I Watched (Nearly) Every Post Super Bowl Show Part III: The 1990’s!

Hello!  This is Part 3 of my series on the chronological history of the Super Bowl lead-out program.  If you missed Part 1, covering the 60’s and 70’s, or Part 2, working through the 80’s, well, check those out first!  Or don’t!  Who am I to tell you how to spend your time?

The 1990’s were a time of change for ancillary aspects of the Super Bowl broadcast.

Take the halftime show.  The final ten years of the 20th century began with the mid-game programming still stuck in the 70’s and 80’s, content with doing Disney-related tributes and showcasing Dorothy Hammill and Brian Boitano.  By 193, the NFL finally had enough and brought out the big guns with Michael Jackson.  It took a couple of years for the new paradigm of “take the biggest music star in the world and let them do a 15-minute concert” to hold, but once it did, the halftime show never looked back, and doesn’t look likely that it ever will.

So it went with the post-Super Bowl programming.  The 90’s began with the same bevy of pilots or early episodes of fledgling sitcoms, with the hopes that something will catch the long-term attention of a massive audience.  By 1996, one network (NBC) said “fuck it” and just aired a star-studded episode of its biggest show (“Friends”).  The game changed for a long time, although it should be noted that, unlike the halftime show, it didn’t change forever!  

But that’s a different article.  For now, let’s close out the millennium with a look back at the 13 shows that closed out the Super Bowl in the 1990’s.

SUPER BOWL XXIV

Show: “Grand Slam”

Episode: “Pilot” (Season 1, Episode 1)

Network: CBS

Aired: January 28, 1990

We kick off the 90’s with yet another feature length pilot to a show that never even made it to a double-digit episode count!  This time, John Schneider and Paul Rodriguez star as a pair of bounty hunters who must work together to bring home a million-dollar bond.  Dennis Bakelenoff (Schneider) has a gimmick of sorts; he’s an ex-ball player who hasn’t lost his arm, hence his nickname “Hardball”.  Pedro Gomez (Rodriguez) also has a gimmick of sorts; he is Mexican, hence the constant needle drops of “Low Rider”.

(Speaking of the nickname “Hardball”...you’d think his nickname would be “Grand Slam” in order to justify the title, which otherwise only gets stated in passing at the beginning and end of the pilot.  Then again, I’m not paid to make these kinds of decisions.)

Gotta admit, I kinda had fun with this.  It’s entertaining in a boneheaded kind of way.  All the kind of “culture clash” stuff you’d imagine is here: a big centerpiece scene involves both Schenider and Rodriguez pounding on hot peppers as a way to metaphorically measure their dicks.  I also feel like the main villain is really obnoxious, and I think he at one point threatens a woman by saying “I will kill you in your body?  But I feel like “Grand Slam” would make for an okay “bad movie” night watch, maybe as a way to kick off the evening.  America didn’t appear to agree; the last episode aired on March 14, 1990, and that was that.  Uh, this grand slam turned out to be….(googles “baseball terms”...no I didn’t mean to write “baseball teams”....scrolling, scrolling)...this grand slam turned out to be a foul ball!

SUPER BOWL XXV

Show: “Davis Rules”

Episode: “A Man For All Reasons” (Season 1, Episode 1)

Network: ABC

Aired: January 27, 1991

On the surface, there’s nothing really objectionable about this early-90’s sitcom about a well-meaning science teacher who ends up as the principal of the school his kids attend (oh, the embarrassment!).  Yeah, the thing that sticks out the most about it is the fact that it’s anchored by Randy Quaid, but you have to remember we didn’t know he was insane in the 80’s and 90’s.  “Davis Rules” lands right in between his surprisingly successful one-year run on “Saturday Night Live” in 1986 and his extremely well-known role in 1996’s INDEPENDENCE DAY; he was pretty well regarded!  Pair him with Johnathan Winters as his nutty dad, Debra Jo Rupp as a fellow teacher and a bunch of kid actors, and this seems like a fairly representative, easy breezy sitcom for its time.

And it may be.  But…I dunno, the whole episode has some sort of weird, possibly evil, energy to it.  Audience reactions come just a beat or two later than you may be expecting (there’s a delayed “awww” sound within the first minute or so).  Winters’ comedic rants have a stroke victim-esque “stream of consciousness” feel.  There’s a very strange moment where Quaid starts walking around the school, talking to himself about how alone he is.  It has the same aesthetic and timing as one of those Kyle Mooney sitcom parody pretapes he and Beck Bennett used to do on SNL, only with the supposed punchlines or comedic turns snipped out.  

Oh, yeah, I guess that’s the bigger issue.  The pilot of “Davis Rules” isn’t all that funny.  Clearly, there must have been something to it to somebody, because this astoundingly lasted for two seasons, for a total of 29 episodes, making this one of the more successful post-Super Bowl pilots up to this point (clearing the combined episode counts for “The Last Precinct”, “Hard Copy” and “Grand Slam” combined).  Maybe people just really liked the jaunty Mark Mothersbaugh-penned theme.  I know I did.

SUPER BOWL XXVI

Show: “60 Minutes”

Network: CBS

Aired: January 26, 1992

Oh, goody, we get to talk about the Clintons!  Maybe later on, we can discuss a topic slightly less divisive and incendiary, like abortion.

This brief, relatively last minute, segment of “60 Minutes” is probably one of the more famous post-Super Bowl episodes of all time.  As a reminder, let’s rewind back to the original Bill Clinton sex scandal, the Gennifer Flowers affair.  See, back in the day, credible accusations of an extra-marital affair used to be enough to seriously jeopardize a presidential campaign*.  It’s difficult to remember now, but the only reason Bill and Hillary were even doing a “60 Minutes” interview is because they were fighting for their lives.  

*Obviously, I’m taking a shot at current times here, although, in 1992, the president campaigning in question still won two terms, during which he extra-maritally affaired again, so my snarky little comparison doesn’t really work.  Yeah, but still.

I’ll just be straight-up; this is a fascinating fifteen minutes of television.  It serves as a microcosm of everything there is to both love and hate about Bill Clinton.  Let the historical record show that he is phenomenally full of shit here, maybe the most full of shit anybody has ever been; six years later, Clinton would admit under oath that he had a sexual affair with Flowers.  There’s an almost sociopathic ability on display during the “60 Minutes” interview, to blatantly be spinning out every single one of Steve Kroft’s fairly valid questions, every word so obviously calculated to deflect.

And yet.  The thing about Bill is that he’s really fucking good at this sort of thing.  If you’re able to go limp a little bit and put yourself in “1992-mode” (aka ignoring the next thirty years to come), you can’t help but walk away from the segment agreeing with the Clinton camp’s seeming philosophy of “why are you bothering us with this?  Nobody cares about this.”  By the time Kroft quotes a CBS News poll stating 14% of potential voters would not support a candidate who has had an affair, and Clinton responds by stating, in essence, that meant 86% didn’t care, you can feel a star being born.  You genuinely feel like Clinton has been on the level with you, even though when you look back at the transcript, he hasn’t actually fucking said anything at all.

Oh, and then there’s Hillary, the breakout star of this whole thing.  I won’t go on too much about her, since I don’t want anybody trying to slit my throat, but it’s undeniable that the line of the night was, and remains, “I’m not sitting here [as] some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette”. It was an instant classic even before “American Crime Story: Impeachment” put the moment briefly back in the mainstream a couple of years ago.  I think it’s because Hillary says it with a Southern accent that she had never had before or since.  It’s a moment many in their circle have regretted since; Hillary was never really able to redefine herself again.  The reason as to why coming off slightly contradictory and phony lifted Bill but sunk Hillary, I’ll leave you to decide.  

The good news is, we don’t have to discuss politics in this space ever again, unless Donald Trump was on an episode of “Survivor” that I’m not remembering.

Show: “48 Hours”

Network: CBS

Aired: January 26, 1992

Oh, yeah, technically, newsmagazine “48 Hours” was the real lead-out program for Super Bowl XXVI.  But, like, nobody cares, you know?  It’s not a particularly well-documented episode; I wasn’t expecting to find a copy of it online or anything, but I couldn’t even really find a reliable synopsis as to what was covered that night.  In order to provide you something here, I’ll leave you with this: the inspiration for “48 Hours” was a 1986 CBS News documentary named “48 Hours on Crack Street”, which is the most hilariously “80’s News” title I’ve ever heard.

Moving on!

SUPER BOWL XXVII

Show: “Homicide: Life on the Street”

Episode: “Gone for Goode” (Season 1, Episode 1)

Network: NBC

Aired: January 31, 1993

After watching a lot of pilots that were mostly shitty the past couple of weeks, downing the initial “Homicide: Life on the Street” hour was an indescribable feeling.  It was like having a perfect piece of medium-rare steak after gargling only razor blades for the past five years.

First of all, I could just list the cast and my job would be done here.  Melissa Leo.  Jon Polito.  Richard Belzer.  Yaphet Kotto.  Ned Beatty. The late Andre fucking Braugher.  Everyone here is an inherently interesting presence, with a lifetime of acting experience between them.  It’s a murderer’s row of talent, one that I don’t believe is rivaled before or since by any post-Super Bowl show I’ve gotten to dip into during this project.

Marry that with one of the more propulsive and engaging scripts we’ve had after the Super Bowl up to this point, and you have a really exciting hour of television.  The actual nuts and bolts of it are things you’ve seen before in countless cop shows: a tense interrogation, fights amongst personnel, and a rookie being shown the ropes.  But it’s the dialogue, the way everybody seems to talk, that’s so compelling.  Crosetti’s low-level conspiracy thinking that leads to discussions about how much trust to put into institutions.  Pembleton’s amazing ability to speak in prose, even when he’s screaming at someone to get off his back.  Felton’s gravelly, disbelieving, ground level grumbling.  

