As usual, when I look at lists like this, I start at the bottom and work my way up, and as I looked at the bottom three (#21, People; #20, The Paper Chase*; #19, Lifeline), I thought the critics had sized things up pretty well: People, a TV version of the magazine hosted by Phyllis George, made it through eight episodes; while Lifeline, a real-life documentary series focusing on a hospital ER, survived for 18 episodes spread over two seasons; meanwhile, The Paper Chase was an overrated series that was cancelled by CBS after one season and lasted for three additional seasons on PBS. So far, so good—or so bad, in this case.
*To its credit, Paper Chase, a show I always considered outrageously overrated, was admired by the panelists as "a quality effort" and a "touch of class." Of course, as anyone in the business can tell you, it's better to be popular than admired; while the series did make it through four seasons (including three on PBS), the praise given it amounts to little more than the Miss Congeniality award of the year.
Taxi, at #3 on our list, is perhaps the most successful of all the season's new shows; it runs for five seasons over two different networks, and leaves with 18 Emmy Awards (including three for Best Comedy Series), along with a host of beloved characters. It doesn't hurt that it airs on ABC between Three's Company and Starsky & Hutch. There's no missing #2, though: Battlestar Galactica, which scores 11 out of a possible 12 points, not to mention a spot on this week's cover. It is, the panel agrees, the only new series that "is in any sense innovative," and it's been given a desirable spot on Sunday night, the most heavily-viewed night of the week. "It's bound to attract by the zillions kids and young adults who are famished for more Star Wars thrills and intergalactic derring-do." And it did, indeed, go on to become a multi-season success, although in order to do so it would have to wait 25 years to be rebooted on a cable network that didn't even exist in 1978.
Among those looking at the new season is our erstwhile critic, Robert MacKenzie. He's not offering any reviews, not yet anyway; too early for that, and some of these shows won't be on long enough to be reviewed anyway. Curiously, though, he sees a number of the 21 shows as "unusually promising"—on paper, at least. He likes the idea of Lifeline, and the rise of nonfiction television in general, although I suspect he might have had second thoughts had he seen these quasi-documentaries morph into unscripted "reality" television that, in reality, was anything but. He praises NBC's Fred Silverman for his commitment to "More prime-time news specials and documentaries," although perhaps their most interesting documentary would have been one explaining how a program like Supertrain gets greenlighted for the second season.
At the other end of the scale, we have two cases in which movies that were perhaps already too long are being made even longer, thanks to the addition of "additional" footage that was, mostly, culled from the cutting room floor. The wisdom of the film editors can easily be seen in Airport '77 (Tuesday and Wednesday, 9:00 p.m. each night, NBC), in which 70, count 'em 70, minutes have been added, 67 of them being outtakes, to, as Crist says, "pad out scenes." It doesn't add anything to a movie that has completely abandoned the airport premise of the first two films; "Not to worry, disaster and/or cliche lovers," Crist assures us; "all goes unsmoothly and there are some exciting air-sea rescue operations after the plan winds up at the bottom of the ocean in, no less, the Bermuda Triangle."
On weeks when we can, we'll match up two of the biggest rock shows of the era, NBC's The Midnight Special and the syndicated Don Kirshner's Rock Concert, and see who's better, who's best.
What else is on this week? Well, we've already visited some of the biggest blockbusters of the week, those big-screen movies stretched over into two-part spectaculars, even if their increased running time doesn't justify their increased running time. However, hope remains.
We know all about Sunday, with part one of Lassie and part two of King Kong, but we've also got the three-hour premiere of Battlestar Galactica (8:00 p.m., ABC). I don't recall having watched this when it was on, although I could have: I was celebrating my second weekend in the Twin Cities after returning from exile in the World's Worst Town™. Amidst outer space and giant apes, though, there's another contender: the 30th Emmy Awards (8:30 p.m., CBS), hosted by Alan Alda; I know you're excited to find out the big winners, and so I won't keep you in suspense: All in the Family and the NBC miniseries Holocaust were the big winners, taking home six awards each, while The Rockford Files takes home the Best Drama award; however, the biggest award might go to the trio of Carter, Begin, and Sadat, who interrupted the broadcast for 30 minutes to announce the signing of the Camp David agreement.
One of the tropes you can almost always count on at the beginning of a new season is the return of an old favorite to a show on which they were once a regular, and such is the case on Wednesday's Charlie's Angels (9:00 p.m., ABC), in which Farrah Fawcett-Majors reprises her role of Jill Munroe, who's somehow involved in trying to prevent the sabotage of a new racing car. We get a special guest star thrown in as part of the bargain, with former world driving champion Jackie Stewart appearing as himself. Call me crazy, but that's what makes this episode worth watching. We're also treated to the first of McLean Stevenson's two failed series this season, In the Beginning (8:30 p.m., CBS), in which he plays the stereotypical conservative priest confronted with a stereotypical liberal nun (Pricilla Lopez) for predictably stereotypical hijinks, which somehow manage to hang on for five, count 'em five, episodes.
