I have loved television for as long as I can remember. I had my favorite TV shows that I watched episodes as often as possible. Unfortunately, at the time, "as often as possible" was usually twice. Back in the 60s and 70s, TV shows produced as many as 26 episodes per season — some even more! After the initial broadcast of an episode, it was usually rerun one more time in the summer when production went on hiatus until the fall season, if the particular show was renewed. If the series was canceled, that was it, that show would never see the light of day again. Of course there were exceptions. The Monkees, which originally ran in primetime on NBC, enjoyed a three-year stretch as part of the Saturday morning line-up on CBS and later for a year on ABC. But, for the most part, after a series was canceled, that was it! You never saw that show again... until syndication packages began popping up on local UHF channels in specific markets. (Hey kids, ask your parents to explain "UHF" to you.)
In 1985, Nick at Nite changed everything. Boasting a kitschy line-up of television favorites from the 50s and 60s, Nick at Night kicked off a nostalgia trend and spawned a variety of other cable channels to purchase the rights to beloved — and forgotten — shows and rerun them over and over and over again. Nick at Nite showed
Mr. Ed, Donna Reed, Dennis the Menace and
Route 66. Soon, they were supplementing their library with
The Andy Griffith Show,
Get Smart, The Dick Van Dyke Show and others, allowing the fledgling network to expand its broadcast day from a few hours at night to a full 24-hour schedule. Nick at Nite's rivals were showing
Leave it to Beaver, Burns and Allen, Jack Benny along with other forgotten favorites like
My Favorite Martian, Mayberry RFD and other popular shows with a surprisingly limited number of episodes like
The Munsters (70 episodes) and
Gidget (32 episodes). With other "retro" networks showing up on cable line-ups, series that were long forgotten found a new home, new exposure to a new audience and a new lease on life. Hey! Who are we kidding? There was no
new audience. These revivals were geared exclusively to folks who watched them in their original run. Being the trivia fan and nostalgia enthusiast, I loved watching shows that I watched — or
barely remembered — in my youth. I saw a show called
Good Morning World for the first time when Antenna TV brought it back for a short run a few years ago. The series surrounded a morning radio show and the wacky antics of its hosts (played by Joby Baker and sitcom vet Ronnie Schell.) The show featured Billy DeWolfe, exercising his classic uppity fussbudget character, as well as an early career performance by Goldie Hawn. It was the creation of Sam Persky and Bill Denoff, the creative team who got their start under Carl Reiner's wing on
The Dick Van Dyke Show.
Good Morning World was the pair's follow-up to the success of another of their creations —
That Girl. You've no doubt heard of
That Girl and you probably never saw an episode of
Good Morning World. There's a reason for that.
As technology advanced and the act of watching television evolved from three networks to a variety of streaming services offering original content and old favorites, more and more "forgotten shows" have surfaced — whether we like it or not. A whole new generation is enjoying
The X-Files. Sitcoms like
Seinfeld (whose infamous final episode was broadcast over
thirty years ago) still can be found in syndication and ready to binge on Netflix, thanks to a lucrative, long-term licensing deal. Sure there are plenty of shows that have not been seen in years and probably will never be seen again. But, thanks to the internet and the good people at YouTube, a quick search will have you wallowing in the nostalgia of your youth with one or two episodes of a
"Oh yeah! I remember this!" show. Recently, my wife and I watched a few installments of the late night music showcase
The Midnight Special, which ran for a decade on NBC after the Friday night edition of
The Tonight Show. I
never thought I'd ever see this show again, but... here we are getting misty-eyed while viewing a performance by Loggins and Messina and scratching our heads while an obviously s
toned Paul Williams trips over his lines.
YouTube is a treasure trove of content for those — like me — seeking long forgotten shows available for a curious viewing. I stumbled across one such show a few nights ago, one I had never heard of before. The show was called
Normal Life and it ran for 13 unremarkable episodes from March until July 1990. It was a 30 minute sitcom starring Cindy Williams, giving television another shot after the embittered end to her successful role on
Laverne and Shirley. Her costar was Max Gail, looking vastly different from his youthful "Detective Wojciehowicz" on the critically-acclaimed
Barney Miller. The series was very loosely based on the homelife of eclectic rocker Frank Zappa. It even starred two of Zappa's children — Moon Unit and her brother Dweezil — essentially playing themselves. There is one episode of
Normal Life available on YouTube, thanks to user "VHS Captures" who uploaded it, noting they discovered it on an old VHS tape. A little research revealed that the episode — entitled "It's Only Rock and Roll" was the
fifth episode in the series, originally broadcast on April 18, 1990. So, we watched.
It was awful.
It was typical 90s sitcom fare, chock full of unnatural acting, trite dialogue, terrible jokes, exaggerated physicality and a lot of mugging for the camera. Poor Cindy Williams looked as thought she
really wanted to make this show succeed. Max Gail looked as though he needed to have a firm talk with his agent. The two Zappa kids rolled their eyes and acted as though they had signed on for something
different. The entire show ran for the standard 22 minutes with commercials. Ten minutes in, my wife asked if the show's runtime was an
hour, as she felt that how long we had been subjected to it.
Look, I love television and I will watch things that most people will not. I will watch
Gilligan's Island. I will watch
Hazel (even though I do
not like it). I watch
Dragnet to laugh at the purposely stiff acting, as well as nostalgic vistas of 1960s Los Angeles. I even like to watch little curiosities like
Normal Life. But, one episode was enough to satisfy my curiosity.
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