On Television
KITMAN, MARVIN
On Television THE CALIFORNIA SYNDROME by marvin kitman Last year I blamed the terrible decline of television on the climate in Los Angeles. Without different seasons there can be no creativity,...
...Most of the time you can'tsee very far in LA because there is a greenish purple cloud hanging over the city that is real poison...
...People drive very slowly, or simply stay home...
...The pain of confrontation is excruciating when your capillaries are broiling...
...The sun usually takes an especially heavy toll among the baldies at the higher levels of network programing departments...
...The year before I suggested that Per-rier water was the culprit...
...The point is that the place influences history and the way things are...
...As oneof the creators confided to my source, "You know, man, like you just can't sit in the pool and, like, you know, and be creative when the sky is like one badvibe after another...
...Without different seasons there can be no creativity, I argued, and in the Rich People's Republic of LA it's always sunny...
...I don't know...
...Even Ed McMa-hon could be heard laughing in the background????the ultimate in silence...
...We've had only four days of sunshine in the last six weeks," an industry source moaned early in July about this year's growing season...
...They need remedial reading and speaking...
...The colors show up on the lung X-rays of television executives...
...I don't know...
...It is a well-known fact," Palin once told me over lunch, "that the French add frogs to Perrier to make the bubbles...
...And when the sun comes back out you can fry...
...The whole process is like reviewing a haystack to find the needle, or searching for the lost ark...
...I'm having all these pessimistic thoughts concerning the effect of LA on television because the new season is descending upon us...
...Nobody walks...
...If President Reagan acts immediately, some of them could be saved...
...It seems that all "the creative talent" (to use the local jargon) was so "bummed out" by the "bad vibes" that they couldn't "produce" as usual...
...Maybe they were even filling up the hot tubs with Perrier...
...And it's taking its toll on the present: The major characteristic of the new fall season is a lack of originality...
...I think it was Hardy who first said, "Geography is destiny...
...Strictly speaking, that is not true...
...Nobody was ever supposed to live there...
...Who is he...
...Amother ominous development: Hot tubs and Perrier were replaced this summer by flotation tanks...
...I'm probably the last important figure in the industry to start watching them...
...It must be the LA version of a private Dead Sea, or Coney Island's Washington Baths...
...Angelenos also have only two rainy seasons a year, and this spooks them...
...In LA there is no one on the streets to bump into...
...There was absolute silence as the boys did their English mums dressing up act and their dead parrot sketches...
...on CBS, Tales of the Gold Monkey (Wednesday, 8:00 p.m.-9:00 p.m...
...The natives sold them houses and they are trapped...
...The tanks' quiet and tranquillity give the execs a chance to be alone with their thoughts, such as they are...
...In this sense I am an environmentalist...
...stars Rock Hudson and that great American TV actor, Jack Scalia...
...Would you believe Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (Wednesday 8 :O0p.m.-9:O0 p.m...
...My favorite piece of news about this show, starring Ron Glass from Barney Miller and Demond Wilson from Sanford & Son, is that Marshall is recycling old scripts...
...you ask...
...Michael Palin of Monty Python's Flying Circus first noted the negative impact of Perrier on California when the comedy team went to LA in 1973 to appear on The Tonight Show...
...Bruce Boxleitner of Bring 'Em Back is Selleck in the jungle...
...Stay tuned...
...For the best TV you need an exchange of ideas????lots of people whom you can bounce your thoughts off, make contact with...
...The microwaves shortcircuit the capillaries near the top of the head, where the lobe that originates new show ideas is situated...
...You never know when they will come up with something worthwhile...
...Their scalp cooked if they stayed, a sure sign that God never intended the place asa residence, only somewhere toenjoy the beach and the Mexican food...
...This is very dangerous...
...The so-called live audience at the studio in Burbank was legally dead from the neck up...
...Television was invented in New Jersey by Vladimir Zworykin, and that is where TV programs were meant to be produced...
...Somehow, the gold diggers got lost and created a civilization by accident...
...You probably can't follow his reasoning if you' re trying to read this erudite article and drink Perrier on the rocks at the same time...
...Just as in real life, a crop was planted in the spring, andnowinthefallwegetto see what the harvest brings...
...Now, recognizing the dangers of LA, they send their kids to Ivy League schools...
...NBC's The Devlin Connection (Saturday, 10:00p.m.-ll:00p.m...
...Any resemblance between certain new programs and summer 1981's hit movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark, is also purely intentional...
...Matt Houston (Sunday, 8:00 p.m.-9:00 p.m...
...No matter...
...My colleagues rushed out to Southern California in early June for the previews, risking permanent brain damage...
...I love the suspense...
...Many of them know only a few words of basic English, like "curl," "hang ten" and "surfs up...