Finally, in the TV Update, Sally Bedell reports that the Fred Silverman era at NBC may be getting off to a rocky start. Over the last two years, ABC, flush with ratings success, has mounted a concerted effort to win over CBS and NBC affiliates. It was popularly thought that these efforts would be on hold for the time being while the affiliates measured Silverman's impact on the Peacock Network. However, less than three months into his term, the network was rocked by the departure of Minneapolis-St. Paul station KSTP, which announced it would be moving to ABC after 30 years as an NBC affiliate. Despite Silverman's plea to give him six months to turn things around, KSTP's owner, Stanley E. Hubbard, was adamant: "ABC's long-range potential for continuing [its] leadership was the deciding factor. We feel ABC is the strongest management team in broadcasting today."
But as I wound my way up the list, I began to wonder if those critics had really been as perceptive as I'd originally thought. There was Apple Pie at #18, The American Girls at #17, The Waverly Wonders* at #15, W.E.B. at #13, The Eddie Capra Mysteries at #11. None of these series scored higher than a one from any member of the panel, and given that one point meant "a marginal
show that could survive
but probably won't" (several of them received zeros, meaning "a natural-born loser"), I started to understand the unvarnished truth: the great majority of the new shows were, quite simply, bad. Continuing, there was Sword of Justice at #10, In the Beginning at #8, Mary at #5—was there no hope for this season?
*Supposedly, Larry Hagman was offered the choice between The Waverly Wonders, a sitcom in which he'd be the lead, and a prime-time drama where he would play an "unscrupulous and ruthless" character. He chose the latter, which was called Dallas, and attained television immortality. The lead in Waverly went to Joe Namath, who went on to demonstrate, over the course of four episodes, why he made the Hall of Fame as a football player.
There was a faint glimmer of light in Mork & Mindy, the #7 show, which runs for four seasons, the longest of any show outside the top four. That it didn't finish higher is understandable; three of the four panelists gave it a zero, and Dorkin calls it "strictly kid-stuff" and a "one-note gag." However, it also indicates that the panel either misjudged or didn't appreciate the magnetism of Robin Williams, which is perhaps understandable; a personality of his magnitude doesn't come along very often. To his credit, though, Schulman sees this as "the sleeper of the year." Dorkin was more positive about the #4 series, WKRP in Cincinnati; he ranks it "the comedy breakthrough of the season," and likes its chances even against NBC's Little House on the Prairie.
This brings us to the #1 show, one that is considered an absolutely, positively, guaranteed success. Each of our four critics gave the series a score of three points, which meant "a show that's a sure winner [that] is destined to be
a front runner in the
ratings." That show happens to be Vega$, starring Robert Urich, and while it was a solid success, running for three seasons and remains fondly remembered by many (not least because of Audrey Davis and Judy Landers), it's not quite the unqualified, long-running hit that one might have expected, particularly considering the prime scheduling slot it's been given, immediately following Charlie's Angels. However, given the shows we've seen in this list, it qualifies as an unqualified success.
If you're somewhat underwhelmed by what you've seen here, you're not alone. ABC's schedule, for example, is decried as "junk," "kiddy-porn," and "bubble-gum banality," yet it's also agreed that the network—and its highly successful programming—is now considered "the model for the other two networks who are transparently attempting to duplicate its success." It doesn't take long for the results to show; several of the new series are gone by November, including Mary Tyler Moore's Mary, which is pulled after four episodes at Mary's request. In case you're thinking that hope lies around the corner with the mid-season replacements, guess again: those replacements include Hello, Larry, Supertrain, Sweepstakes, and David Cassidy–Man Undercover, and The Stockard Channing Show. To be fair, though, it also includes The Dukes of Hazard and Diff'rent Strokes. But if you're thinking that this new season was pretty underwhelming, you're absolutely right. And to their credit, the panelists were pretty accurate in their predictions. But then, how could they not be, when most of what they had to choose from were bombs?
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He's also encouraged that television has finally come to realize that shows can be set in cities other than New York or Los Angeles, as evidenced by The Paper Chase (somewhere in the Northeast), Vega$ (Las Vegas), WKRP in Cincinnati (Cincinnati), and Battlestar Galactica (outer space). Just for good measure, he throws in W.E.B., a show that "threatens to take us inside the world of network broadcasting." (At five episodes, I wonder if he got a chance to review it?) Well, he does warn us that "This will not be a comedy, unless unintentionally."
As for what he terms "the Beach Blanket Bounce-off," those shows featuring girls dressed (or undressed) in bikinis, towels, and nighties, "The critic, no sexist he, will judge these series on their merits, with only proper attention to their charms."
