YouTube Spotlight: Milton Berle vs. Joe Flaherty

We mentioned this in our Show Notes post yesterday, but Milton Berle is not in the Texaco special mentioned in our bonus episode this week, but how can you not think of Milton when you think of Texaco Star Theater? So we included this clip in the video playlist:

This is one of those times when Wikipedia summarizes it quite well, but basically Berle shows the SCTV guys no respect, and Genius Winner Joe Flaherty tries to defer to him but can't help snapping back a bit. Miltie didn't really like sharing the spotlight, did he?

What I wonder is, who made Milton Berle the time police? He and Martha Raye are presenters, not the hosts of the ceremony. I guess he just took it upon himself to try to dismiss the next generation of comedy.

Catherine O'Hara remembers this moment in a 2020 Entertainment Weekly piece reflecting on an Emmy win for Schitt's Creek. The story notes that SCTV responded, in a manner, to the incident with a parody sketch the next season that featured Flaherty pummeling a Berle stand-n and telling him he would never ruin another acceptance speech!

YouTube Spotlight: Maybe Baby (1988): "A comedy that really delivers!"

One of the clips in this week's Newhart video playlist is this promo for the 1988 NBC TV movie Maybe Baby with Julia Duffy supporting the team of Dabney Coleman and Jane Curtin!

IMDB reports:

For a happily married man, life changes completely and he finds himself in distress when his wife decides to have a baby after several years of marriage.

The movie premiered Monday, December 5, 1988 and drew a respectable audience but as edged by Monday Night Football's presentation of the Rams beating the Bears. CBS had Murphy Brown, Designing Women, and ALmost Grown.

Maybe Baby looks madcap in this promo, but the first review on IMDB is 1 out of 10, though the critic puts their credibility in question by leading off with, "As soon as I saw Jane Curtin and Dabney Coleman I knew it would be a waste of time."  As of this posting, the movie is available on Prime Video and Tubi. Anyone interested in us considering it for a future season of the podcast?

YouTube Spotlight: The Joe Piscopo New Jersey Special

Joe Piscopo makes his way back to the blog with an appearance in one of the clips on our YouTube playlist for Moonlighting. One of the original series promos also touts an original ABC presentation, The Joe Piscopo New Jersey Special.



In case you somehow forgot, Joe Piscopo is from New Jersey. So it's only appropriate that he return to the Garden State for a primtime TV special. the program aired 10:00 on Tuesday, May 13, 1986, losing out to Stingray on NBC and a CBS TV-movie called Second Serve (based on Renee Richards' autobiography).

This was several years after Piscopo's SNL run, and it was less successful than a 1984 HBO special.  A contemporary Chicago Tribune review was lukewarm.

Unfortunately, the result is an occasionally amusing hour that is mostly undistinguished for its persistent self-indulgence.

Danny DeVito has a prominent role, Eddie Murphy and then-governor Thomas Kean less so.

This special is available on YouTube in segments, but here is an official clip from its apparent rights holder: