I Watched (Nearly) Every Post Super Bowl Show IV: The 2000’s!

I’ve made my stance on the inaugural decade of the 21st century fairly clear, both in this space and in real life.  On the whole, the 2000’s were a fairly uninspiring and creatively bankrupt ten years: trashy, cheap reality television really got cooking , and party girl celebrity culture was in vogue, thanks to an increasingly out-of-control tabloid media that was too happy to pass cruelty off as entertainment.  Oh, and I guess there was that 9/11 thing, a devastating event that fueled the desire for cheap entertainment in the first place.  Yes, there were plenty of cultural milestones to go around; the LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy and “Mad Men” seem to get better with age.  But we have all memory-holed a lot of bleak shit.

I get to say this because I was there.   The 2000’s were probably my formative decade, starting it as a preteen and ended it as an official young adult.  I should have a lot of nostalgia for everything I grew up with.  But I’m not sure that I do.  I tell you this so that you understand I am not a 00’s apologist.

That said, the eleven Super Bowl lead-out programs that aired between 2000 and 2009 are actually fairly strong, proving that maybe there’s a lot of good stuff we tend to forget about.  Okay, maybe I tend to forget about them.  I’m kind of a cynical person.  I’m…I’m working on it.

Alright, here we go!  Post-Super Bowl shows of the 2000’s!

SUPER BOWL XXXIV

Show: “The Practice”

Episode: “New Evidence (Part 1)” (Season 4, Episode 12)

Aired: January 30, 2000

Network: ABC

Special Guest Stars: Anthony Heald, Clancy Brown*

*Maybe neither of them are really big names, but they’re both special to me, dammit!

Although I had never seen an episode of “The Practice” before this project, I was familiar with the show it eventually became.  There was a period of about a year and a half when spin-off “Boston Legal” was in my regular television rotation.  I was always curious to know what its original incarnation was like, but seven extra seasons worth of a blind watch always felt a little much.  Yet the urge always remained.

Based on this episode, I can see myself maybe making good on that promise one day.  “New Evidence” isn’t the most brilliant hour of television ever made, and it’s not exactly subtle (this is a David E. Kelley joint, after all), but it’s satisfying in an old-school kind of way.  Our team of Boston lawyers, led by Bobby Donnell (Dylan McDermott), are headed to California to help defend a murder suspect who is facing the death penalty.  They are saddled with his defense mostly off of a gut feeling Lindsay (Kellie Williams) has about his innocence, much to the chagrin of everybody involved. It’s an uphill battle the entire way for our leads, as witnesses get nervous, stories change, and new evidence emerges.

I think the funniest thing about the episode is how hilariously hostile it is to the state of California.  The entire theme of “New Evidence” is how everyone in Los Angeles is a rude and unhelpful asshole, as if somehow courtrooms in Boston are magnanimous and noble tributes to teamwork.  Anthony Heald’s judge talks on and on about how “maybe this is how you do things in Massachusetts”, like California is some swamp bayou hamlet.  I’m not offended, per se, it’s just such a buck-wild point of view.  Like, David E. Kelley is telling us how he really feels on this one.  

This does actually lead to one of the hour’s bigger flaws: the judge is so over-the-top irrationally evil that he quickly goes from a character you love to hate to just an annoying cheap source of conflict.  He forces people to be on the jury that should obviously be disqualified, he forces the Practice team to defend this man even when they end up having pretty good reason at that point to drop the case.  Also, it’s vaguely subpar work from Heald, a guy I normally like!  He keeps hitting the word “Massachusetts” the same slimy way, which has a ton of impact the first time, but loses its power with each repetition.

That said, I had a good time watching this and I was sad I didn’t have time to move on to see how this story would resolve itself.  Luckily, the next episode’s plot description on Amazon took care of that for me: “Lindsay gets [her] client freed when she determines that the defendant’s wife and the victim’s husband were having an affair and conspired to kill the victim.”  Gotcha!

SUPER BOWL XXXV

Show: “Survivor: The Australian Outback”

Episode: “Stranded” (Season 2, Episode 1)

Aired: January 28, 2001

Network: CBS

I missed the boat entirely on the still-ongoing “Survivor” craze, but at its peak, it was completely unavoidable even if you weren’t watching.  As I proceeded to not watch the first season, I still managed to find myself abreast of all the dastardly naked machinations of Richard Hatch, and was aware of the intense speech given by Sue Hawk in the finale.  I even somehow found myself browsing the premier “Survivor” fan site in the world, a website called SurvivorSucks (an early harbinger of how 21st century fandom would conduct itself, perhaps).  So, yes, when the next season got slated to premiere after the Super Bowl, I knew this was a big deal.  Continued to not watch it!  But I knew it was a big deal.

Watching “Survivor” now, nearly twenty-five years later, it becomes immediately apparent why the show was such a hit, and forever altered the landscape of reality competition: it’s one of the all-time great premises in television.  I don’t know that I really need to pore over the famous set-up of “everyone is formed into tribes and play challenges; winning team gets supplies, losing team votes somebody out.  Last person standing gets a million bucks.”  The format is simultaneously tribalistic and individualistic, forcing all contestants to have genuine social skills as well as an elite poker face.  It’s instantly compelling television.

Of course, the perils inherent to the format of this project is that I have to just watch the one episode then move on.  It’s double-rough because it’s the first episode of the season.  These types of things get more fun as you have folks to root for or against; the first episode of any reality game show is usually tough because there are so many people, you don’t know who to focus on yet.  The closest I came to bonding with a contestant was the guy who threw up on the plane getting in and is physically ill the entire time (he’s just like me frfr).  Naturally, he comes very close to going home in the first week, which is real “me” type of shit.  As much as I’d like to see when he actually gets the ax, I must move on.  The tribe has spoken!

SUPER BOWL XXXVI

Show: “Malcolm in the Middle”

Episode: “Company Picnic” (Season 3, Episodes 11 & 12)

Aired: February 3, 2002

Network: FOX

Special Guest Stars: Terry Bradshaw, Howie Long, Stephen Root, Tom Green, Cristina Ricci, Susan Sarandon, Patrick Warburton, Heidi Klum, Magic Johnson, Bradley Whitford

Like all millennials, I definitely had a “Malcolm in the Middle” phase, although mine didn’t last as long as others.  I think I probably faithfully watched, like a season and a half?  Anyway, I hadn’t seen it in ages, and I was eager to revisit the show that first launched Bryan Cranston into the bigger pop culture conversation.

So the good news is that, even at a full hour’s length, “Company Picnic” is pretty funny all the way through.  I had forgotten how well Cranston and Jane Kaczmarek play off of each other, and I had especially forgotten how well Cranston does with physical comedy (he’s crouching down, running around and freaking out like a goddamn pro the whole time).  But the three main kids are the real revelation.  Obviously Frankie Muniz holds everything together as the titular Malcolm (the middle child), but I was stunned at how polished Justin Berfield (as oldest child Reese) and Erik Per Sullivan (youngest Dewey) are in their roles.  Per Sullivan in particular provided me my biggest laugh (his sugar-induced freakout).

The…not bad news, necessarily, but definitely the thing most out of step with how I remembered “Malcolm in the Middle”: just look at that guest star list!  How the fuck did they land Susan fucking Sarandon?  More importantly, and I don’t say this lightly….did they need to get Susan Sarandon?  Did we need Magic Johnson in the most half-assed drag I’ve seen in a while?  I completely understand that this is a post-Super Bowl ep, and that means snagging big guest stars.  But “Company Picnic” has no fewer than ten, a number I have to imagine won’t be beaten anytime soon.  At best, it’s distracting and at worst, it’s madness-inducing.  

At least it made me want to go through “Malcolm in the Middle” again some time, especially sincere…ah yes, there’s a Disney Plus revival on the way.  Better cram it in now before its value is lessened!

SUPER BOWL XXXVII

Show: “Alias”

Episode: ”Phase One” (Season 2, Episode 13)

Aired: January 26, 2003

Network: ABC

Special Guest Star: Rutger Hauer

You would think that being such a big “LOST” guy would have made me an equally big “Alias” guy.  Alas, “Alias” is a show I got burned out on relatively quickly.  At its best, its twisty, espionage-driven narrative was loopy genre fun.  After a couple of seasons, though, it became clear that the show was too willing to throw any sort of established character or plot truths in the trash can in order to pull the rug out from under you.   After the millionth reveal that X character was actually Y and working for Z, it just got exhausting.  If anybody can be anything at any time, you question what the point is in getting invested at all.

“Phase One”, though, captures “Alias” in its absolute prime, and illustrates what made it special.  It is an absolutely buck-wild choice for a Super Bowl episode, though.  I’ve always been curious how this would have played to a completely neutral, first-time audience.  After all, this is the one where, right in the middle of Season Two, “Alias” decides to just take its arm and slide every piece off of its elaborate chess board onto the cold floor.  By the end of the hour, Sydney Bristow (Jennifer Garner) and her father Jack (Victor Garber) are finally revealed to their enemies as double agents.  The dastardly Syndicate, run from the inside of SD-6 by the equally dastardly Arvin Sloane (Ron Rifkin) has been defeated, or so it seems.  It really is a finale-level of plot, the impact of which presumably only holds weight if you’ve watched the season and a half that came before.  I had a hard time imagining a half-drunk audience walking into this cold and being super into this.

Here’s the thing: I think “Phase One” actually weirdly works for a newcomer?  For all of the show’s narrative knots, the stakes are usually pretty clearly communicated: here are the good guys pretending to be bad guys, here are bad guys pretending to be good guys.  Sydney and her coworker Vaughn (Michael Vartan) are in love, but can’t show it.  Sydney has friends, and one of them is a young Bradley Cooper.  And…go!  To some degree, having no prior investment in the Bristow clan or her compatriots at either SD-6 or the CIA probably plays to your advantage on this.  Admittedly, the Syndicate suddenly being completely crushed kinda comes out of nowhere when watching this in conjunction with what came before and after.  But here?  You’re kinda just watching a successful mission playing out.

Yeah, there are some fairly obvious “this is for a wider audience” plays, none more famous than the opening “Back in Black” slow-mo shot of Garner in lingerie (funnily, it may be the most famous moment in all of “Alias”, a show that to my recollection didn’t really revel in sleaze otherwise).  You also get more “characters explaining who they are and what their relationship is to others” kind of talk than you would usually get.  We also get a big ol’ guest star in Rutger Hauer, who’s great as newcomer SD-6 head Geiger.  It’s clearly not a normal episode.

But “Phase One” ultimately succeeds through its performances, none better than the one we get from Carl Lumbly as Marcus Dixon, Sydney’s SD-6 co-worker who gets blindsided by the news that he’s been working for the very bad guy he thought he was working against.  As he silently decides whether he wants to blow his entire life up by submitting to Sydney crucial information that will bring everything crashing down, you can almost literally see every thought run through his mind.  It’s an astounding, quiet, character-focused moment that sells the whole hour, in my opinion.  For all its glitz and adrenaline, when “Alias” succeeded, it was off the back of its characters and cast.  “Phase One” is a plot-heavy episode that still manages to prove that.

Unfortunately, due to some bad luck with the broadcast (including a too-long trophy and post-game ceremony that included, for some reason, a performance by Bon Jovi), “Phase One” didn’t begin until after 11:00 pm on the East Coast.  Many viewers simply went to bed, and the ratings were the lowest the spot had ever pulled since the NBC Nightly News in 1975.  Not “Alias”’ fault, but other networks took notice all the same.

SUPER BOWL XXXVIII

Show: “Survivor: All-Stars”

Episode: “They’re Back!” (Season 8, Episode 1)

Aired: February 1, 2004

Network: CBS

My initial instinct is that potentially jumping blindly into an All-Stars season of any competition series is setting yourself up to fail; the novelty of returning favorites falters if you’ve never seen them before.  On the other hand, the second full season of “Top Chef” I ever watched was their All-Star year and I loved it, so I don’t really know what I’m talking about, I guess.

What stuck out to me immediately about this kick-off episode of “Survivor: All-Stars” is how quickly the game shifted.  With everyone having played before and (for the most part) gone pretty far in their initial seasons, there are no obvious weaklings for more savvy players to feast on.  I also thought it was smart for the show to ask back several winners, potential Survivor Hall-of-Famers who have to operate with targets on their backs.  Because all of these contestants are playing an elevated game, I found it more intriguing than the first episode of the Australia season we covered just a little bit ago.