Rest assured, though, that MacKenzie, as is the case with any good critic, is "free to draw the useful and happy distinction between good ratings and good television." It's not necessarily the case that never the twain shall meet, but, borrowing the royal "we" from our hero Cleve, "We plan to keep an open mind, a condition that is best maintained in a horizontal position," with the eyes closed and the feet up.
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Back in the days when networks actually aired movies, one of the treats of the new season was seeing some of these blockbusters make their television premieres. And in an effort to get the maximum impact from these premieres, the networks are quite apt to do one of two things: add additional footage to expand the running time so the movies can be turned into two-parters; or remove footage so the movies can be shown on TV in the first place.
An example of the latter is The Bad News Bears (Friday, 9:00 p.m., ABC), which Judith Crist calls "one of the best kids' movies of recent years." Until, that is, the movie was "bowdlerized" by ABC. One of the movie's strengths, in addition to "top-notch" performances from Walter Matthau, Tatum O'Neal, and Jackie Earle Haley, was that "for once screen kids talked the way human kids do." Unfortunately, "the salty speech has been sugared for TV, even though 10 million kids will know the three little words that are missing from that tag line." More evidence, in case we needed it, that the kids are often a lot more advanced than the adults, which, in fact, would answer quite a few of the questions regarding how kids are brought up nowadays.
The other premiere to get the stretch treatment is the 1976 remake of King Kong (Saturday and Sunday, 9:00 p.m. each night, NBC), which has 65 minutes being added to the 134 minutes of the theatrical release, all of it outtakes. Alas, the new footage can't hide the reality: the charm of the original 1933 classic "is lost amid all the hydraulic manipulations and plastic. For those who don't know the original film, the new version can be a foolish entertainment. For those who do, it's a travesty."
One might think we'll fare better with movies that make it to the small screen more or less intact, but such is not the case of 1976's The Shootist (Tuesday, 9:00 p.m., CBS), with John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, Lauren Bacall, and Ron Howard "wasted" in "a tediously pretentious and vapid melodrama about the last days of a 'legendary' killer." Wayne and Bacall emerge from the movie as "anachronistic antiques," in Crist's words. I happen to like The Shootist myself, but I'm willing to allow as to how this may be an example of a movie that ages well; part of its power, I think, comes from it being the Duke's last movie, and seen in the light of a dying actor in his final movie playing a dying gunman in his last hurrah, it takes on a resonance and emotional charge that it might not necessarily have had during its original viewing. Put another way, if Wayne had gone on to make five or six movies after The Shootist, would we remember it as fondly as we do?
Even old reliables aren't necessarily a guarantee of success; take Lassie: The New Beginning, another two-parter (this one a telemovie, so the padding is all intentional), airing Sunday at 7:00 p.m. on ABC, with the conclusion being shown next Sunday at the same time. It is, says Crist, "probably the worst of the nine theatrical films and innumerable TV-series episodes" since the original 1943 Lassie Come Home, and considering its plot—two kids faced, in part one alone, with "grandma's illness, a trek from Arizona to California to be dumped on an uncle who dislikes them, grandma's death, separation from Lassie, threats of an orphanage"—well, says Crist, "If I were a collie, I'd sue."
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Kirshner: Harry Chapin, Tom Chapin, and Steve Chapin (all brothers) are joined by comic Gary Mule Deer and comedy group the New Untouchables. Music: "Taxi."
Special: Performances by R.E.O. Speedwagon, Little River Band, A Taste of Honey, Atlanta Rhythm Section, Climax Blues Band, and the Ozark Mountain Daredevils. Highlights include "Keep Pushin" (Speedwagon), "Reminiscing" (Little River Band", "Boogie Oogie Oogie" (Honey).
I don't suppose you'd call the Chapin brothers a "group," but this is a week of groups nonetheless. And when it comes to groups, Special has the best of the offerings. If you don't believe, me, just check out this performance of "Time for Me to Fly" by Speedwagon, and "Boogie Oogie Oogie" by A Taste of Honey. If that doesn't convince you that Special wins the day, nothing will.
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What else is on this week? Well, we've already visited some of the biggest blockbusters of the week, those big-screen movies stretched over into two-part spectaculars, even if their increased running time doesn't justify their increased running time. However, hope remains.
Saturday sees the special one-hour sixth-season premiere of Good Times (8:00 p.m. ET, CBS), the first of a three-part story arc that features the return of Esther Rolle as Florida, the moral foundation of the series. To watch it, you'll have to pass up the second-season premiere of CHiPS (same time, NBC), which remains at an hour but offers up the tantalizing possibility that Jon and Ponch will leave the CHP for a future selling cars. Given that there's nothing in the promo material about the series changing its name, I think we can guess how this turns out. Brianne Leary joins the cast, and the special guest stars are a blast from the past, Troy Donahue and Kaye Stevens. Meanwhile, Captain Stubing finds himself marooned on a desert island after a three-hour cruise—that is, a two-hour season opener that includes the typical cast of stars, but really misses out on the opportunity for a Gilligan's Island reunion.
