DVD/MTM/Signs of the Times

The upgrades to our Computer Farm have left me temporarily unable to access my blog from home, so i'm using my friend Sharon's laptop to publish this draft.  Thanks, Sharon!

So i've been watching too much old TV recently. But i did have a lot of fun with things like, i used to have a dress with a collar like that! Their dish drainer is just like ours - and 3/4 of the ones in the stores today. And - May have been different in NYC, but girls hardly ever wore pants around here in the early 60s.

We had Season 4 of The Dick VanDyke Show out from the library for six weeks. (checked out then renewed once.) Then at Christmas MyGuy was given a Best Ever collection of Dick VanDyke shows. We haven't seen those yet, but i have been comparing which episodes are on that set with the ones in Season 4.

My tastes do not match the tastes of the people who made the collection.

Now every episode of this series is cute & funny, even the waste of airtime one where Sally is embarrassed about her rich boyfriend, but dumps him - not because he's a mortician, but because he treats the help like dirt - before Rob & Buddy can tell her he's married.

But The Impractical Joke (a friend of Buddy's gets Rob to disassemble his phone, then Buddy brings all sorts of hurt on himself awaiting Rob's imagined revenge) is far more deserving of a Best Ever spot than either 4 1/2 or the inaccurately named The Allen Brady Show Goes to Jail. Those seem to have earned a place as Best Ever mainly because of guest Don Rickles.

They're good, fun shows, but not great ones.

Oh, and i would dearly love to see again the one where Rob & Laura discover that the person who married them wasn't really entitled to do marriages, so they need to get married, because they aren't, and the guy they choose to perform the ceremony doesn't want to, because he's never seen a couple who obviously so do not belong together.  That is one of my all-time favorites!!!

And then there's the third Season 4 Episode on the Best Ever collection, Don't Bathe on Saturday Night. Like the other two, it's cute, not as good as others in Season 4.  i suppose i don't mind  having it on our collection.

But we like to watch the Behind the Scenes stuff and voiceover commemtaries. i kept getting angrier and angrier as i did.

The story involves a failed attempt of Rob & Laura to take in a show and have a night in a nice hotel. But Laura gets her toe stuck in the plumbing, and she's locked in the bathroom.

The producer had promised Mary Tyler Moore a Laura episode. Even doing the voiceovers in like 2003, he didn't get why she wasn't happy with his special Laura episode.
Which had her offscreen hollering lines as in a radio show for 3/4 of the program.
While the guys in charge tried to console her with the thought that, while she was offscreen, she would be giving all the men in America a treat, allowing them to imagine her naked in the bathtub.

Am i the only one who sees a problem here?

This was 1964. Everyone blamed Mary's lousy attitude on the fact that she was quitting smoking that week. Rob Reiner yelled at her (not knowing it was in front of sponsors) for her uncooperative attitude. Later they apologized to each other and Mary even sent Rob a peace offering gift. (He said she deserved every word of it, but he should've taken her into her trailer to do it.)

Even in Mary's accompanying interviews, she blamed her temper on the smoking thing.

i say it was MTM being classy. And preserving her reputation as not a prima donna.

i told MyGuy that in 1974, she would've refused to do it.  My thought was, the climate of the times had changed.   He told me that in 1974 she had her own production company and was calling the shots.

Which actually is the best revenge anyway.


2 comments:

  1. Having seen the byproduct media as well, I disagree about Reiner and Moore's attitudes. It came across to me that he had in fact by now realized that it was upsetting and unfair to her that "the big Laura episode" was half an hour of radio theater on her part. I grant that he still doesn't get that "I want to invite the male half of America to imagine you naked" isn't a compliment, though.

    What I got from Moore's side is that she wouldn't have blown up nearly as badly if she wasn't on edge from the nicotine withdrawal. She getting a poor deal, but she probably wouldn't have been as vocal about it, and I believe certainly wouldn't have gotten into an argument so bad that she collapsed into a puddle of tears from causing Reiner to shout at her when he never shouts.

    ReplyDelete
  2. i reckon we agree on everything except that Reiner now gets the part about "the big Laura episode" wasn't.
    Thanks for wandering over & weighing in! Agreement not required.

    ReplyDelete

i look forward to your comments! Thank you for sharing them.