Oh, and then there’s John Munch, maybe the most significant television characters of all time if you’re a psycho like me (he famously would go on to become the only fictional character to appear in ten different series, a lot of that facilitated by “Homicide” would go on to get folded into the gigantic “Law & Order” universe/continuity).  Belzer passed away in 2023, but Munch will live on forever.  This all served as a good reminder for me to finally go through this show, one of the most critically acclaimed shows of the past thirty years that has only recently been put on streaming after years of music rights making that look unlikely.  There are good things in this life!

SUPER BOWL XXVIII

Show: “The John Larroquette Show”

Episode: “Eggs” (Season 1, Episode 17)

Network: NBC

Aired: January 30, 1994

This was a rare back-to-back for NBC, having broadcast the Super Bowl in 1993 as well.  Thanks to some broadcasting rights wonkiness, they would eventually broadcast the Super Bowl twice more before the decade was done.  Perhaps feeling like they were playing with house money, NBC decided this time around to eschew airing yet another pilot after the game and instead programmed a double-billing of two sitcoms that were already on the air.

First up, “The John Larroquette Show!”

John Larroquette is one of those guys who I’ve always liked as just a comedic personality who hangs around, as opposed to a specific show or role (I was too young to catch “Night Court”!)  I hadn’t ever seen an episode of his self-titled sitcom, although I was eager to get to this episode in order to get an idea of it.

It’s not bad!  It has more of an edge to it than I would have expected from a 90’s NBC comedy.  First of all, it takes place in a seedy bus terminal in St. Louis.  Second of all, John Hemingway (Larroquette) is an actively recovering alcoholic; the opening theme makes that part perfectly clear.  Third, there’s quite a bit of racial comedy inherent to its nature, with John and Dexter (Daryl “Chill” Mitchell) constantly throwing around barbs about each other’s worldviews and perspectives.  It makes a lot out of John presuming things about what Dexter likes just because he’s black.  The show manages to make all of this sound like guys just talking (or at least, the sitcom version of “guys just talking”), instead of a program Trying To Have A Comedic Discussion.

Like the episode of “Davis Rules” we just reviewed, “Eggs” can be strange.  There’s a long stretch devoted to Chi McBride singing a lullaby to an abandoned baby, with no real attempt to play it for laughs.  They do revise Chi singing during the credits and that is suddenly played for laughs, as he seems to throw the baby across the room, so deep in the throes of the melody is he.  Thank god, though, the baby is thrown back to him in a flourish.  Oh yeah, and before that, a skittish and anxious cop tries to kidnap the baby.  So, I would say there’s a lot going on in this twenty or so minutes.

Show: “The Good Life”

Episode: “The Statue”

Network: NBC

Aired: January 30, 1994

First of all, the Wikipedia is once again wrong on what episode aired here.  It claims the pilot was broadcast after Super Bowl XXXII, but TV Guide listings at the time confirm it was actually the fifth episode, “The Statue”.  In your face, Wikipedia!

“The Good Life” is a fairly difficult show to Google; there’s a much more famous UK show with the same title that seemingly has the SEO on lock.  It’s also not a well-documented program in any way, possibly because it also lasted thirteen episodes.  Luckily, the star of this sitcom, John Caponera, has uploaded a pair of “Good Life” episodes onto his YouTube channel, one of which was “The Statue”.  Thank you, John!

I actually thought this was pretty solid.  Based on just this episode, “The Good Life” doesn’t appear to be a genre-shifting masterpiece or anything; it lives off of all the familiar tropes we’ve come to know.  John works at a factory with his best friend (Drew Carey) and gets into all kinds of wacky, misunderstanding-laden, situations.  This episode revolves around the done-to-death “having dinner at the boss’ house” plotline.  The central conflict surrounding a broken-off penis of the titular statue adds some shocking ribaldry, but to describe it, it’s nothing you’ve never seen before.

But…I dunno, it’s funny and well-constructed!  The conflicts escalate and intersect at the perfect times, the jokes land, the performances are all comfortable, the characters are perfectly defined.  I don’t have a lot of negative feedback to provide here.  Carey especially seemed to have found himself in a great spot.  He nails the aloof, sarcastic sidekick role, and is able to imbue Drew (love a show where everyone’s characters is just their first name) with that signature Drew voice and style.  It’s not surprising that he was able to leverage “The Good Life” into his own titular sitcom the next calendar year.

“The Good Life” was the first one of these “a few episodes, then tossed in the garbage disposal” shows I’ve come across during this project where I was genuinely surprised it didn’t last longer.  Camponera has stated an imposed hiatus to make room for Winter Olympics coverage crippled any momentum the show might have enjoyed after this week, and that sounds as good a reason as any to me.  NBC wouldn’t go on to sweat it too much; their breakout season was just around the corner.

SUPER BOWL XXIX

Show: “Extreme”

Episode: “Pilot” (Season 1, Episode 1)

Aired: January 29, 1995

Network: ABC

For the longest time, this entry represented my biggest heartbreak.  This show, called “Extreme” was about a Rocky Mountain search-and-rescue team, starred James Brolin, got cancelled after seven episodes, and was called “Extreme”.  It was also monumental in the history of the post-Super bowl show, as it sucked so bad that it forced everyone to stop using the slot for doomed pilots*.  Oh, and it was called “Extreme”.  How could I not get my hands on this?  But it was available essentially nowhere, and I was forced to have to lick my wound and wonder what could have been.

*At least, allegedly.  This part of the Wikipedia entry got slapped with the dreaded “[citation needed]”. 

Then, out of nowhere, someone uploaded the entire series onto YouTube as one long five-hour video.  Stuff like this is why I haven’t quite ruled out the existence of a higher power.

After watching the “Extreme” pilot, I haven’t ruled out the non-existence of a higher power, either.  I found it to be a pretty brutal watch, and I don’t think I’m bringing in any outside biases on this.  I genuinely wanted to…not like it, per se, but I came prepared to let the stupidity promised by its premise wash over me.  Frankly, my one note for the “Extreme” pilot is that it could have been stupider.  You get some gnar-rushing absurdity here and there; there’s a great moment about halfway through where two skiiers are racing each other down the slope, some mid-90’s alt-song you almost recognize scoring the entire thing, only for the song to cut out when disaster strikes.  The disaster?  One of the guys falls.  And falls.  And falls.  Cut to reaction shot from his friend.  Cut to more falling.  Extreme!

Unfortunately, I get the sense “Extreme” wants to be a real show.  The production values were higher than I could have expected; admittedly, many of the mountain rescue scenes look pretty stunning for a 1995 ABC show.  I’m guessing this meant the show was expensive, so I’m further guessing there was a desire for some prestige to this.  It’s bogged down, then, by a lot of attempts at character moments.  This is not in and of itself a bad thing; no show can survive on spectacle for very long.  But, instead of being quick and zippy, the character dynamics are leaden and dull.  Brolin doesn’t serve as good of a ringer as I had thought; he’s not in it much and he seems a little checked out.  I wanted simultaneously more and less from this show.

Alas, it didn’t matter for long; “Extreme” aired its final episode on April 6th, 1995, and into the memory hole it went, at least until “snowymatrix thru-walker” uploaded it to YouTube.  Thanks, again!

SUPER BOWL XXX

Show: “Friends”

Episode: “The One After the Super Bowl” (Season 2, Episodes 12 & 13)

Aired: January 28, 1996

Network: NBC

Special Guest Stars: Brooke Shields, Chris Isaak, Julia Roberts, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Fred Willard, Dan Castellaneta

The one that instantly changed what could be done with the post-Super Bowl real estate.  Unlike the halftime show, the lessons here were also learned immediately; from here, we enter a very long period where networks leveraged this spot to raise the profile of shows that were already quite hot, stuffing as many guest stars into the proceedings as they possibly could. 

“The One After the Super Bowl” is an hour-long episode that is effectively two half-hours stitched together.  The first half centers around a Joey Tribbiani stalker (played by Brooke Shields, who gets a palpable audience pop during her entrance that almost none of the other guest stars do) who doesn’t understand that he’s not actually a doctor in real life.  This is the kind of rock-stupid character gag that should be frustrating; if she thinks soap operas are real, one wonders how she’s able to turn the TV on in the first place.  But for some reason, “Friends” is just barely able to make this work, perhaps because this version of New York is so comically heightened already.  Shields’ commitment to the bit helps, too; this apparently was enough to convince NBC to scoop her up to launch “Suddenly Susan” later that year.

The second half finds our Friends crew on a Jean-Claude Van Damme film set, where Joey tries to suck up to the PA in order to land a role.  On this set, Chandler runs into an old friend (Julia Roberts), who he hadn’t seen since he embarrassed her in front of the entire assembly in elementary school.  It’s obvious from the jump why she’s suddenly so interested in reconnecting with him, so the punchline isn’t all that funny but, frankly, the sheer novelty of seeing prime Julia Roberts on a fucking network sitcom forgives a lot.

The whole episode is kind of like this.  We see Phoebe date a schoolteacher, who’s played by Chris Isaak.  I didn’t think he was that good, but…it’s fucking Chris Isaak, you know?  The storyline that connects the episode’s two halves concerns Ross’ pursuit to reconnect with his monkey Marcel*; this leads him to the San Diego Zoo, where he runs into a zookeeper and a groundskeeper.  They’re played by Fred Willard and Dan Castellaneta, respectively.  Just two stone cold comedy legends coming in to do maybe five lines each.

*If you haven’t picked up on it yet, I’m somewhat of a Friends skeptic.  I’ve watched a good handful of episodes, and there are probably four or five lines that roll around in my brain and make me giggle, but I’ve never fully warmed up to it.  However, shit like Marcel the monkey sort of gets to the heart of what I think can be lovingly goofy about the show.  Why does Ross have a pet monkey?  Fuck you, that’s why.

“The One After the Super Bowl” isn’t the best episode I’ve watched in this project.  It’s not even the best episode of “Friends” I’ve ever seen.  But, it doesn’t need to be.  What it’s trying to be is a flex, a warning to the rest of the television landscape.  The central message is “We can pull prime broadcast slots and innumerous guest stars like it’s fucking nothing.  Good luck.”  And in that sense, the numbers don’t lie.  Nearly 53 million viewers (about half of the Super Bowl audience) stuck around to watch this episode; no other lead-out program has ever really come close.  “Friends” wasn’t even done with its second season yet and it was already unstoppable.

SUPER BOWL XXXI

Show: “The X-Files”

Episode: “Leonard Betts” (Season 4, Episode 12)

Aired: January 26, 1997

Network: FOX

FOX has entered the chat, ladies and gentlemen!  It turns out that the former fledgling network had managed to wrap up their inaugural Super Bowl broadcast with a banger, for my money a Mount Rushmore post-Super Bowl episode.

To some degree, selecting “The X-Files” was FOX taking the gauntlet thrown down by NBC the year before and running with it.  Where “The X-Files”’ peak was during its near-decade long initial run is somewhat debatable, but mid-Season Four was as good a choice as any.  The show was regularly clearing 20 million viewers a week, huge for the new-ish FOX network.  Its cultural cache was likely even higher than that, with its fandom beginning to popularize this thing called “Internet message boards”.  A feature film was already in the works.  They even cameo’ed on “The Simpsons” two weeks prior.  Relative to its genre nature, “The X-Files” was humongous.

To another degree, though, “Leonard Betts” eschews the glitz and glamour that the post-Super Bowl spot could now afford a television show, sticking to the basics.  They wisely stick to its famous “Monster of the Week episode” format (as opposed to its infamous “Mythology episode” format), giving us one of the stickier, memorably gooier villains the show had ever had.  Yet, Betts remains wildly sympathetic, a feat largely built off the back of its main guest star, Paul McCrane.  You watch him murder people who have been nothing but friendly to him, yet you can’t help but feel for him as he undergoes his many painful, brutal transformations.  

The move to keeping the episode to the basics allows potential new viewers to get oriented to the crucial dynamic between Mulder and Scully, and if ever there were a good example of the magic between David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, it’d be “Leonard Betts”.  Mulder is in prime “what if this brutal crime was being committed by this made-up creature in this totally insane way” mode, matched only by Scully’s peak exasperation.  And, hey, you would be, too.  Imagine if you trained rigorously and studiosly, only to be paired with a coworker who was constantly like “hey what if this mugging was done by the Chupacabra” and he was right 80% of the time?

The brilliance of “Leonard Betts”, though, comes in a small moment right at the end.  It’s established that Leonard stays alive by eating the cancer out of his victims.  So, when his interests suddenly turn on Scully, meekly telling her, “you have something I need”?  We have perhaps the most perfectly crafted hook in this entire project.  As a theoretical new viewer, seeing what the show is typically like before being hit with the potential of what it could become…you bet I’d be watching the next week.

(The punchline, of course, is that the next episode, “Never Again”, was an infamous stinker.  Alas!)

SUPER BOWL XXXII

Show: “3rd Rock From the Sun”

Episode: “36!  24!  36!  Dick!” (Season 3, Episodes 14 & 15)

Aired: January 25, 1998

Network: NBC

Special Guest Stars: Cindy Crawford, Angie Everhart, Greg Gumbel

“3rd Rock From the Sun” is not a show I dabbled in much, either as a kid or now.  It just wasn’t on my radar, and the rare glimpses I did get made me slightly uncomfortable.  This “Coneheads”-esque sitcom about aliens trying to integrate into human society just had an undefinable strange energy that I just didn’t vibe with.

This episode, though, does hold a place in my heart, at least sort of.  Super Bowl XXXII (Denver vs. Green Bay) was the first Super Bowl I ever watched, and it was an uncommon family gathering to boot (we would never do it again).  I remember the ads for this episode running constantly throughout the afternoon and, again, the strange energy was not something I wanted to fuck with.  So, actually seeing the episode felt like taking on an old enemy of sorts.

Look, I don’t have a ton to say about it!  I still think “3rd Rock” is weird!  I’m not quite in love with John Lithgow the way everyone else seems to be; I don’t despise him or anything, but he’s always seemed like the bagged cereal version of a “faux British aesthetic” guy.  The episode’s plotline is almost childishly simple (girls have come into town and everyone is horny), yet maddeningly over-complicated (the girls turn out to be from Venus and are here to broadcast a beer commercial during the Super Bowl that will make everyone weak and compliant, allowing Venus to take all of the stuff from Earth).  I also think I experience cognitive dissonance from seeing Wayne Knight play such a huge role in a different NBC sitcom from the 90’s.

There are positives: I was stunned at how much I liked Kirsten Johnson, someone I hadn’t really been exposed to all that much.  I thought French Stewart does a pretty good job with the “confident dumb guy” act.  It’s always nice to see Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Jane Curtin. Finally, I give points for utilizing the Super Bowl itself as part of the action. Still, I have to wonder if this is another example of the “event mega-episode stuffed with celebrity guests” being a poor fit for what is, at its core, a show that is happy to just be light and silly.  “36! 24! 36! Dick!” then may not be the most representative episode for “3rd Rock”.

I’ll close with this.  What’s up with NBC and “3” shows?  “3rd Rock From the Sun”!  “30 Rock!” “Third Watch!”  As a famous network sitcom star was fond of saying, “what’s the deal?”

SUPER BOWL XXXIII

Show: “Family Guy”

Episode: “Death Has a Shadow” (Season 1, Episode 1)

Aired: January 31, 1999

Network: FOX

We end the 90’s with an animation two-hander from FOX.  First up, the series premiere of “Family Guy”.

Although I had a long period in my mid-twenties or so where I found “Family Guy” a tired and creaky vehicle for shock humor, I initially got in with Seth MacFarlane’s magnum opus on the ground floor.  Let it be known I was one of the twelve people watching it in the early 00’s as it was caught in the patented FOX death spiral of being aired seemingly at random throughout the year.  I was there way before everyone else found it either on DVD or on Adult Swim, and it is genuinely flabbergasting to me that it’s still cranking out new episodes to this day.  “Family Guy” has survived a lot of opposition to weirdly become this comedy institution, even as it’s essentially refused to adapt or evolve with changing audience tastes.

It’s a trip, then, to return to its very first episode, which has the energy of a writer’s room that’s suddenly been empowered to just put every funny thought they’ve ever had onto the page.  There are a nearly infinite amount of punchlines constantly coming at you throughout its brief twenty-two minutes, almost as if they sensed the network wasn’t going to support them for very long.  The pilot episode is borderline exhausting, although I should mention it’s frequently very funny.  Jerry Seinfeld as a court jester!  The Kool-Aid Man busting through the walls!  “Just one gun”!  I laughed quite a bit!  I guess I’ve come back around to “Family Guy”.

The only thing kind of odd about “Death Has a Shadow” is that they clearly hadn’t hammered out Peter’s friend group yet, nor the full character dynamics.  We briefly see Quagmire, and we see in the background a black guy who is clearly going to become Cleveland.  But there’s no Joe Swanson, at least not yet.  Seth Green’s voice for Chris isn’t quite right, either, still too much like its Buffalo Bill inspiration.  And Lacey Chabert is voicing Meg, who the family isn’t horrifically rude to yet.  But the commitment to non-sequitur absurdism was there from the jump.  This was fun!

(As before, points to the episode for directly involving the Super Bowl, as well as caricatures of John Madden and Pat Summerall.)

Show: “The Simpsons”

Episode: “Sunday, Cruddy Sunday”

Aired: January 31, 1999

Network: FOX

Whereas “Family Guy” was still being birthed, here we catch “The Simpsons” in its slow exit from its prime.  “Sunday, Cruddy Sunday” is located right in the middle of its tenth season, maybe a year or two removed from what is generally considered the show’s golden years.  You can feel that slight loss of fastball in this episode; the punchlines aren’t as constant, and the ones that are there are maybe 5% less sharp as you typically associate with The Simpsons.  It also suffers from my least favorite trope: guest stars either getting announced, or announcing themselves (“I’m Dolly Parton!” or “Wow, it’s Dan Marino!”, that sort of thing, you know, the way people talk).

But!  It’s still a successful and funny outing, with a great sad-sack guest appearance by the late Fred Willard.  I also have to give the same points I gave “Family Guy” for also directly involving the Big Game itself, with significant extra credit for actually landing Madden and Summerall to play themselves.  That nicely offsets the glowing cameo they provide to the head of the network himself, Rupert Murdoch (also voiced by himself).  Of the two “Simpsons” Super Bowl episodes, this is clearly the superior.

I Watched (Nearly) Every Post-Super Bowl Show Part II: The 1980s!

Hello!  Welcome to Part 2 of my series on the chronological history of the Super Bowl lead-out program.  If you missed Part 1, covering the 60’s and 70’s, you can read it here.

A lot of 80’s television is a total mystery to me.

I started paying attention to then-current TV in the mid-to-late 90’s, and the classic reruns playing in my household were still very much of the 50’s and 60’s ilk (“I Love Lucy”, “The Brady Bunch”, that sort of thing).  Not a lot of 80’s stuff going on, both too recent to be classic, but too far away to be current.  It’s just not really in my wheelhouse much.

I mention this so that it won’t surprise you much that, of the ten Super Bowl lead-out programs of the 1980’s, only one was a show I had ever seen a second of (discounting nonfiction fare like “60 Minutes”).  In my defense, though, a few of these are from shows I bet you’ve never seen a second of, either.  Unless you happen to be a big fan of “MacGruder and Loud”?  Or “The Last Precinct”?

Yeah, I’m here to tell you now: the episodes that aired after the Super Bowl from 1980 to 1989 are, for the most part, pretty dire stuff. We are firmly in the era of networks entering an arms race to showcase the Next Big Show. For the most part, they…don’t become the next big show. I know 80’s television is held in high regard by many, so you’ll have to forgive my dumb millennial transgressions, but the vast majority of the following ten episodes left me extremely cold.  Well, except for one or two exceptions, one of them being one of the best pilots ever made.  Who’da thunk?

But first, let’s watch a little news…

SUPER BOWL XIV

 Show: 60 Minutes

Episode: “Bette Davis/Thunderbirds/PDAP”

Aired: January 20, 1980

Network: CBS

By sheer happenstance, I was able to track down an essentially fully intact version of this episode (with commercials!) thanks to the “Museum of Classic Chicago Television” YouTube channel.  And you know what?  Not only was it a delight, but it also felt like the perfect artifact of the year 1980.

We open with an extended interview between Bette Davis and Mike Wallace which, frankly, has chronologically been my favorite thing I’ve seen so far in this project.  There’s a lot of talk nowadays about bravery and integrity in journalism.  And, look, asking questions in the White House media scrum knowing there’s an 80% chance the President is going to yell at you and a 95% chance that ding-dongs on the Internet will send you death threats is its own form of bravery.  But I’ve never seen anyone have the balls Wallace has here when he states as bluntly as possible to Davis, “You must admit that you were difficult [on set], Bette.”  I want to shit my pants just thinking about doing that, and here’s Mike just casually dropping it like he’s asking how she likes her steak cooked.  Oh, he then quickly clarifies he meant she was “impossible”.  Naturally, Bette gives it back as well as she takes: “only when it was a stupid director, then it was self-preservation.”  They don’t make any of this like they used to!

The second segment is about the US Air Force Thunderbirds, the demonstration squad that’s been dazzling audiences with air shows for decades.  The story itself is mostly notable for Harry Reasoner getting strapped into one of the planes and taken for a ride, but the framing of it is interesting.  Reasoner opens the piece by lamenting the loss of heroes in today’s society, of things to be proud of.  In no uncertain terms, he clarifies how deflating the 70’s were to the idea of “heroes” and looks to the 80’s for rehabilitation.  Whether you agree with the outcome or not, this feels like a real exposed nerve that the incoming Reagan years attempted to cover.  It also unfortunately feels coldly familiar.

The final, and main, segment is a Dan Rather piece about the Palmer Drug Abuse Program (PDAP), at the time heavily lauded by Carol Burnett’s daughter.  More than that, it’s a look at/take down of its founder Bob Meehan.  Now, people’s feelings on the guy clearly varied then, and they clearly varied now, so I’ll let you decide whether Meehan was a messiah or a cult leader (I personally felt like he’s very obviously the latter from the second I laid eyes on him, and that was before he gave several extremely bad answers regarding PDAP’s success rate and finances), but I will tell you my favorite detail.  It was the revelation of PDAP’s reluctance to let its participants out to see concerts, with the sole exception appearing to be a lousy band called Freeway; three guesses who the lead singer and drummer is.

It all ends with a brief Andy Rooney piece, which was football-related and frankly more coherent than countless parodies of Rooney would lead you to believe, and viewer mail.  All in all, I loved watching this piece of 45(!) year old snapshot of America.  Should this become a retro “60 Minutes” site?  Reply in the comments below!

SUPER BOWL XV

Show: “CHiPs”

Episode: “11-99: Officer Needs Help” (Season 4, Episode 11)

Aired: January 25, 1981

Network: NBC

I don’t know that I get “CHiPs.”

Admittedly, “11-99: Officer Needs Help” is the only episode I’ve seen out of its entire six-season run, thus I can’t speak to how representative it is to the “CHiPs” as a whole.  All I can say is that it is way lower-stakes than I was really expecting.  The main conflict feels like something the Hardy Boys could have taken care of: a warehouse worker schemes with some criminals to steal a bunch of stereos, and it’s up to the California Highway Patrol to retrieve them!  The mystery of “who’s the inside man” isn’t super compelling; we know from the first scene, and Ponch figures it out almost casually.  There’s a novelty at play with several clearly-on-location shoots on Los Angeles highways.  The episode itself isn’t even all that bad; it moves along, and there’s some timely themes regarding the use of technology vs. trusting human instinct.

But…I can’t quite figure out why “CHiPs” was such a phenomenon.   Obviously, it was huge enough to make Erik Estrada a household name, at least for a while.  But I thought he and his co-star Larry Wilcox were just okay.  Their chemistry together is present, but absolutely nothing special.  The only storyline I found myself engaged with was the rookie dispatcher, who keeps tumbling over her codes and APBs.  It’s such a weird choice (as is the eventual revelation as to why she’s so nervous) that I was forced to respect it.

Otherwise, meh.  Cool theme song, though!  Maybe that’s why everyone liked “CHiPs”!  “Dah dah dah DAH dot da DA DAAAA!”

SUPER BOWL XVI

Show: “60 Minutes”

Aired: January 24, 1982

Network: CBS

Despite finding the previous post-Super Bowl 60 Minutes episode, I couldn’t even determine with confidence what segments even aired this night.  The best guess I have comes from the New York Public Library, which has a page listing all CBS News programs in the 80’s.  On January 24, 1982, a show aired with the following segments: “The Best in the West/What the General Knew/Thunderbirds”.  The three segment format alone fairly obviously makes this a 60 Minutes episode, but what sealed the deal for me was the “Thunderbirds” segment, which we just reviewed a couple of minutes ago.  Guess CBS figured shooting Harry Reasoner into the sky was too good not to rerun.

Beyond that, I haven’t a clue what this may have been about!  Were I to venture a guess in regards to the other two, I presume “The Best in the West” is about the shopping mall in Las Vegas, and as far as “What the General Knew”, it would be the power of hawking cheap car insurance with Shaquille O’Neal.

SUPER BOWL XVII

Show: “The A-Team”

Episode: “Children of Jamestown” (Season 1, Episode 2)

Aired: January 30, 1983

Network: NBC

Okay, now this I get.

First, a note of clarification.  Contrary to some lists/articles floating around out there, the pilot for “The A-Team” did not air after Super Bowl XVII.  The pilot, “Mexican Slayride”, aired the week before.  “Children on Jamestown” is the second episode, and already changes are afoot: Tim Dunigan is replaced by Dirk Benedict as “Face”, where he would stay until the series’ conclusion.  I have no real insight into the scheduling, but putting episode two of something after the Super Bowl feels like a major power move.  “We know you’re going to love this show so much right off the bat, we don’t need a big event episode!”

Well, clearly it was a correct call.  I knew “The A-Team” mostly through countless parodies, as well as that classic theme song.  Of course, I knew this is where Mr. T started solidifying himself as an icon*.  But I had never actually seen an episode.

*Although I only recently figured out that “I pity the fool” is not from “The A-Team”.  It is, in fact, from ROCKY III.

And, look…it’s for the most part deeply silly.  I’m not even sure the premise makes all that much sense; if the idea is they have to stay off the grid to avoid the law, how is that reconciled against taking on mercenary missions where you fire rocket launchers everywhere?  How incognito can you be when one of your four members looks like Clubber Lang?  But, it’s undeniably fun.  The chemistry between the four is infectious, and all the different personalities shine through.  George Peppard in particular is able to somehow make Hannibal, a guy who on paper is too cool-for-school (he treats every gun pointed to his head as a minor annoyance), feel like an actual leader.  The whole runner about trying to get his boots back is great!

They even manage to make their sudden turns into seriousness feel somewhat realistic, such as when they all tell reporter Amy Allen (Melinda Cullea) to start accepting death so that she’s no longer scared of the mission ahead.  These are all Vietnam veterans after all, and they’ve all seen some serious stuff (I genuinely wonder how many TV shows before this featured Vietnam vets at their center).  Throw in John Saxon as a sunglasses-wearing head of a religious cult, and you got yourself a really fun hour!  A-Team?  More like A+Team!

SUPER BOWL XVIII

Show: “Airwolf”

Episode: “Shadow of the Hawke” (Season 1, Episode 1)

Aired: January 22, 1984

Network: CBS

“Damn you.”

“Too late.  God already did.”

• An actual exchange from the pilot episode of “Airwolf”

So if I thought I didn’t get “CHiPs”, I really, really didn’t get “Airwolf”, to the point where I actually had to browse Reddit to get an understanding as to why this was a hit in its day.  The cast is a bizarre hodgepodge of people you would never think to even see in the same building, let alone share a scene, up to and including our two male leads Jan-Michael Vincent and…Ernest Borgnine!  David Hemmings plays the villain, which adds some weird legitimacy to the whole thing, but also…what?  Also, it’s very clear that the real main character is the titular helicopter, but we don’t see much of it in this inaugural episode outside of a sequence in the beginning and end.  We learn midway through that Vincent’s character (Stringfellow Hawke) plays the cello.  I think this is meant to be serious.

In its defense, the two-hour pilot is one of those “movies that establish the premise” kind of deals (ie. not likely to be indicative of what the show was like week-to-week).  I assume once “Airwolf” is able to revert to “mission-of-the-week” stuff, more specific character dynamics can begin to set in.  But, clearly, America saw enough in this initial outing that the show ran for three more years (including a fourth season with an entirely different cast, only made to hit the required number of episodes to qualify for syndication).

For me, I found myself frequently puzzled and borderline-bored by “Shadow of the Hawke”, in which Hawke agrees to recover the stolen Airwolf helicopter for “The Firm” in exchange for information on his missing brother.  It doesn’t help that I don’t quite get Vincent himself, either.  I found him an unengaging lead, although he wasn’t alone in that regard.  The whole enterprise was too sullen and self-serious for me.  I got a major boost of energy when Borgnine showed up, if only because his presence was the exact opposite of everything “Airwolf” had been for the first thirty minutes, and Hemmings helped throughout, but on the whole, I just didn’t warm up to it.

I suppose if you were a gearhead kid growing up, “Airwolf” would have hit like crack; the helicopter itself and the fight sequences it engages in are easily the highlight of the episode (and the most high production value thing I had seen in this project up to this point).  I think that, along with its sullen, almost cynical tone, is what drew people to the show initially.  It accurately reflected the era it was made in, no easy feat (Libya and Gaddafi are directly referenced by name several times).  But for me, the true highlight comes in the episode’s final moments, as Hawke tearfully plays the cello while staring off into the sunset.  As an eagle flies into frame, I wondered if maybe I’d been too hard on poor ‘Airwolf’. 

SUPER BOWL XIX

Show: “Macgruder and Loud”

Episode: “Pilot” (Season 1, Episode 1)

Aired: January 20, 1985

Network: ABC

ABC enters the chat!

This is another entry where the content is, if not fully and officially lost, at least impossible to find.  The opening 15 minutes of the pilot to “Macgruder and Loud” were uploaded twelve years ago on YouTube, but that’s about all that’s findable.  I presume the other 75 minutes or so were uploaded as part of a playlist back in 2012, but for whatever reason, they’ve been taken down.  It’s clearly floating around there somewhere, but I wasn’t able to secure it.

It’s likely for the best; the 15 minutes I was able to watch weren’t terrible.  It’s all competent to a degree.  But the premise feels…flimsy.  The gist to this Aaron Spelling Production is that Macgruder (John Getz) and Loud (Kathryn Harrold) are a married couple that both work as LAPD police officers.  Due to anti-fraternization policies, they must keep this a secret from their boss.  That appears to be about the long and short of it, although the first call we see them respond to is a domestic disturbance (see what happens when people get emotionally involved?).  There doesn’t seem to be a lot of juice here to propel it to a years-long run, and America appeared to agree.  “Macgruder and Loud” only made it to 15 episodes before reaching an annulment.  

Two final things about it: “Macgruder and Loud” was apparently pimped endlessly during the Super Bowl, which anecdotally led Johnny Carson to quip “Did you see that new show, “Frequent and Loud”?’ which, if true, is a venomous enough burn that you can forgive its lack of an actual pun.  Two, I suspect much of the show’s failure can be attributed to its all-timer clunky title.  “Macgruder and Loud.”  What is anybody supposed to make of a title like that?  Besides being sneakily unintuitive to say, it doesn’t really sound like a cop show.  Maybe a boring lawyer show?  Perhaps an Odd Couple-type comedy.  Of course, the show “Macgyver” would premiere a few months later and completely market correct the “Macg–” name, and that would be that.

SUPER BOWL XX

Show: “The Last Precinct”

Episode: “The Last Precinct” (Season 1, Episode 1)

Network: NBC

Aired: January 26, 1986

To quickly review the premise of “The Last Precinct”, a cop comedy that lasted only eight episodes before disappearing from the pop culture ether, there would be reason for optimism regarding its potential status as a “Brilliant But Canceled” artifact.  It’s a colorful cast of misfits who are all huddled under one less-than-desirable precinct, with a desire to be a POLICE ACADEMY-esque laugh-a-minute sitcom, with nerd culture beloveds like Ernie Hudson and Adam West amongst the cast.  I had actually been looking forward to this pilot for quite some time.

But, uh…”The Last Precinct” is not good.  Its main crime, sadly, is that it’s not funny at all.  It’s not even always clear what kind of humor it even wants to ride on.  The Mike Post-penned theme song relies on a maddening array of wacky sound effects, and the opening twenty minutes has a lot of juvenile “dumb noises and blonde bimbos” kind of stuff, so fine, I can accept it wallowing in the gutter to court teenage boys.  On the other hand, it also wants to be a complex comedy of errors, with people and things not being what they seem.  A big part of the pilot’s story revolves around a blind gangster’s dog being switched with a drug-sniffing dog, which is not the worst idea in the world.  But “The Last Precinct” is terrified that we won’t be able to keep up, so it frequently puts up text on the screen saying stuff like “this is the drug-sniffing dog, REMEMBER?” and it’s like, yeah man, you just switched two things, we’re not watching the fucking COURT JESTER here.

It’s often too lazy to even do a joke at all.  One of the misfit cops is a transgender woman*, which has to constitute some sort of first for network television.  You start looking at the year “The Last Precinct” was made, and you start getting nervous about the cheap shots the show will take at her.  Ah, but “cheap shots” would veer too closely into resembling “punchlines”.  It’s mostly satisfied to just point out that she used to be a man, then dusting off its hands and slinking away.  It does the same with the cop who is also an Elvis impersonator: outside of a couple of lines of dialogue that reference song titles, the main joke there is “he sings Elvis songs”.  Funny!

*That is to say, “from penis to vaginaaaaa”.

Adam West as the clueless commissioner, decades before finding a second life as a beloved voice actor on “The Simpsons” and “Family Guy”, is easily the best thing in the entire pilot.  Alas, he appears in only about three or four of the episode’s 75-minute runtime.  Yeah, that’s the other thing, the pilot is double-length which is too fucking long for something trying to be this manic.  The actual show was an hour, and it didn’t air a second episode until April, by which time I’m sure its goose was already cooked.  “The Last Precinct”?  Let’s hope so!

SUPER BOWL XXI

Show: “Hard Copy”

Episode: “Pilot” (Season 1, Episode 1)

Network: CBS

Aired: January 25, 1987

Another year, another too-long pilot for a show that fizzled out and was never heard from again.  “Hard Copy” (not to be confused with the syndicated shit-stirring tabloid show that first aired in 1989 and made Googling the 1987 CBS show a near-impossible task) barely made it into March before getting yanked from the schedule.

To “Hard Copy”’s kind-of credit, its central premise of “‘Hill Street Blues’, but for journalists” is a valid one, and it’s one of the only network dramas I’ve seen from the 80’s and 90’s to treat law enforcement as less than sacrosanct: reporters are directly calling out police commissioners to their faces for failing to properly follow up on obvious crimes.  Also noteworthy are its main trio of actors: Michael Murphy (who would go on to play the title role in TANNER ‘88), Wendy Crewson (who I mainly know as the buzzkill wife of Tim Allen in THE SANTA CLAUSE) and Dean Devlin (who would eventually find his groove as a high-level producer of things such as INDEPENDENCE DAY, GODZILLA and THE PATRIOT).

The real issue, besides (again) being too long of a pilot (72 minutes), is that all the acting feels very heightened; our lead actors are constantly declaring things LOUDLY.  It’s also just…kinda dull, with none of the distinct characters or crackling dialogue that would make the aforementioned “Hill Street Blues” or later hits like “NYPD Blue” and “Law & Order” such standouts.  It just doesn’t work.  On the other hand, it ends on a saxophone-scored freeze frame of Devlin about to crack open a beer.  I liked that part.

SUPER BOWL XXII

Show: “The Wonder Years”

Episode: “Pilot” (Season 1, Episode 1)

Network: ABC

Aired: January 31, 1988

After fizzling out with the “Macgruder and Loud” pilot after their inaugural Super Bowl broadcast, ABC followed it up three years later with one of the greatest pilots in television history.  Sometimes, it pays to just keep trying!

Although I wouldn’t claim to be an expert on its entire six-year run, “The Wonder Years” was nevertheless a seminal show for me when I was a kid, it being easily the most interesting and creative of the then-current Nick-at-Nite lineup.  Its appeal to me at the time is hard to explain, considering it’s a show drenched in nostalgia, both for the late-sixties/early-seventies as well as that fraught age of pre-teenagehood, neither of which I had enough context for to really look back on in any way just yet.  But the tone was so unique and warm and inviting (Daniel Stern’s narration was always so soothing to me), and the characters were so specific, yet universal: the emotionally unavailable father, the meathead older brother, the socially-conscious sister, the frazzled mother trying to hold everything together, the impossibly dorky friend, and in the middle of it all, the young man who’s realizing he’s changing: new school, new circumstances, new feelings for that girl across the street he hasn’t hung out with in awhile.

All of the above, by the way, is set up so efficiently in this first twenty-four minutes of “The Wonder Years”’ life, proving that you don’t need two fucking hours in order to hook a prime-time audience.  The pilot manages to be sweet, funny, sad, sometimes in the same scene.  It perfectly marries the time of turmoil inherent to being on the cusp of thirteen with the time of turmoil inherent to being on the cusp of the 1970’s (there’s a joke about the school changing its name to Robert Kennedy that is as honest as it is bleak).  The revelation of the fate of Winnie’s brother is so moving, and slightly scary.  The famous ending is perfectly wistful.  There’s essentially nothing I don’t like about this episode.  It’s difficult for me to know what else to say about it.  It speaks for itself.

