargent, and little Tabitha and Adam, showed up. Watching the pilot now, it's downright amazing how mature the writing is. (This is a show about a woman who keeps her entire former life secret from her new husband before they marry, and after the revelation, it's about the couple finding a way to make their "mixed marriage" work. Even apart from the show's whole Darrin-can't-control-his-powerful-much-older/wiser-spouse - its proto-Women's Lib aspect - it used fantasy as an avenue to deal with real issues.) . . .

The pilot has that dramatic line by Endora as played by Agnes Moorehead, and repeated 40 years later by Shirley Maclaine (also playing Endora) in the movie version, describing the witches as a species. Darn. I can't find the exact quote -- something on the order of "We are quicksilver and moonlight --" Anybody remember?

And yes, the show always used character actors to excellent effect. The drunk (played by the fellow who later became Mr. Whipple in the Charmin spots) who would always be on the next stool when Darrin drank in his favorite midtown bar; Arte Johnson (pre-Laugh-In) as an elf, Marion Lorne as Aunt Clara; the very young Richard Dreyfuss; the Kravitzes, Darrin's parents, Maurice Evans as a very Shakespearean-actor father to Samantha . . . and the grandest of them all, Paul Lynde. Lynde first appeared, you remember, as an anxiety-ridden wreck of a driving instructor whose doctor, he tells Samantha, prescribes so many tranquilizers for him that he takes them in the form of a big cookie.

And as Uncle Arthur: "Endora, when I think of you as a blood relative . . . I long for a transfusion."

Benzadmiral · Apr 28, 2017

Fading Fast said:
Now I want to see the "Bewitched" pilot as the few episodes of the show I've seen turned me off as, as you note, it was kinda a kiddie show.

"The Twilight Zone" episode you reference is one of my favorites. It's smart, tense and thought provoking. And, yes, her charisma lifts off the screen - her looks and performance are a combination of youth, beauty, intensity and intelligence that is powerful.

There is also a great script later in that season called "A Is For Aardvark," in which Samantha temporarily gives Darrin magic powers, and he finds he truly enjoys it -- and they have to reexamine their relationship. Good stuff. (IMDb says it was directed by Ida Lupino!)

ETA: Oh, yes, Elizabeth always had that star quality. There was an Untouchables she was featured in, "The Rusty Heller Story," and even my mother paid attention to her when we saw Johnny Cool the year before Bewitched came out: "Oh, that's Robert Montgomery's daughter!"

Doctor Strange · Apr 28, 2017

That Untouchables episode is always mentioned, but she had made an impression in a small role in The Court Martial of Billy Mitchell too.

I remember that episode where Darrin is given powers very well - "Banana... come!" It's a credit to the show's early, more serious approach that he likes it so much and it changes their relationship.

Zombie_61 · Apr 28, 2017

Benzadmiral said:
The pilot has that dramatic line by Endora as played by Agnes Moorehead, and repeated 40 years later by Shirley Maclaine (also playing Endora) in the movie version, describing the witches as a species. Darn. I can't find the exact quote -- something on the order of "We are quicksilver and moonlight --" Anybody remember?

IMDb to the rescue, but, according to them, it was in the second episode. "We are quicksilver, a fleeting shadow, a distant sound...our home has no boundaries beyond which we cannot pass. We live in music, in a flash of color...we live on the wind and in the sparkle of a star!"

What was the last TV show you watched?

Fading Fast

Doctor Strange

I'll Lock Up

Ernest P Shackleton

One Too Many

Zombie_61

MisterCairo

I'll Lock Up

Stearmen

I'll Lock Up

Ernest P Shackleton

One Too Many

MisterCairo

I'll Lock Up

MisterCairo

I'll Lock Up

Benzadmiral

Call Me a Cab

Fading Fast

Doctor Strange

I'll Lock Up

belfastboy

LizzieMaine

Fading Fast

Doctor Strange

I'll Lock Up

Benzadmiral

Call Me a Cab

Benzadmiral

Call Me a Cab

Doctor Strange

I'll Lock Up

Zombie_61

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