As a “Survivor” newcomer, this also felt like a quick way to catch up on these iconic names and figures from the show’s early canon, when (again) you really truly couldn’t avoid chatter about it if you were clued into pop culture at all.  I finally got to see the villainous Richard Hatch in action, and I got to fall in love with Rupert Boneham twenty years after everyone else in America already did.  Oh, look, there’s Sue Hawk!  And that brick shithouse Rudy!  And Boston Rob (I could tell which one he was, because his name was Rob and he had a Red Sox hat on)!  Reality is not a genre I dabble in too much, so this felt like dipping into a completely different universe.  It’s fun enough that I would consider diving deeper into “Survivor” if there weren’t forty-eight fucking seasons worth of it.  Vote me out!

SUPER BOWL XXXIX

Show: “The Simpsons”

Episode: “Homer and Ned’s Hail Mary Pass” (Season 16, Episode 8)

Aired: February 6, 2005

Network: FOX

Special Guest Stars: LeBron James, Yao Ming, Tom Brady, Michelle Kwon, Warren Sapp

Where 1999’s “Sunday, Cruddy Sunday” was a snapshot of “The Simpsons” at the end of its prime, “Homer and Ned’s Hail Mary Pass” captures the show fully out of it.  It’s mostly concerned with quadrupling up on celebrity cameos, which is perhaps befitting an episode airing after the Super Bowl.  But would it be too much to ask for the cameos to at least be functional?  The whole crux of the episode is Homer developing a career in training athletes in the art of elaborate celebrations.  This sort of makes sense with football, a sport that was really having a moment with showboating in the 00’s (Randy Moss had fake-mooned the Green Bay crowd one year prior).  But basketball doesn’t make as much sense, especially not with Yao Ming, who to my knowledge wasn’t that much of an asshole on the court.  I suppose they could have gone with fight choreographers; after all, Ron Artest was available for V.O. work in 2005.  For the record, figure skating makes even less sense in this context.  What is a celebration dance in figure skating, exactly?

Still, it’s not all a wash.  I think the made-up touchdown dances are all pretty funny; I especially like the one where the ball is cooked on a barbecue griddle.  And Yao gave us one of the most hilarious half-assed voice performances I’ve ever heard on a professional broadcast (I think “shut up….kid. I gotta good thing. GOING. Here.” to myself more often than I’d care to admit).  But, this episode from twenty years ago served as a sign that the “Simpsons” heyday was firmly in the past.

Show: “American Dad!”

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

Aired: February 6, 2005

Network: FOX

Special Guest Star: Carmen Electra

At the time of its release, I sort of felt like Seth MacFarlane’s follow-up project to “Family Guy” was doomed to fail.  Its hyper-specific jabs at Bush-era politics and paranoia seemed like it would get old fast, especially since it aired IN THE MIDDLE of Bush-era politics; I was sick of it in real life, why would I run to go watch it in fiction?  I also wasn’t sure the various characters in the Smithe household made a lot of sense together; I know that adding an alien and a talking fish were there to kind of replicate the template of the Griffin family, but there’s a cohesion in Quahog with the “talking baby” and “talking dog” at least being members of a typical nuclear family.  Roger and Klaus being results of CIA experiments and missions always felt like a bit of a stretch.

Naturally, “American Dad” became the superior show to “Family Guy” over time.  As always, I know nothing.

Still, the pilot is fairly rough, with very little of what would make the show special visible there.  This isn’t to say it isn’t funny, just one-note.  Stan is an alpha male!  The son is a horny teenage boy!  The daughter is a liberal!  Imagine the trouble her and her dad will get into, eh?  It even relies fairly heavily on the famous “Family Guy”-style cutaway gag, something it moves off of fairly quickly, to my recollection.  Not terrible, but also not terribly indicative of the show to come, either.