Change is terrifying and hard.  The “Wonder Years” pilot is comforting and easy.  It’s perfect.

SUPER BOWL XXIII

Show: “The Brotherhood of the Rose”

Episode: “Part 1”

Network: NBC

Aired: January 22, 1989

We end the 80’s with a post-Super Bowl first: Part 1 of a mini-series!  It’s also the only time a network would do this, which is a shame.  The multi-part TV movie seems like an easy fit for the Super Bowl lead-out slot: there isn’t this push to maintain a show’s artificially juiced ratings, since you only need to keep momentum for another week or two before getting to move on.  I suspect “Brotherhood of the Rose” stands alone as a result of timing; in 1988, the post-Super Bowl slot had only recently become a place for event programming, and by the 90’s, the type of show that got awarded the time slot would change significantly.  Alas!

As for the first two hours of “Brotherhood of the Rose”, it’s not too bad.  It’s extremely dad-core, an espionage thriller/book adaptation starring Robert Mitchum, David Morse, and Peter Strauss.  Morse and Strauss play a pair of brothers who get scooped up from an orphanage by Mitchum to become elite assassins; when a mole infiltrates their network of spies, the two are paired against each other.  But, is Mitchum all he appears to be?  It feels tailor-made for the average Super Bowl viewer to accidentally leave on the TV and half-watch until going to bed.

It’s the kind of low-key movie where exposition is communicated by characters telling people things they already know (“you know how I picked you up from that orphanage!”).  And I gotta tell you, the score is ridiculous, carried mostly by a very silly horn melody that makes the whole movie seem a little cornier than it really is (it doesn’t help that they play it during every ad bumper, of which it feels like there’s a hundred of them).  But, it’s really not that bad and is at least entertaining.  And the production values are higher than you think, with a nice aerial stunt appearing near the end of this installment.  Whether I’d go back and watch Part 2 to see how the thing concludes…well, I haven’t as of this writing, but…I may!  We’ll see.

I Watched (Nearly) Every Post-Super Bowl Show Part I: The 60’s and 70’s

The Super Bowl has become this all-consuming thing in American media.

Of course, the NFL itself has become this unstoppable monolith, surviving endless amounts of scandals and health issues to reach continuing rating highs.  Hell, I’m watching more football these days, even though I don’t have a team.  If you live in this country long enough, you end up just kinda watching NFL broadcasts eventually.  But, even if you don’t care about the 17+ weeks of regular season coverage, most people at least casually check out the Super Bowl, the final game of the season that determines the new champion.

The NFL and its various broadcast partners know it, too.  It’s why the game itself feels almost secondary to everything else around it.  Celebrities singing the national anthem!  Celebrities in the stands!  Celebrities doing the halftime performance!  Celebrities in unfunny commercials hawking embarrassing products!  You sometimes forget there’s a very serious football game going on.  But it all seems to work; on the list of the most watched American broadcasts of all time, the top ten are all Super Bowls.  Only one non-Super Bowl is even in the top twenty (the “M*A*S*H” finale, of course).

Because of these otherwise-unprecedented numbers, the party doesn’t stop after the game concludes anymore.  No, celebrities are now often in the next show after the Super Bowl is over, too.  Yes, the famous “Super Bowl lead-out program”, also referred to interchangeably (at least in this article) as the “post-Super Bowl show”.  It’s the time slot later in the night where networks are doing everything they can to retain their temporarily massive audience, and maybe even persuade them to tune in again later that week.  

At their best, the post-Super Bowl show can actually be pretty exciting, especially if you happen to be a fan of the selected program.  Imagine being a big “Office” guy and realizing your favorite sitcom is about to get promoted to the big time, provided the opportunity for major guest stars, and viewed by your extended family members who otherwise had managed to never hear of it up until now.  The lead-out program can also be cultural events in and of themselves; who can forget the classic “Wonder Years” pilot?  Or the star-studded “Friends” event?  Or that infamous Bill and Hillary interview on 60 Minutes?

At their worst, the post-Super Bowl show can be…surprisingly leaden and weird!  Just as an example, the 80’s are littered with bizarre pilots that barely got their shows off the ground, let alone to cruising altitude.  And the spot has been losing ground in recent years, with glitzy game shows and reality competitions burning up time as networks determine what a “broadcast show” even is anymore.

Anyway, I’ve always been fascinated by the Super Bowl lead-out program, if only because you can sort of get a sense of major American television history and business practices through them.  When did networks start eschewing expensive pilots and spending their money on celebrity cameos?  When did they start giving up on the spot altogether?  When did they even realize it was a time slot they could even do something with?  I’ve always been curious.  

So, I worked my way through them!  Well, at least most of them.  Some are hard to find, but we’ll talk about them when we get there.  To keep this from getting unwieldy for you all, I decided to break these articles out into decades.  We start with the 60’s and 70’s, where the Super Bowl had yet to become the unbeatable juggernaut, and the game was followed by…whatever was going to be on TV that night anyway!  Interestingly enough, though, you can sort of pinpoint when a network decides, “we might be able to do something fun with this”.  

Alright, let’s get started!  For the most part, I’m going off of the lead-out program Wikipedia article unless I have reason to believe it’s incorrect.

SUPER BOWL I

Show: Lassie 

Episode: “Crisis at Devil’s Gorge” (Season 13, Episode 17)

Aired: January 15th, 1967

Network: CBS

I have reason to believe the Wikipedia article is incorrect.

The entry for Super Bowl I does indeed list an episode of Lassie, in this case “Lassie’s Litter Bit”.  Googling the name of the episode even pulls up a few other articles related to other post-Super Bowl programming.  For all intents and purposes, this is the generally accepted first Super Bowl lead-out program.  This is an incredible legacy for a half-hour of TV that first aired a week after the initial Super Bowl.

Yes, “Lassie’s Litter Bit” aired January 22nd, 1967, exactly seven days after Super Bowl I.  I know this primarily by just looking at the “Lassie” Wikipedia page.  However, I confirmed this by pulling up the TV Guide from that week, which shows in plain English that the episode that aired after the CBS broadcast of the 1967 Super Bowl was in fact a Lassie episode titled “Crisis at Devil’s Gorge”.  I don’t know who the fuck you’re trying to fool, post-Super Bowl lead-out program Wikipedia page, but it’s not me, bitch. 

(I know this is a victory that manages to make me look like the insane one, but let it be known that my capacity to waste my own time in order to prove a point is nearly infinite.)

Anyway.  Lassie.  

If you ever want to get completely and instantly overwhelmed, pull up a Lassie episode guide sometime.  A movie star that made the leap to television, the world’s most famous border collie managed to stay on the air for nineteen years and almost 600 episodes, an astounding accomplishment considering the average lifespan of a border collie is about a decade and a half.  

Much like Taylor Swift, the “Lassie” TV show is generally viewed through a series of eras.  I don’t possibly have the bandwidth to research the eras in detail (although this impeccable Pop Arena video should give you everything you’d ever want to know), but “Crisis at Devil’s Gorge” lands firmly in her “Ranger era” (Lassie, I mean.  Not Taylor Swift).  Lassie’s owner is a U.S. Forestry Service ranger Corey Stuart (Robert Bray).  In this particular episode, Corey is out in the forest with Lassie putting, like, stakes in the ground for forestry reasons until he gets bitten by a rattlesnake.  Will Lassie be able to get help in time, or will Corey die a miserable death on primetime television?

I’m teasing a little bit, and I don’t want to categorize this particular episode as “nothing happens”, if only because I find that kind of characterization reductive; after all, if nothing ever happened on “Lassie”, it wouldn’t have run for twenty years.  But it’s definitely charmingly lo-fi, where the stakes feel very small, even though they are literally life-and-death.  It’s also notable for playing out in nearly complete silence; there’s a couple of lines here and there just establishing what everyone is doing and why, but it otherwise plays out visually.  It’s silly, and definitely not what one would expect as a post-football game comedown.  But!  “Crisis at Devil’s Gorge” goes down ridiculously easy.  I get why someone could binge on 500+ episodes of this stuff without even blinking.

Show: Walt Disney’s The Wonderful World of Color  

Episode: “Willie and the Yank (Part 2)”

Aired: January 15, 1967

Network: NBC

Yep!  We’re still in 1967.  Turns out the first Super Bowl was simulcast on both CBS and NBC, the kind of teamwork you will absolutely never see again*.  Thus, Super Bowl I actually has two lead-out programs!  Let’s go to DisneyLand!

*At least not until 2027, when the Big Game airs on both ABC and ESPN.  But even that is kind of a corporate synergy move.

“The Wonderful World of Color” was the sixties title of a loooong-running Disney anthology series.  Millennials probably know it better as “The Wonderful World of Disney”, the Sunday night program where they played theatrical successes like TOY STORY, BABE and THE LION KING, alongside less-than-theatrical stuff like the third HONEY I SHRUNK THE KID and the Kevin Nealon vehicle PRINCIPAL TAKES A HOLIDAY.  The show’s history goes way further back than the nineties, however.  It started life in the mid-fifties, and its episode list is maybe the only one more overwhelming than “Lassie”.

