On Television
KITMAN, MARVIN
On Television A SURPRISING SEASON BY MARVIN KITMAN There are so many good new shows this fall season, I sometimes think I've lost my mind. Or I've died and gone to heaven. Some of the sitcoms...
...That's using your noodle...
...I know an internationally acclaimed New York analyst who gets on with his guns as though they were real people...
...Despite their brainpower, the IHP kids are not omniscient: They may know the density of oxygen on Mars or in LA, but the mechanics of a high school dance confound them...
...The Ellen Burstyn Show (ABC, suspended) Designing Women (CBS, Thursday, 9:30 p.m...
...Finally he brings one back from the pound...
...His denial was so sincere you almost believed it, even when he started coughing up fur balls...
...ALF, my favorite sitcom, is about a typical LA household—a father, a mother, two kids and an extraterrestrial creature who dropped in on them from the planet Melmac (the home of plastic flying saucers...
...Plenty can be said about a season offering LA Law by Steven (Hill Street Blues) Bochco and Crime Story by Michael (Miami Vice) Mann—plus Andy Griffith as a Southern Perry Mason (Matlock...
...They say it makes the cops seem almost as violent as the robbers...
...But how many times can you say "the best,' "funny," "heartwarming," "great" without becoming tiresome...
...Fortunately, he is willing to eat cat food cans...
...Well, that it's droll, for one thing...
...in Newark...
...If Head of the Class takes off, it could yield a whole new set of high school role models...
...A few, however, linger in my memory: Jack and Mike (ABC, Tuesday, 10 p.m...
...HeadoftheClass(ABC, Wednesday, 8:30 p.m...
...If I'm still raving next time, it didn't work...
...It could make Sylvester Stallone laugh...
...The late 80s could be the age of the jock of the mind...
...ALF wears sunglasses, plays with electric trains, and is wild about rock and roll...
...I personally identify with the fat one, Dennis Blunden (Daniel Schneider), a chemistry whiz in love with Sara Lee (the cake...
...I was especially impressed with the second episode, where Charlie has the kids play the game "What will I be like 20 years from now...
...Elsewhere, The Cosby Show, Cheers—and a smattering of soaps: Dynasty, Dallas, Knots Landing, and Falcon Crest...
...I love the kids in Head of the Class, too—even though the performers are hardly kids themselves (with the notable exception of Tannis Vallely, a 10-year-old who plays a character—the bespectacled Jannice Lazorotto—two years older...
...people used to ask...
...Our House (NBC, Sunday, 7 p.m...
...Even the police chiefs have been against it...
...Yet there is also a poignant side to him...
...Starman (ABC, Friday, 10 p.m...
...But I still have Murders She Wrote on tape from last season, along with such classics as Susan Lucci in The Mafia Princess, Bianca JaggerinM/am/ Vice and Barry Bostwick in George Washington...
...I'll have to go back to the shop for retooling before I fratz out...
...The next thing you know, TV will muster the courage to try a sitcom about average high school students...
...So much for the comedies...
...As it happens, ALF's favorite food is live cat...
...What was that sensational sitcom about baseball players...
...Amen (NBC, Saturday, 9:30 p.m...
...Sledge is a complex character with his own code of justice—which includes tying suspects to the trunk handle of his car and driving around the parking lot...
...Moore gets those whiz-like minds thinking, whether about the causes of World War I or matters philosophical...
...Crime Story looked like it would keep my record intact...
...ALF gets more hilarious every week...
...This sometimes makes him a bit of a pest, even a noodge...
...ALF's attempts to adjust to life on Earth are not always wrinkle-free...
...As they say in the Napa Valley, 1986 is a vintage year...
...In the drama category they are: Crime Story (NBC, Friday, 10 p.m...
...Hesseman's comic style, though slightly bent (maybe as a result of his close proximity to Loni Anderson), made Johnny Fever into a major satirical statement on the subject of radio...
...In fact, this is the drollest sitcom ABC has come up with since Police Squad...
...On Hiatus," it has been announced, are Better Days, Together We Stand (C BS, with Elliot Gould), Kay O 'Brien (CBS), Life With Lucy, and Ellen Burstyn...
...Okay, maybe that's too extreme...
...That's why criticsareso much funnier when they' re being mean and nasty...
...Of course, TV affects kids, too...
...It should also be noted that Sledge Hammer is no philistine...
...It sticks the barb of satire to those who talk to their weapons and to the more discreet types content to give them an occasional hot-eyed glance...
...is hysterical...
...As Johnny Fever, the morning DJ, he stole the show...
...There is just one problem with having so many good new productions available...
...The guy is mucho macho violent...
...The genius-nerds are having their day...
...In the very first episode, Hammer is coming into his office in the morning and there's a sniper on the roof across the street...
...Did you see the episode where the family suspected him of eating Lucky...
...Add them up and you'd get the national debt at the end of Reagan's second term...
...the chief of police bawls...
...He doesn't just trade jokes or do routines a la GabeKotter—he stretches the students, leads them...