SUPER BOWL XL

Show: “Grey’s Anatomy”

Episode: “It’s the End of the World” (Season 2, Episode 16)

Aired: February 5, 2006

Network: ABC

Special Guest Stars: Christina Ricci, Kyle Chandler

I’ve always kind of had a chip on my shoulder about “Grey’s Anatomy”.  Although it was the third to arrive of the trifecta of megahits in the 2004-05 season that turned ABC from a joke to the dominant American network (the other two being “Desperate Housewives” and “LOST”), it was the only one I didn’t watch.  Naturally, it was easily the most popular amongst my high school campus.  I also think “Grey’s Anatomy” being tapped for the big post-Super Bowl time slot felt like a slap in the face to “LOST”, my then-favorite show AND one that would have absolutely crushed the occasion, had the opportunity been provided to them (although the relative failure of the “Alias” post-Super Bowl episode probably spurred this decision more than anything else).

I also always got the impression that it was a heavily soap-ified version of “ER”; the constant references to a guy called “McDreamy” just kind of made my back teeth hurt.  Couple all of this with the fact that I was a teenage/early-twenties guy in its heyday and there likely could not have been a show more specifically created to be my enemy.

So I watched “It’s the End of the World” with no real context to anything before or after with no real intention of having a good time and…um, it’s terrific?  Like, it’s one of the best episodes I’ve gotten to watch in this project?  I know, I’m devastated, too.

It’s not that this particular episode showcases the most unique and tightly drawn characters I’ve ever seen on TV.  Everyone is young, quirky and horny, and they frequently talk in what I can only describe as “quirky millennial speak”, Meredith Grey herself being the worst offender (“she’s got my McDreamy, she’s got my McDog….she’s got my McLife!”).  You often wonder why everyone has enough downtime to be sleeping with each other so much (it’s not clear from this episode what Izzie Stevens actually does around here).  The medical cases on display here are not terribly grounded to anything resembling reality.  The main thrust: a WWII reenactor has accidentally blasted himself with a bazooka, and the only thing keeping the shell from blowing him (and the entire hospital) up is the inserted hand of a very green EMT (Ricci, in her second Super Bowl episode in five years).  You know, that old story.  Also buzzing around Seattle Grace is a very-pregnant Dr. Bailey and, unbeknownst to her, her husband, who has suffered a car accident and is currently having surgery performed on his brain.  It’s all a lot, the horrible day that Meredith predicted at the top of the episode.

But.  But. BUT.  The power of this episode (and I sincerely hope for peak “Grey” in general) is its elite ability to steadily work all these different plotlines and stitch them together in the exact right way at the exact right times to make “It’s the End of the World” such a fun hour.  And it seems fairly evident that the show understands what both their main and guest cast can do so well, and tailor the material to maximize them.  Katherine Heigl’s exasperation and TJ Knight’s anxiety flies perfectly against Isaiah Washington’s stoic coolness and Patrick Dempsey’s aloof heroism.  Ricci is wildly affecting as a girl who’s in far too deep, both literally and metaphorically.  By the time Kyle Chandler shows up with ten minutes to go as the bomb squad guy, I think I literally hollered.  It all just kinda works.

I know, I know, I’m stunned.  I don’t know that it’s going to inspire me to watch the 437* episodes I’ve missed, but I’m more than willing to extend an olive branch to one of the longest-running shows in American history.  I now fully understand why all the girls I knew in high school were addicted to this fucking thing.  Sorry for being a dick.  Kinda.  “LOST” still better, tho.  I think.

*That sounds like a sarcastically huge number, but that really is the episode count minus one as of this writing.

SUPER BOWL XLI 

Show: “Criminal Minds”

Episode: “The Big Game” (Season 2, Episode 14)

Aired: February 4, 2007

Network: CBS

Special Guest Star: James Van Der Beek

At the time of “Criminal Minds”’ premiere, I remember there being quite a bit of hand-wringing in the media about its constant violence and depressing criminal situations.  And, look, I’d be a hypocrite if I were to take any swipes at the show for that; after all, I was deep in the thralls of “24” at that time, and there, Kiefer Sutherland was fucking pulling knives into people’s eye sockets.  But I do get how watching a bleak serial killer get caught in the nick of time every week could start to affect your mental health, even if it’s fictional.