We know all about Sunday, with part one of Lassie and part two of King Kong, but we've also got the three-hour premiere of Battlestar Galactica (8:00 p.m., ABC). I don't recall having watched this when it was on, although I could have: I was celebrating my second weekend in the Twin Cities after returning from exile in the World's Worst Town™. Amidst outer space and giant apes, though, there's another contender: the 30th Emmy Awards (8:30 p.m., CBS), hosted by Alan Alda; I know you're excited to find out the big winners, and so I won't keep you in suspense: All in the Family and the NBC miniseries Holocaust were the big winners, taking home six awards each, while The Rockford Files takes home the Best Drama award; however, the biggest award might go to the trio of Carter, Begin, and Sadat, who interrupted the broadcast for 30 minutes to announce the signing of the Camp David agreement.
Then as now, Mondays in the fall can mean only one thing, and that's Monday Night Football. For the season's third week, Frank, Howard and Dandy Don travel to Foxboro, Massachusetts, for the game between the Baltimore Colts, a bad team that used to be good, taking on the New England Patriots, a formerly bad team on the way to being good. (9:00 p.m., ABC) The Colts gallop to a 34-27 victory, but whether or not that's good is up to you.
With Tuesday dominated by movies (Airport '77 on NBC, The Shootist on CBS), the burden for the night's variety falls on ABC. On Happy Days, a two-part story set in Colorado concludes with Fonzie entering a bull-riding contest to bail out a dude ranch. (8:00 p.m.) If Fonzie hadn't already jumped the shark, I suppose you could have said he's throwing the bull around; either way, it's a long way from the show's origins. Laverne & Shirley follows (8:30 p.m.), with a knock on the head turning Shirley into a stripper named Roxy. Happens all the time, in my experience. Janet and Chrissy take part in a liberation protest at a nude beach on Three's Company (9:00 p.m.); dare we suggest that they were—busted? On Taxi (9:30 p.m.), Tony gets a chance to match wits with a boxing champion, played by world welterweight champion Carlos Palomino. Does Tony get punchy over the encounter? And on Starsky & Hutch (10:00 p.m.), Starsky tries to track down Hutch before he succumbs to a deadly strain of botulism, a plot that leaves me wondering whether this is the most realistic storyline of the evening, or the least.
Thursday opens with the seventh-season premiere of The Waltons (8:00 p.m., CBS), a special two-hour episode that works in a tribute to the memory of Will Geer (Grandpa), who died in April. It's also the opening of the seventh season for Barnaby Jones (10:00 p.m., CBS), as Buddy Ebsen tries to protect a murder witness targeted for extinction by the bad guys. Gretchen Corbett takes some time off from The Rockford Files to play the damsel in distress. And it's the second-season starter for Family (10:00 p.m., ABC), wtih Quinn Cummings, nominated for an Oscar for The Goodbye Girl, joining the cast.
It's the fourth-season opener for Donny & Marie (Friday, 8:00 p.m., ABC), which also introduces a new weekly disco segment. K.C. and the Sunshine Band help kick off the festivities, along with Olivia Newton-John and Bob Hope, who—I swear—never met a guest spot on a variety show that he didn't like. Still, it's preferable to the debut of The Waverly Wonders, the show which Larry Hagman passed up—remember?—in favor of Dallas. (8:00 p.m., NBC) In honor of Joe Namath's football background, the show airs for four episodes.
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For KSTP, the move means being able to take advantage of a powerhouse primetime lineup from the nation's number one network; for ABC, it hopes to double the audience of its evening news program, thanks to KSTP's top-rated news programs. For other affiliates considering a change, a network source is quoted as saying, "There is no question that the move will have a psychological impact." Hubbard added that while he didn't doubt that NBC's ratings would go up under Silverman, he didn't think it would happen in six months. Guess again; Silverman never does turn things around at the number three network, and he himself will be gone by 1981, setting up his own successful production company.
Living in the Twin Cities at the time, I remember when all this went down. It was indeed a shock to see KSTP, one of the original NBC affiliates, make the switch, and the surprises didn't end there; it was widely expected that NBC would, in turn, go to KMSP, the now-spurned ABC affiliate, but no—they instead chose WTCN, one of the nation's leading independent stations, leaving KMSP as the odd station out. In the end, they turned out all right; after a successful independent run themselves, they're now a Fox affiliate, with all the rights and privileges included (read: NFL football). Yes, as Carroll O'Connor and Jean Stapleton would say, those were, indeed, the days. TV
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