All you really need to know is that, at the time, “The Wonderful World of Color” was typically broadcasting original television movies cut up into hour-long episodes and shown over the course of several weeks.  This week, Disney presented the second installment of a three-part Civil War movie entitled “Willie and the Yank” (which would later be edited down to about 80 minutes and released internationally as THE MOSBY RAIDERS).  Kurt Russell stars as Willie, a teenage confederate who deserts his post after accidentally shooting an officer, later revealed to be John Mosby (Jack Ging).  He escapes with the help of Henry Jenkins (James MacArthur), a Yankee soldier who will eventually fall in love with Willie’s cousin, Oralee (Peggy Lipton).  Everything comes to a head on Henry and Oralee’s wedding day, as true alliances are revealed.

“Willie and the Yank” is a story about hidden identities and shifting loyalties, themes befitting a Civil War drama.  I imagine this movie has deepening appeal the more of a Civil War buff you happen to be.  John Mosby was a real Confederate leader (who would eventually become the United States consul to Hong Kong!), and his signature raid plays a crucial role in Episode 2, so if that interests you...there you go!  This installment also happens to be the most action-heavy, so it’s a shame the YouTube upload I watched is in such poor shape.  Much of the battle happens at night, and for as much as I could see, I may as well have had my screen turned off.  Alas!

Still, it’s fascinating to watch 15-year-old Russell carry much of this on his back (he’s in almost every scene), and it’s always fun to see Lipton in anything, here just a year away from landing THE MOD SQUAD.  The most fun of all, though, is the signature intro from Walt Disney himself.  As it happens, he had just died the month before, giving his appearance here extra resonance.  Disney ends up having twice the charisma and screen presence as future host Michael Eisner, although his intro also ends up being much less funny as a result.

SUPER BOWL II

Show: Lassie

Episode: “The Foundling” (Season 14, Episode 18)

Aired: January 14, 1968

Network: CBS

Another year, another Lassie episode.  This time, Lassie takes it upon herself to bring home a lost doe whose mother may not accept her after interacting with a well-meaning human couple.  It’s just as low-stakes and serene as “Crisis at Devil’s Gorge” the year before, but this time, it’s paired with some nice food for thought.  Ranger Corey wants to open up a new campsite in the forest, but Ranger Bill is hesitant to increase the number of tourists walking in and out of this natural habitat.  When this lost doe gets accidentally “marked”, Bill’s point seems to be made.  Corey seems to be pretty cocky when Lassie saves the day, but I don’t know that this is a good argument against restricting the forest.  A dog isn’t going to be able to bail out every conflict that a tourist causes, you know?

I will say, though, the empathy in which this story is told is pretty impressive.  The tourists that cause all the trouble in the first place aren’t necessarily condemned; they take the doe back to the rangers out of a desire to help, not out of a desire to be malicious.  They genuinely just didn’t know the consequences!  I feel like this is the kind of thing I would have held onto as a kid, which would seem to make this a successful outing.  There’s even a nice little action sequence where Lassie takes on a bobcat!  Overall, I liked this a little better than “Crisis at Devil’s Gorge”. 

SUPER BOWL III

Show: General Electric College Bowl

Aired: January 12, 1969

Network: NBC

Although it sounds like the title of a football game, the G.E. College Bowl is a student-driven quiz show, as teams from two different colleges face off against each other in order to win grant and scholarship money.  It had a nice big fat run from the fifties through the eighties, and has been revived numerous times since, the most recent being a Peyton Manning-hosted affair that wrapped up just a couple of years ago.

This is the first episode in this series I wasn’t able to locate by the deadline and, unlike other missing entries, I feel fairly comfortable calling this true lost media.  It just doesn’t feel like the kind of thing anybody would feel the need to preserve.  It’s not an indictment on the presumed quality of the program; there are a handful of episodes that exist on YouTube and the Internet Archive for you to enjoy and they all manage to stay engaging in a scholarly, dry way.  The secret to the College Bowl, it seems to me, is that it matches the depth of knowledge required to compete on your average episode of JEOPARDY with the unbridled (and vaguely unearned) enthusiasm that comes with attending an Ivy League school.  Students from schools like Bradley or Rutgers are asked rapid-fire questions about the phylum of beetles or whatever and you can palpably feel the ecstasy from the panel and the audience with each correct answer (or, alternately, the agony that comes with each miss).  In some ways, it’s the same joy people get from watching college sports in general; non-professionals doing something because they love it (but also secretly because there’s the potential for a payout later on down the line).

As of right now, I wasn’t able to specifically review the 1/12/69 episode of the College Bowl, though I have no reason to believe it would be any different from any other episode you could pull up on YouTube.  That said, if there’s an immense archive of G.E. College Bowl episodes out there that I managed to just completely miss, please let me know!  I’d love to see it.

SUPER BOWL IV

Show: Lassie

Episode: “The Road Back (Part 2)” (Season 16, Episode 15)

Aired: January 11, 1970

Network: CBS

We enter the seventies with the second installment of a four-part epic event in the Lassie-verse, “The Road Back”.  Unfolding over the month of January, the entire thing feels like the “Lassie” writers’ room traveled through the future to hear my light jabs at its relatively stakes-free existence broadcast, then returned to their own time in order to put me in my place.  Over the course of eighty minutes or so, Lassie travels with Ranger Cory to San Francisco to open up a school in Chinatown, stops a little girl from running into traffic, gets hit by a car, runs away from the animal hospital after it catches on fire, saves a seaman in Sausalito, plays matchmaker for a despondent student and a kindly soldier, then dodges the cops like she believes ACAB with all her heart.  They certainly showed me!

As these things often go, the actual episode that led out Super Bowl IV (Episode 2) is the least exciting of the quartet, although there’s plenty of footage of Lassie just walking through Fisherman’s Wharf; the entire four-part story in general recognizes the novelty it has to offer and takes great advantage of its location shooting.  This is also the episode that introduces the frankly completely insane narrative convention of Lassie having flashbacks.  She sees a man riding on a horse and starts flashing back to previous footage of Corey riding on a horse, re-establishing the stakes of her being lost in a major city.  So Episode 2 isn’t a total loss.  But, would Lassie get home?  You’d have to watch for two more weeks to find out!  But, also, yes.

SUPER BOWL V

Show: Bing Crosby Pro-Am Golf Tournament

Aired: January 17, 1971

Network: NBC

Like all the other occasional sports-related Super Bowl lead-out programs, I hold the possibility that this has been archived somewhere; you can find loose clips here and there of broadcasts from other years.  However, I was unable to locate any footage of the 1971 iteration of the Bing Crosby Pro-Am Golf Tournament (which is now known as the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am) by the time of this writing.  It’s probably for the best; I’m not much of a golf guy, and if I had managed to get a hold of even some of the ninety-minute broadcast, I can only imagine how quickly my wife would be packing an overnight bag as I watched and pretended to enjoy it.

For those who are keeping score, though, the winner of the purse in 1971 was Tom Shaw, who defeated Arnold Palmer by two strokes.  I suspect this was a major defeat!  But I’m not the guy to confirm that!

SUPER BOWL VI

Show: 60 Minutes

Episode: “Will The Real Howard Hughes…When In Rome/Can anybody Here Beat Muskie?”

Aired: January 16, 1972 

Network: CBS

Infuriatingly, 60 MINUTES, maybe the most important documentation of current events that America has, does not appear to really have an accessible archive.  Thus, all I was able to dig up from this particular evening’s installment was a brief three minute clip of the first segment, which details the controversy surrounding the then-recent Howard Hughes autobiography as supposedly dictated to by Clifford Irving.  

Even in the short clip, you can feel a real skepticism from 60 Minutes host Morley Safer regarding Irving’s truthfulness.  Turns out Safer was correct in his misgivings; less than two weeks after this airing (and a fat lawsuit from Hughes himself), Irving confessed to the autobiography being bogus, and he ended up going to prison for about a year and a half.  Yay, journalism!

SUPER BOWL VII

Show: The Wonderful World of Disney

Episode: “The Mystery in Dracula’s Castle (Part 2)”

Aired: January 14, 1973

Network: NBC

We return to the wonderful world of Disney with “The Wonderful World of Disney”.  Tonight, we get the second installment of a two-part TV movie “The Mystery in Dracula’s Castle”.  Now, given that title and that title alone, what would you imagine this movie to be like?  One might hold the anticipation of this being a haunted house caper, with fog machines running akimbo, some moving portraits hung on the wall, likely even an appearance from the Dark Lord himself, maybe played by a beloved character actor.  Could one hope for Vincent Price?  Is this a Vincent Price-starring family horror flick?

That’s exactly what this movie is!  No, just kidding, it’s a silly seaside summer adventure, where the two children of a mystery novel writer run around the vacation town they’re residing in.  Her oldest son, Alfie, is an aspiring filmmaker, and is determined to make the next great Dracula film, presumably because the creators of “The Mystery in Dracula’s Castle” came up with the title first, then had to work backwards.  His younger brother, Leonard, has been cast as Count Dracula himself, but would rather be developing his skills as a master sleuth.  The titular castle turns out to be an old lighthouse, which Alfie for some reason scouts as the perfect shooting location.  It’s unfortunate, then, that it ends up being the hideout for a pair of amateur jewel thieves.  Oh, and there’s a rascally, kleptomaniac dog!  What a sticky situation.

The second installment is much more focused on the concept of a “mystery”, as Leonard asks his novelist mother, Marsha, for some advice on how to solve this case of the missing jewels.  Her thoughts are all kind of meta-commentaries on the functions of mystery novels (“it’s always the person you least expect”, “if there’s a butler, he did it”, etc.), and it would all have been fun had the list of suspects in this movie not been so shallow.  As far as who stole the jewels, that’s not much of a brain-stumper: it’s the two thieves we’ve already met who told us they did it in Part One.  As far as who they were stolen for, it turns out it’s the only other prominently featured character, the seemingly-kindly store owner, played by John Fiedler, the voice of Piglet.  The one you least suspected!!!  Oh, spoilers, I guess.

Anyway, it turns out the screenwriter, Sue Milburn, was the winner of a 1971 Walt Disney Filmwriting Award, and was inspired by her own love of horror movies, including the Hammer horrors coming out of the UK.  She would go on to do some television writing here and there throughout the 70’s, an episode of “Charlie’s Angels” here, an episode of “The Bionic Woman” there. Good for her!

SUPER BOWL VIII

Show: “The New Perry Mason”

Episode: “The Case of the Tortured Titan”

Aired: January 13, 1974

Network: CBS

Post-Super Bowl programming is usually known for either being high-profile pilots or, more recently, major episodes of already-popular programs.  Super Bowl VIII, then, is notable for being followed by one of the last episodes of a lesser-known program.  As many football players are known to say, “c’est la vie”!

Unfortunately, the original Perry Mason is not a show I’m super-familiar with, although I can tell you it ran for almost ten years and close to 300 episodes through the late-50’s/early-60’s.  I am exactly one episode more familiar with “The New Perry Mason”, which ran for 15 episodes in 1972/73 before being completely forgotten about.  “The Case of the Tortured Titan” is episode 13 of its shortened run, and it feels like a show that would have been on its last legs had it ever been walking upright at all.  The production feels a little on the cheap side, with several scenes seemingly completely unscored.  One of our prominent guest stars, Elaine Giftos, stumbles on her lines and just keeps going, like a 60’s episode of “Doctor Who”.  The case itself, about the disappearance of a prominent and secluded architect, is a little stilted and lifeless.  

The biggest issue with “The New Perry Mason”, though, is at the top.  You can tell you have an issue with a television show if, going into it completely cold, you have no instinct as to which actor is supposed to be your lead.  Anyone can watch one contextless scene of “Mad Men” with the sound off and know, essentially intuitively, that Jon Hamm is the main focal point.  So it goes, I imagine with Steve Carrell in “The Office” or Kiefer Sutherland in “24”.  The original Perry Mason starred Raymond Burr and, while I can’t evaluate his performance as Mason, I know his work well enough in other movies that I have no doubt he would pass this test.  Our new Perry Mason, Monte Markham, fails this test for me constantly.  It’s not that Markham is not an accomplished actor himself; he is!  But he is so bland and uncharismatic as Perry Mason, and it’s a crippling blow for this outing.

All of this does inspire me to check out the original “Perry Mason”, though!  The basic premise of “talky legal procedural that requires patience and attention” is sort of refreshing in a century so far dominated by hot-shot forensic and police shows.  But “The New Perry Mason” just didn’t satisfy.  Maybe the Old can get it done.

SUPER BOWL IX 

Show: NBC Nightly News

Aired: January 12, 1975

Network: CBS.  Just kidding, NBC.

Oh boy, the news!

It won’t shock you that I wasn’t able to track this down, although there’s always the possibility that it exists on some VHS upload on the Internet Archive somewhere.  It’s probably for the best; I barely watch the news now, and I can’t imagine justifying blowing thirty minutes on a rerun of the news.  I might have actually been upset had I found this.

I wanted to at least postulate as to what could have been covered on the news that night.  Onthatday.com indicates it may have been a slow news day; besides the results of the Super Bowl, it only lists the announcement of the first car rebates, this time by the Chrysler Corp.  The New York Times indicates such exciting stuff as the Prime Minister of Pakistan hitting up the U.S. for armaments, the rise of trance music, and the murder of a man in Riverside Park.  Any and all of those could have been discussed on the NBC Nightly News!  Imagine any of those stories being delivered to you by everyone’s favorite news man Floyd “The Big Tuna” Kalber!  Having fun yet?

SUPER BOWL X

Show: The Phoenix Open Golf Tournament

Aired: January 18, 1976

Network: CBS

Another golf tournament likely lost to time, much to the relief of my very patient wife.  

This time, the winner is Bob Gilder, who snagged the purse over Roger Maltbie.  The only other thing of note here is that, since 1973, the Phoenix Open has always been scheduled for the same weekend as the Super Bowl.  It should be noted that this is the one and only time a single network was able to broadcast both (the 1976 broadcast of the Phoenix Open had to start in media res).  To avoid this going forward, there is now a labyrinthine rotation of television rights so that both events are never broadcast at the same time by the same network.  I think that barely qualifies as “interesting” so I’ll move on to 1977.

SUPER BOWL XI

Show: The Wonderful World of Disney

Episode: “Kit Carson and the Mountain Men (Part 1)”

Aired: January 9, 1977

Network: NBC

Another year, another Disney TV movie, this time the first installment of a two-part story detailing the adventures of Kit Carson, a fictionalized version of a real American frontiersman (although actor Christopher Connelly is much better looking than the actual Carson).

Up to this point, watching the movies for this article have felt somewhat like homework.  I gotta say, though, the first part of “Kit Carson and the Mountain Men” was fairly rousing!  Maybe it’s the relatively quick pace; the story moves at a good clip, with conflicts and stakes firmly established.  It was also a treat to see Robert Reed, the much beleaguered paterfamilias of “The Brady Bunch”, pop up in something he actually seemed to enjoy doing.  “Kit Carson” also gets a lot of mileage out of the running thread of a kid sidekick who appears starstruck by Carson due to all the penny novels he’s read about him.  I love it when heroes are already legends in the universe of a show or movie!  I wouldn’t call this hour (nor its concluding second hour) perfect by any means, but it beat “The Mystery of Dracula’s Castle”, if only in terms of honesty.  Is Kit Carson in it?  Check!  Are there mountain men?  You bet!  See?  It’s not that hard!

(It should be noted that this entry constitutes somewhat of a “best guess” for me; the Wikipedia entry states that the lead-out program for Super Bowl XI was an episode of something called “The Big Event”.  The episode title?  “Kit Carson”.  It seems at first glance to be a reasonable guess on Wikipedia’ part: “The Big Event” was a reskinned version of the NBC Sunday Night Movie, made to expand the potential offerings to include mini-series and sporting events.  The only issue with that is that any sort of listing archive I can find (including the NBC Archive) indicates that “The Wonderful World of Disney” aired that night, not “The Big Event”.  Given the otherwise-remarkable coincidence that TTWD aired a Kit Carson movie that night, I feel I’m once again more right than the Wikipedia page.  Anyway.)

SUPER BOWL XII

Show: “All in the Family”

Episode: “Super Bowl Sunday” (Season 8, Episode 16)

Aired: January 15, 1978

Network: CBS

A milestone moment in the history of the Super Bowl broadcast, in that this appears to be the first lead-out program specifically designed to take advantage of its spot after the Big Game.  This late-stage episode of “All in the Family” is allll about the Super Bowl, establishing a tradition that many lead-out programs in the decades to come would keep alive.

I’m pretty well-versed in prime “All in the Family”, which this deep Season Eight episode decidedly is not.  Where the first few years of the program was unafraid to dig into the deep-rooted bigotry of Archie Bunker in order to fuel crisply-written (and very funny) heated discussion and arguments amongst the household, Carroll O’Connor’s defining role here is mostly just a jerk (although still decidedly homophobic).  He also owns a bar now, which the show would eventually go all in on a couple years later as it transitioned into “Archie Bunker’s Place”.  It’s exceedingly difficult for any show to keep its finger on the pulse of America for very long, but it’s weird to see something like “All in the Family” begin transforming into a workplace comedy.

Anyway, it’s a big day for Archie Bunker’s place; it’s Super Bowl Sunday, and he’s selling sandwiches for $2.00 a pop.  He’s also intent on taking 10% of the gambling pool going around.  All of this greed at the expense of his friends and patrons will come to a head when two robbers come in to take the money along with any valuables.  Oddly, the robbers insist on everyone pulling their pants down before they leave, and I know that kinda sounds like a weak joke premise on my part but I promise it really happened.  Because of this, I think we may learn that Meathead has a small dick?  I think this was meant to be humorously humiliating rather than resembling a sinister kink porn.

All in all, it’s still a decent sitcom episode!  But it’s no longer the daring revelation “All in the Family” used to be.  But then, what is?

SUPER BOWL XIII

Show: “Brothers and Sisters”

Episode: “Pilot” (Season 1, Episode 1)

Aired: January 21, 1979

Network: NBC

I thought I had the first episode of this frat house sitcom in hand.  Alas, I quickly realized the YouTube upload I had found was in fact the second episode.  Weirdly, there are a handful of easily findable episodes of “Brothers and Sisters” floating around out there (no mean feat considering they only ever made twelve), but the pilot doesn’t appear to be one of them. It doesn’t help that there are multiple other shows and movies with the name “Brothers and Sisters”.

It’s probably for the best.  While I recognize the continued popularity of the “horny college campus” style of comedy, it’s maybe my least favorite genre.  I don’t know if you’ve seen ANIMAL HOUSE lately, but it hasn’t aged particularly well for me, and I can’t imagine this LAMPOON-inspired show would have fared any better.  So it’s probably best I just come to a soft landing with the 70’s and get ready for the next decade.

I’ll end with this.  Interestingly enough, this was one of three network frat house sitcoms to premiere in the 78-79 TV season.  America had ANIMAL HOUSE fever, baby!  The other two: ABC’s “Delta House” (which had the distinction of actually being an official spinoff of ANIMAL HOUSE) which ran for 13 episodes and CBS’ “Co-Ed Fever”, which aired for only 6 weeks.  I guess that ANIMAL HOUSE fever broke, baby!