What if the Classic Comedies Were on CBS Today?
I saw a number of on-air promos for CBS' Monday night comedy block. Based on the content and what they were clearly selling, I thought back to the golden age of CBS comedy and wondered what a typical promo for their Saturday night line-up would be like were those shows on the Big Eye today.
INT. BUNKER LIVING ROOM - DAY
ANNOUNCER (VO - BRIGHT)
Saturday is a night of laughs on CBS. First, on All in the Family, not everything is Bunker-dory...
Archie in his chair. A concerned Michael is holding the front of his pants out and staring down at his crotch. Gloria enters.
GLORIA
Michael, what are you doing?
ARCHIE
There's something wrong with the Meathead's meat head.
(HUGE LAUGH)
MICHAEL
It's all red.
(HUGE LAUGH)
GLORIA
Let me see.
She peers down his pants.
GLORIA
That's just my lipstick.
ARCHIE
Oh Jeeez!
(HUGE GIANT ENORMOUS LAUGH)
CUT TO:
INT. MESS TENT - DAY (BLACK & WHITE)
ANNOUNCER (VO - SOMBER)
And then... on a very special MASH...
Father Mulcahy talking to off-stage reporter.
FATHER MULCAHY
When the doctors are operating and it's cold, like it is now, here today, sometimes the doctors will warm their hands over the body. Can anyone look at that and not say...Wow, we have the HOTTEST PATIENTS IN KOREA!? Wooooooo!! Suit up!!
(HUGE CANNED LAUGH)
CUT TO:
INT. MARY'S APARTMENT - NIGHT
ANNOUNCER (VO - SUGGESTIVE)
Then on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Rhoda gives Mary advice on how to get through those cold Minneapolis nights.
RHODA
Mair, we gotta get you laid.
(HUGE LAUGH)
MARY
Rho-da!
RHODA
You know I live vicariously through you, and at the moment I'm very horny.
(HUGE LAUGH)
MARY
Rhoda, that's terrible.
RHODA
I don't need to hear the details. Just -- you were in bed, you did it. Actually, those probably are the details. I'll add "had an orgasm" for myself.
(HUGE THUNDEROUS LAUGH)
CUT TO:
INT. DR. HARTLEY'S OFFICE - DAY
ANNOUNCER (VO)
And finally, what happens when Bob starts a sexual addiction group on the Bob Newhart Show?
MR. CARLIN
Your wife has a vagina, right, Dr. Hartley?
(HUGE LAUGH)
BOB
Well...uh, yes...yes, sh-she does.
MR. CARLIN
What does it look like?
(HUGE LAUGH)
MR. CARLIN
Can you describe it? Peterson's never seen one.
(HUGE LAUGH)
BOB
He hasn't. Well, uh...(CALLING) Carol, could you come in here for a ..a...minute?
(SPASMS OF LAUGHTER)
CUT TO:
INT. SET - DAY
Big CBS logo against a white backdrop behind Klinger, who wears just bra and panties and is waving to the camera with a shit-eatin' grin.
ANNOUNCER (VO)
That's this Saturday on CBS, the "Tiffany Network"!!
You can read more from Ken at kenlevine.blogspot.com
Loading comments…
Want to reply to a comment? Hint: Click "Reply" at the bottom of the comment; after being approved your comment will appear directly underneath the comment you replied to
so...what did Blacks get to laugh at in the 50's-60's on network TV? Norman Lear was groundbrea
They got to laugh at the sad sad irony of life.
Amos and Andy was a great show and the best Disney movie I ever saw was " The Song Of the South". The Blacks who don't enjoy laughing have kept these classic off the air. Hey, it's their loss.
I still sing those songs from that Disney movie and it makes me feel great.
3 words
TURN IT OFF.
So if a show was maid about a child molesting homosexual and welfare cheating, crack smoking black man and their escapades in the park as they try to score rock and molest children, you wouldn't have a problem with it and would just tell those that object to turn it off?
Not my own original thought, but I think it's a good point.
The last real good TV comedy for me was "Third Rock from the Sun".
Comedic talent is rare especially on the writing end.
I do sooooo agree with you. Third Rock rocked!
Go to a library or used book store, or check on e-bay. Get a copy of Harlan Ellison's "The Glass Teat" and "The Other Glass Teat" He says what most of you are saying about T.V., but it was written as artlicles in the L.A. Free Press and then put together in book form during the late 60's and early 70's. Nothing new under the sun.
That said I do wish T. V. and movies would get over the words Penis and Vagina (or even Oprah's Va JayJay). You've said it a million times, we heard it a million times. It made sense when they used the terms on L.A. Law during the testimony of rape victims, but enough already. Do they really think five and six year olds need to add those words to their vocabulary?
Network TV makes working the 3-11 shift or off-shore employment even more attractive than it was during TV's golden sitcom age.
As a modern day Rosie the Riveter working second shift, I agree whole heartedly!
Just a wee bit of defense for a few current TV shows...30 Rock (it IS 30..right.
Quite frankly...
Mad Men is so good!..(ju
Now..I just have to ask...why are meat eaters so friggen angry with vegetarians? Guilt?