...ABC, Saturday, 8:30 p.m...
...a show that wants to be the new Odd Couple, with a slob cop as Oscar and an 11 -year-old Oriental karate champion as Felix...
...Or they went to that legendary Greek island called Hiatus...
...Fever had been at so many stations under so many air-names, he wasn't sure exactly who or where he was ("Is this/lM Toledo...
...Hesseman's Charlie Moore is a regular fellow, likably flawed, who hasn't exactly realized his greatest aims in life...
...I happen to think it's even better than LA Law, yet it has been garnering the lowest Nielsen rating of any non-news shows...
...is a spoof of every violent cop, private eye and vigilante show ever conceived...
...But Charles Bronson and Clint Eastwood would definitely find it amusing...
...There is something inscrutable about Sidekicks...
...Matlock (NBC, Tuesday, 8 p.m...
...Itcreatesa real problem for me, beyond the usual bleary eyes: It's a strain on my limited vocabulary...
...I don't know how long I can go on singing paeans of praise...
...Fillmore High's 10 IHP students are in the hands of Charlie Moore, a definite pedagogical oddball...
...Alan (Tony O'Dell) is a sympathetically earnest type who wants to be President when he grows up...
...In the past my job as a TV critic was easy...
...Darlene (Robin Givens) is a speech and debating dynamo...
...They used TV as a lesson plan...
...Practically every season 17 out of 19 shows are dreadful, or at least forgettable...
...I can use the roughage," he explains...
...What are you trashing today...
...I've already forgotten most of the other entries on the bad list...
...In a meeting at the station house the chief says, "Kill the cigarettes, please.' Sledge whips out his piece and, as usual, all present dive for cover...
...It'salsowhyTV is the critic's dream—they do bad better than anybody...
...Heart of the City (ABC, Saturday, 9 p.m...
...Kotter in the heyday of Welcome Back...
...It's the industry's way of saying—and it may have corroborating research—that its audience is dumb...
...Surely this is a new TV industry we're seeing...
...Bay City Blues...
...He's like an active child with a curious mind as he confronts such basic elements of earthly civilization as the toilet...
...Incidentally, it's not all that rare for a guy to talk to his gun...
...His kids may know all the answers, but Charlie knows the questions...
...Crime Story grew less violent after the premiere episode, but its ratings kept dropping...
...He listens to classical music on his police car radio when he is not busy pumping lead into people...
...The show was clearly on Death Row...
...When he left Winger, Idaho, his dream was to be a producer-director on Broadway...
...Is there malpractice insurance for TV critics...
...Those with especially nerdish tendencies will see themselves in Arvid (Dan Frischman), a classic case complete with pocket slide rule, glasses and polyester pants...
...I'm sorry to be so late reporting all of this...
...Remember the teachers who became Mr...
...Love me as long as it lasts," he implores the teenager in the family...
...What can you say about a show featuring a character named Sledge Hammer—he's a cop—who talks to his gun (a .44 magnum) as if it were a person...
...Charlie Moore is played by Howard Hesseman, an actor I've always liked...
...But most of all I like what the Head of the Class writers do...
...Downtown (CBS, Saturday, 8 p.m...
...Perhaps I'll try watching all the shows set in California with shades on to filter out residual California sunshine...
...You tend to follow them religiously, and I was already following a raft of old favorites: Spenser: For Hire, Hill Street Blues, St...
...Usually it is my favorite new shows that get the axe—often so quickly I can't remember their names...
...There simply aren't enough hours in the day...
...In the most quoted promo line of the summer, the fictional mayor says, "That man makes Rambo look like Pee Wee Herman...
...It's even worth learning howto set your VCR thisyear, as one TV executive observed...
...I knew we couldn't keep filling the airwaves with garbage forever without outer space eventually taking revenge...
...So Charlie has in recent episodes been giving them an advanced honors course in human engineering...
...The only way to fight violence is with violence," Sledge shoots back...
...The Cavanaughs (CBS, Monday, 9:30 p.m...
...He speaks of existence as a "benign exercise in futility" and bemoans his inability to seethe purple side of native Melmac during his stay on planet Earth...
...A: Ozzie Osbourne eats his first rat...
...Some feel it combines the intensity and clout of the 1971 season with the consistently amusing characteristics of 1975...
...Or am I losing my marbles...
...I still remember the first time I saw Hesseman, somnolently spinning records on my favorite radio station, WKRPin Cincinnati...
...In the last category I would place such gems as Better Days (CBS, suspended), a sitcom based on the curious premise that a white kid from Beverly Hills might just want to move to the inner city—Brooklyn, to be exact—in order to become a star on an all-black high school basketball team, no less...
...Life with Lucy (ABC, suspended) Into the "undecided" category goes Sidekicks (ABC, Saturday, 8 p.m...
...LA Law (NBC, Thursday, 10 p.m...
...His snappy, vaudevillian line of patter and jokes makes you feel you're watching "The Muppets Meet Danny Rose at the Little Carnegie Deli Over a Pastrami Sandwich...
