Pilot's Log

In the summer of 1979, we moved again from Pittsburgh to the Tampa Bay area. The second TV was placed in a "Florida room" of the house, that was originally designed as a garage but never actually built as such. After some months of sharing a bedroom with my brother I somehow persuaded my parents into replacing the old sofa in the Florida room with a Castro Convertable bed and took the room over as my own bedroom. As a result, I was watching a lot more TV...even though I was just as scrupulous about curfew times as I was in previous years. Except in summer of course, when I began watching a lot of late late shows--and network reruns of prime-time shows in latenight slots.

1978-'79 Season
*Favorites At-The-Time: Hardy Boys, Battlestar Galactica, Operation Petticoat, Project UFO, Taxi, The Dukes of Hazzard, Sword of Justice, Mork & Mindy
*Eventual Favorites: M*A*S*H, WKRP in Cincinnati

1979-'80 Season
*Favorites At-The-Time: Mork & Mindy, The Associates, 240-Robert, That's Incredible, M*A*S*H, WKRP in Cincinnati, Real People, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, 20/20

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I loved a LOT of One-Season Wonders. The most recent being the Americanized LIFE ON MARS. ABC just kept screwing around once it premiered, messing with the time-slot and keeping it off air when it was building an audience. I wish it had been given further seasons and a chance to live up to its potential. I suppose I'll have to eventually get the British version and its sequel on DVD to figure out where it was actually headed.

PS: I decided to do a quick survey of one-season wonders of my lifetime. I've only made it through most of the Seventies and Eighties when I was watching much more television than I do now.

One-Season Wonders:
ABC: 240-Robert, The Associates, Best of the West, Blue Thunder, Breaking Away, Call To Glory, The Insiders, Masquerade, Masters of Science Fiction, Max Headroom, Operation Petticoat, The Phoenix, Renegades, Salvage, Strike Force, When The Whistle Blows, When Things Were Rotten
CBS: Bring 'Em Back Alive, California Fever, Concrete Cowboys, The Flash, Frank's Place, Mr. Merlin, Otherworld, Q.E.D., Spencer's Pilots, Square Pegs, Whiz Kids
NBC: Amazing Stories, Games People Play, Mike Nesmith in Television Parts, Misfits Of Science, Project UFO, Sword of Justice, Voyagers
FOX: Adventures of Brisco County Jr., Space: Above & Beyond

I'm not done, probably, but I feel close enough to that point.

A NASCAR Dodge Charger for 2012, altered to the shade of orange used for the General Lee Charger in THE DUKES OF HAZZARD. I did this because of the Bubba Watson/General Lee/Phoenix racetrack story in the news.

Another TV series that used to be regularly shown on Retro:

RUN FOR YOUR LIFE

Original Premise: A war veteran who became a successful lawyer has the shock of his life when he is diagnosed with a unavoidably fatal--and inoperable--condition. Luckily, it's still in its early latent stage, so he'll be healthy for a while. But his physician only gives him a year or so to live.

"I haven't taken a day off since Law School," the lawyer says.

"See if you can pack twenty years of living in twelve months," his doctor tells him back.

And so the man quits his practice, and goes out into the world on a perpetual whirlwind adventure. He takes on daredevil missions for ad hoc causes, such as smuggling spies out of hostile nations, or testing race cars, or guiding a sailboat out of the path of a hurricane--whatever needs to be done and done NOW. He'll take on any task where the reward justifies--and circumstance demands--the risk of a man's life.

Reimagined: He takes his situation to the Internet. He has a blog, which is virally popular, written under the pseudonym "The Runner". He has a top-of-the-line smartphone through which he gets his assignments. Since he's amassed loads of Frequent Flyer miles from his previous life, he can go anywhere in the world at any time. His readers across the web find missions for him and help him whereever they can. (Since he is a military veteran, this series can be plugged into the NCIS [nee JAG] continuity too!)

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Back when I was a more active otaku I used to joke that we (my friends and I) wanted "Super Dimensional" lives but were probably more likely to get "Rumik World" ones. The problem with the "cool" stories is that they're also horribly dangerous ones. I love Chuck, but would you want to live in a Burbank where if you go to the big-box store for a barrel of cheese balls, you could wind up in a fight with master super spies? I love Criminal Minds, but would you want to be in a situation in which the BAU may be your only hope of surviving? Burn Notice is great--but would you want to live around these characters? Life On Mars...cool, but I don't know the British version. (In fact, my own "Hackett Continuum" was going to have some thematic parallels.)

I know this doesn't answer your question. Let's just say I'm still chewing on it.

Paul Francis had the remake of The A-Team on his DVD player during the Build Day party at his place yesterday.

Okay, it's generally agreed that the original show of the 1980s was dumb and mediocre at its very best. It was a modern-dress Western with low production values. It ran as long as it did because it was cheap to make and appealed to the lowest common denominator. I get that.

But it doesn't excuse Hollywood from making a "pitiful" feature film version.

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CHUCK and Criminal Minds are the only dramatic shows I follow these days. I'd probably be a driver in a traffic jam, or filling balloons for a party scene.

The Visual RNA Of The Daytime Drama.

Note too that Doctor Who used a lot of these techniques for most of its run, especially in the Pertwee, Tom Baker, Davison, and later eras.