Yet another argument for working the 3-11 shift &/or off-shore employment.
ken, you've done it again. insanely funny column.
however, i do think mr. carlin would have asked bob if emily had a "va-jay-ja
and howard, the airline navigator from across the hall, would have had love sick problems with his flight attendant boyfriend(s).
and jerry would have been caught giving one of his dental patients a reallllllllly good cleaning.
------
Now that I think about it, "Green Acres" had a lot of questionable elements:
1. The town was called "Hootervil
2. The Ziffels shared a bedroom with a pig.
3. Mrs. Douglas wore slinky dresses in the middle of the day.
4. "Ralph," one of the Monroe Brothers carpenters, was a woman.
5. "Mr. Haney" was played by a man named Buttram.
Where was the Parents Television Council back then?!?!?
I avoid anything associated with the word "comedy" on network television
The question is who to cast as the better Sgt Bilko -- Cheney or Rove?
Definitely Rove as Bilko, the scheming con artist with just the right bullshit for any occasion. And, as Colonel Hall, the slow-witted patsy resigned to being bamboozled at every turn: the American people.
Hey, what's your problem. How can you put Phil Silvers in the same class of those ass wipes.
Does anyone know the name of the Classic song that Phil Silvers wrote.
Hint Frank Sinatra had the hit.
Sex and bodily functions are the antipode of true humor-but they work perfectly for a viewing public made up of mostly virtual pre-adolescents. Obviously, there is room for the risque or the ribald in humor. For instance, Benny Hill was ribald and that made for good slapstick, but there had to be an ironic or unexpected element to make the situation funny.
The majority of today's comedies seemed geared for what we would have thought funny in second or third grade.
There is such an enormous dearth of talent, creative ability and originality, that people resort to sex talk and toilet humor. It's like using the f-word. It suffices for an idiot who has nothing to say, and an insufficient vocabulary to make something up. To paraphrase Talleyrand, "scatalogy was given to people to hide their imbecility
There were a group of us, Steve Baldwin, actor, nutjob, general wild time, Todd Phillips, the Hollywood director, then at NYU Film School, Melissa Knott grand daughter and heir to the Knott's Berry Farm fortune, Sarah Mandino, niece and heir to the Og Mandino fortune, we all lived and went to school in New York, and hung out downtown on occasion. Generation X hadn't fully been applied to us yet, but we were all children of the 70's and so we spoke a certain same language. The ideas of George Carlin influenced us, but really it was all the shrooms and pot and acid and mescaline and ecstasy along with the philosophy we were studying that warped our minds. Did I come up with the idea to remake seventies classic shows like Starsky and Hutch, or The Dukes of Hazzard on my own, no, Baldwin probably had as much influence as any number of other people. But Todd probably wouldn't have ever ended up where he was without at least a little help from Sarah's trust fund.
MASH, like the leather stocking tales, worked by being a social commentary on American values while still including lots of sex and to a lesser degree violence. The irony though is that many people found it itself, along with the Odd Couple, dumbed down for TV from stage and screen. Well, stage and screen at least in the case of Neil Simon's the Odd Couple reprised for the screen by Walter Matthow and Jack Lemmon.
I know a lot of Todd's work is sophomoric and lcd of the variety you are here denigrating, but he really is brilliant in his own manner and there is actually a great deal of thought behind this very post modern idea.
Let's not forget the movies. You can bet if they did a remake of Driving Miss Daisy, they would have a car chase, several explosions, and Hoke doing Miss Daisy in the back seat.
Yeah well I saw the first 10 minutes of Big Shots last night and was literally gagging until I turned it off.
They said penis 15 times or more, knobber, tranny, and were slinging the innuendo as thick as KYgel at Leatherfest. Penis was also texted in a phone message, for us to read. Surely, no one sends a sexy textmail to a dude and uses the word penis. And all of it done with a real Man's Show attitude..
I long for the days where white men are not the butt of every joke and the asshole in every script. These guys just ruin it for everyone. And they think they are programming for men, or that this is a sample of a "show for the guys"?
I'm sure DirtySexyMoney is family values tho. Can't wait. It's not like I expected anything better from TV, I do not rely on it for entertainment anymore. Geez....I am no prude but your kid can't see previews, trailers, commercials, and most every show. Unless you want them blighted and blasted and ruined before age 8.
I am stunned at which the speed of this seems to grow. I know it has really creeped...
They make the plot up and purpose and direction as the season(s) go. Just start with a weak premise and go scandalous scandalous scandalous and hope for the ratings.
Nice system we have tho, in this country. Somehow we can still blame it all on Lefty Hollywood instead of on the Pap Merchants, advertisers, Network Heads, and Big Corporate Media.
Fart and poop jokes are the new "edgy"...
They always have been for 6-10 year olds.
And always will be. Hard to make a sophisticated fart joke....
Ward, we have to do something about the Beaver.
No, no, it's "Ward, aren't you being a little hard on the Beaver?"
Was there ever a worse pun than "Beaver Cleaver"?
You must be logged in to comment. Log in or connect with