...is not quite the romp/1 L/ms, but it has a special distinction all its own: Thanks to originally being scheduled Friday nights opposite both Dallas and Miami Vice, it could at one point claim to be the funniest unseen network offering in television history...
...The neighbors protest from their windows, but he is unfazed—until his phone rings...
...I tell you, there hasn't been anything quite like the latest cropinmy 19yearsasacritic...
...are my favorite dumb-funny shows—they appeal to a certain lower instinct in me...
...At home Sledge wiles away the hours by taking target practice in his living room...
...Chips...
...I realize many of my NL readers don't know what' s going on in TV until I tell them, but I couldn't pull myself away from the screen...
...Well, Off-Off-Off...
...Head of the Class is "Up the Up Staircase'' for a change...
...Maybe the sun in LaLaLand, which I visited back in 1980, is having a delayed effect on me...
...her goal is to be host of Good Morning America...
...And this man is considered sufficiently well-adjusted to treat the sick...
...One of the funniest things I've heard in years is ALF innocently calling to the cat, "Yo, Lucky, my man...
...The tide character (his nickname stands for Alien Life Form) is funnier—and a lot prettier—than both Kate andAllie...
...It gets confessions...
...With all the great new stuff—not to mention football—it seems I'll be doing nothing besides watching TV...
...He also pioneered the three-day beard well in advance of Miami Vice's Don Johnson...
...Circuits are going to blow...
...As others have pointed out, it's Welcome Back, Kotterv/ith the crucial difference that the kids are smart...
...Interesting concept," he says, watching the water go down...
...In any event, it's been a long time since the good shows outnumbered the bad...
...A man is on the phone...
...Some of the sitcoms are actually funny, and several of the dramas are taut and gripping...
...Sledge Hammer...
...For years TV has been plying us with sitcoms about half-wit high school students, presumably on the theory that we can more easily identify with the characters...
...ALF's relationship with Lucky, the house cat, is a running gag...
...In my day the model for teachers was Mr...
...Then he shouts at the kvetches, "Have some decency...
...He calmly walks to the trunk of his car, takes out his bazooka, and levels the building...
...True, I could start taping this season's programs...
...For the record, the good shows this fall in the comedy category are: ^4jLF(NBC, Monday, 8 p.m...
...In case you don't know it, it's alot more difficult to say good things than bad...
...Miraculously, though, the network didn't give it the juice...
...In the premiere he fell asleep each time he put a new record on...
...The cliches that riddle ALF's speech come from old movies and TV series, which evidently go up through the ozone layer and can be seen on other planets...
...You couldn't resist blowing up a building on your way to work...
...He keeps a collection in his closet that he's given names like "alter ego," "man's best friend," "doctor's little helper," and " fifty-minute special...
...Many of today's young professionals were doing Fonzies and Bar-barinos in the70s...
...It would get me through the season with ease...
...He's the sort of alien who calls up the local DJ and does a mean "Rolling on the River...
...It could just as well have been Massilon, Ohio, his students would respect him anyway...
...Wrong cat...
...All I had to do was program my PC with certain expressions: "awful," "terrible," "garbage," "trash," "the worst drek," "you call that funny...
...He ended up making Off-Broadway...
...My intellectual favorite is Head of the Class, a sitcom about an IHP (Independent Honors Program) class at a Manhattan high school...
...Happily, some of the new shows were up against other new shows, and got killed off...
...Sledge Hammer...
...ALF and Sledge Hammer...
...The violence in Sledge Hammer...
...I'm even fond of the principal, Dr...
...Their stories give the characters humanity...
...They have IQs higher than their teachers and producers put together...
...Previous IHP teachers had been content to read magazines while the class perpetually devoured information in preparation for the next round of the Academic Olympics ("(?: August 20, 1980...
...You could probably go back further in history for a more scholarly allusion—"He makes Clint Eastwood look like Wally Cox"—but true is true...
...He reminds you of the special teacher you once had, the one who cut through the bluster and really understood...
...As near as I can tell, he simply believes Crime Story is a quality show that deserves the chance to run a full season...
...Charlie Moore actually makes the attempt to teach...
...The bad ones require a somewhat more complicated taxonomy: the too boring, the too awful, the too mediocre, the too ridiculous, the too ludicrous...
...He's fast, I'll give that to him," saysthealien...
...The NBC governor, Brandon Tartikoff, granted a reprieve...
...My reputation for nastiness is in danger of being ruined by all the good shows this fall...
...Extraordinary...
...Sledge Hammer...
...Samuels (William G. Schilling), and there aren't many principals I can say that about...
...It will take next month's column at least to do justice to the dramatic series...
...perhaps they are real, compared with his patients...
...Now this— good reviews...
...The rest of the episode became a parody of The Fugitive, with a one-armed Alien Life Form desperately roaming the city streets looking for a cat to vindicate his honor...
...NBC began moving it around so frequently, it looked like one of those flash news specials...
Vol. 69 • November 1986 • No. 17