“Criminal Minds” clearly won the argument, though, almost certainly due to it tapping into the same large audience that would eventually migrate over to true-crime podcasts.  Accounting for a two-year hiatus in 2021 and 2022, it’s still on the fucking air, having aired its 344th episode last summer.  It may appear to now be a Paramount Plus exclusive, and is technically a revival called “Criminal Minds: Evolution”, but Wikipedia has kept up the season count, so I am forced to consider this all one big run.  For those who are curious, Zach Gilford (Matt Saracen from “Friday Night Lights”) plays the current Big Bad.  (Sort of) broadcast television, everyone!

Needless to say, I had never seen an episode until now, and “The Big Game” seems to serve as a decent introduction.  If you’ve ever seen a criminal procedural before, you know all the beats of this thing.  A deranged killer played by a recognizable guest star (in this case, James Van Der Beek) commits a brutal murder, and it’s up to our FBI squad to find him before he strikes again.  Our team consists of a beleaguered lead agent (Mandy Patinkin), a handsome man of action (Shemar Moore), a cool woman in a suit (Paget Brewster), a brilliant young autistic guy (Matthew Gray Gubler), and a brassy tech gal who knows everything (Kirsten Vangness).  Together, they will almost save the day until you realize, oh fuck, this is a two-parter.  

The plot will also be familiar if you’ve ever seen the movie SE7EN, although there is a nice twist towards the end that I probably should have seen coming, but didn’t.  The cast is comfortable with each other, although I was surprised that Brewster had just joined the cast a mere five episodes prior (she was great; Paget Brewster is always great).  Gubler is probably best left to the tumblr contingent to fawn over, and I was shocked at how checked out Patinkin seemed to be.  But the episode’s script serves as a functional nasty mystery.  I give points to its totally arbitrary Super Bowl connection right at the beginning; the first pair of victims were watching it on TV.  Cool promotion!

“Criminal Minds” is the type of big, broad, slightly bullshitty, but undeniably slick and competent style of network television that was already starting in 2007 to look a little out of date to people my age.  Most of my contemporaries were starting to flock to the exciting stuff happening on cable; this was the same calendar year where “Mad Men” would premiere and “The Sopranos” would conclude.  “Breaking Bad” was a mere year away.  Yet, “Criminal Minds” was a massive hit anyway essentially from the jump.  It was a Top 20 show in America throughout Obama’s two terms.  I’m certain this is the beginning of the schism between CBS and anyone under Social Security age.  They’re the old-man network now, but it pulls outrageous numbers off the back of that.  Really makes you think.

SUPER BOWL XLII

Show: “House”

Episode: “Frozen” (Season 4, Episode 11)

Aired: February 3, 2008

Network: FOX

At this point in the project, it’s worth asking if FOX overall has done the best with the “post Super Bowl show” assignment.  Admittedly, they didn’t start broadcasting Super Bowls until 1997, completely sidestepping the “flashy pilot” era that is fucking up every other network’s average here.  But, every show they’ve aired up to this point have been extremely popular, generally well-made television programs: “The X-Files”, “The Simpsons”, “Family Guy”, “American Dad”, “Malcolm in the Middle”, and now, “House”.  Not bad!  They’re no “MacGruder and Loud”, but still not bad at all.

Speaking of “House”, it was a treat to revisit it!  It was always a show that was secretly just a star performance and winning formula that pretended to be a prestige medical drama, but it’s worth nothing that both the performance and formula are really fucking good.  Hugh Laurie was heavily nominated for his portrayal of Dr. Gregory House over its eight-year run, yet he still somehow seems underrated.  There’s flat-out no show without his grumpy, foul-mouthed, deeply wounded lead role here.  And the format of “House” (House and his differential diagnosis team must help solve a series of mystery symptoms from a patient, typically a major guest star) can sometimes make it a bear to binge, since every episode is the same.  But, when taken in small doses, “House” is soooo fucking satisfying.  Watching brilliant, but abrasive, characters bounce off each other to solve a mystery is what television is all about.  