...I can hardly wait to read what I have to say...
...These are the masochists and sadists who are in a hurry to tell themselves and their readers what the shows are like in advance...
...I can wait...
...My report on the new season will begin in earnest next column...
...The sun was in the shop for longer than usual this past summer in sunny California...
...The first shows were done in New York, true, but that's the same environmentally and geographically...
...on CBS...
...The less time an executive spends in LA, the more he reduces the risks of having his intellect burned away...
...I too am intrigued by the season, no matter how much I poke fun at it...
...Otherwise he will wind up a 40-year-old surfer...
...There are many other negative aspects to the TV capital's environment...
...Don't laugh, they actually have such a street in LA...
...Getting into one cleanses the mind or something...
...The epitome of the season's lack of innovation is ABC's The New Odd Couple (Friday, 8:30 p.m.-9:00 p.m...
...The video cassettes of the new series' premieres are piling up on my office floor next to the video tape machine...
...You can get a ticket for walking...
...In 1979 I decided that sitting in hot tubs caused the degeneration of programing...
...Bring 'Em Back Alive (Tuesday, 8:00 p.m.-9:00 p.m...
...they cancel dentists' appointments, delay dinner reservations at restaurants????if the restaurants bother to reopen at all after a downpour...
...Most of the shows seem to come from the same place, the photocopying room in the basement of the Century Plaza off the Avenue of the Stars...
...An accident sometimes happens...
...That's what ruined TV in the past...
...The carbona-tion befuddles and flattens the mind...
...They could become dishwashers, or programing assistants to Brandon Tartikoff at NBC...
...The film had a great impact on the TV community'screative minds...
...It gets slippery when wet faster in LA than elsewhere...
...on NBC are among those that float to mind...
...Despite the sameness of the material and my qualms about LA, though, I find myself getting excited about watching the new shows anyway...
...I mean, like, you need those good vibes, you know...
...As Robin Tyler pointed out at the Radical Humor Conference at NYU last spring, they do have seasons out there????the fire season, the earthquake season, the flood season, and the TV season...
...They get so little rain, in fact, that a shower activates other elements in the environment, like the grease on the road...
...But ever since De Gaulle's day there has been a bubble shortage in France that's been hush-hush...
...on ABC stars Lee Horsely, who looks like Tom with a Texas accent...
...Previously his talent has been trying to look interested in the Jordache woman...
...My most recent theory, though, is that the industry's being in the LA area itself accounts for the level of our TV programs...
...on ABC, and The Voyagers (Sunday, 8:00 p.m.-9:00 p.m...
...It may have been Laurel...
...The fate of those pioneers is cruel...
...You see the 40-year-old surfers in TV-land all the time, and they are indeed permanently disadvantaged...
...Then a few pioneers shot some pictures in the sun and it was all over for TV as an art form...
...I want my son to bea success," says a worried television writer-father, "to have the advantages I never had...
...It is no wonder that TV's golden age occurred when the entire operation was back east...
...Why, the Jordache man, making his first extended????longer than 30 seconds????acting appearance...
...They smile in conversations even if they don't agree...
...You've heard about them...
...In addition, a Tom Selleck Look-alike Contest is being conducted by the industry this fall...
...The two most important qualifications of NBC President Grant Tinker are, one, a lot of white hair to reflect the sun, and two, an office to visit at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan...
...Maybe they watched it in their flotation tanks????i'm sure the more successful producers have private screening facilities inside...
...The Federal government should set up a program to help these unfortunates, and get them out of California before it's too late...
...The mistake TV people made was going to LA full time...
...Look, good is good...
...Everyone travels in private cars, insulated...
...When the first visitors arrived in the 19th century, the idea was to dig up the gold and run...
...Out there they are already making excuses, pointing the finger at the bad weather...
...Maybe they will never be brain surgeons, but they could do useful jobs that require muscle...
...Almost every drama show has a male star who either resembles or allegedly acts like the lead of CBS' Magnum PI (Thursday, 8:00 p.m-9:00 p.m...
...They say it's all-natural carbona-tion...
...I believe that where you work affects the quality of what you do...
...and The Quest (Friday, 10:00 p.m.-11:00 p.m...
...People who get too many rays in Southern California start to nod out...
...The fun is discovering it...
...It's enthralling...
...Produced by the legendary Gary Marshall????one of the fine minds behind the original TV Odd Couple????the latest version is the black rendition of the Felix and Oscar story...
...The lack of oxygen, for instance, addles the brain...
...It's hard to be genuinely creative when you live the same life as a grapefruit...
...They're chambers filled with salt water that are very dark inside...
...The last thing they should want is to be alone with those thoughts...
Vol. 65 • October 1982 • No. 18