In “Frozen”, our major guest star is Mira Sorvino, with the added gimmick of her not actually being treated in House’s hospital.  She’s stranded in the North Pole, and must get treated for what appears to be a mysterious auto-immune disease via telecommunication.  “House” predicts the future!  At first, you worry this saps the show of its unique advantage: letting Laurie spar with another major celebrity.  Yet, somehow, he and Sorvino manage to develop chemistry without ever even being in the same room together.  The added twist of Sorvino being a psychiatrist, aka the exact kind of person House wants nothing to do with, adds a lot of back-and-forth between them.

No worries, “House” also contains all the grody details seemingly necessary for any big network show in the 21st century.  Drills get put into people’s heads, urine is drunk, major broken bones get gruesomely reset.  However, all of this is offset with a hilariously low-stakes subplot of House doing everything he can to get cable reinstituted in the hospital.  The moment of the night for me was his decision to, in response to hearing how much money cutting the cord has saved the hospital, find a way to waste the exact same money to even it out (he begins by dumping a container of tongue depressors on the ground).

It should be said, too, that I don’t think I ever got all the way to Season Four on my initial watch, so it was fun to see the cast now include Kal Penn and baby Olivia Wilde.  The whole running arc of House trying to put together a new team is the only aspect of this that feels a little unexplained to a prospective new audience.  There’s an end-episode twist where Robert Sean Leonard is now dating a recently fired candidate, and I had no clue who it was supposed to be.  Still, I think it can all be forgiven when the stand-alone aspects of the hour were otherwise strong.

SUPER BOWL XLIII

Show: “The Office”

Episode: “Stress Relief” (Season 5, Episodes 14 & 15)

Aired: February 1, 2009

Network: NBC

Special Guest Stars: Jack Black, Jessica Alba, Cloris Leachman

I got on with the American version of “The Office” late.

I was a fairly serious devotee of the UK original, and I was one of the many who thought the US version was a cheap faxed copy of the initial paper-company-set original.  I assumed the truncated Season One would be the end of it, and I promptly stopped paying attention.  By the time I realized, “hey wait a lot of people I know really like this…did ‘The Office’ get its act together?” it was already a couple of seasons in and I just stubbornly refused to jump on board, fretting that I’d be two years behind on the story.

Then, Super Bowl XLIII happened, and I noticed the episode afterwards was “The Office”.  And, I dunno, something came over me.  “Stop being weird!” I thought.  “It’s a network sitcom, not the fucking ‘Wire’.  How much continuity do you think there’s going to be?”  So I watched “Stress Relief” and had a blast.  Then the previews for next week ran, and the episode was all about Michael reconnecting with someone named Holly, someone we had met a season or two prior.  “Blasted continuity!” I panicked to myself before continuing to not watch it week to week.  And there my “Office” story would have ended, had I not ended up dating an Office superfan that I could binge the show with.  Sometimes, things work out.

Anyway, “Stress Relief” is certainly in the running for “Best Super Bowl Lead Out Episode” in terms of pure laughs.  It alone contains three signature Office centerpieces: the fire safety cold open, the CPR training, and the Michael Scott roast (as well as his belated responses the next day).  For a sitcom episode double the length of a regular comedy, it contains something like 25 of the best Office moments, a feat no doubt helped by its relative stand-alone status.  There’s a subtle, but very real, “introduce the characters again” feel, with a heartfelt Jim-and-Pam subplot in order to show off to potential new viewers everything that fans loved about the show.  

The only downside to it is that Jim-Pam storyline, where watching an illegally downloaded film with Andy somehow serves as a metaphor for issues Pam’s parents are having.  The plot itself isn’t so bad, although it forces us to believe Jim might have said something nasty to her dad, which is a little silly.  It’s the film they’re watching, MRS. ALBERT HANNADAY, which is supposed to be a parody of a typical Oscar-bait film.  The problem is that it doesn’t really feel like one; in fact, it doesn’t seem like any movie anybody’s ever seen.

Oh yeah, this is also how they incorporate their special guest stars.  I suppose the reason for this is that they wanted to preserve the grounded reality of ‘The Office’ by not bogging it down with celebrities playing characters.  What makes that funnier is the direction the show would eventually take, with Will Ferrell, Kathy Bates and James Spader all playing characters down the line.  Alas!

Still, we’ll always have ‘Staying Alive’.  “Staying Alive.’  Ah-ah-ah-ah…

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!