Uncle Ned approves! Well, the OLD bottle-chugging, maraschino cherry-gulping, Alex-slapping Uncle Ned would, but maybe the reformed Ned would speak out against this.
1) Regina King: I mean, she won an Oscar, so that's a pretty big deal, especially considering we all assumed Jackee would be the one from 227 to win an Academy Award.
2) Nathaniel Taylor: Shout-out to the late great actor, who died this week after a career that would have been distinguished if it had only included his role as Rollo, my favorite auxiliary character on a series (Sanford and Son) that was loaded with them.
3) The Golden Girls: Have you listened to the bonus episode we dropped this week? We delve into Golden Girls Mad-Libs, and the results are more satisfying than a night with...a delicious cheesecake. Where did you think we were going with that?
4) Little House on the Prairie: Amazon Prime just rolled out the entire series for your viewing pleasure--if "pleasure" means enjoying pestilence, fires, armadillo attacks, Mrs. Oleson's nagging, mumblety peg accidents, and all the other calamities that hit Walnut Grove each week.
5) Katherine Helmond: Is it wrong that after hearing of her passing this week, all I wanted to do was imitate Tony Danza saying, "Mona"?
6) Good Times: The entire series hit the Starz app this week. Come for the work of Esther Rolle and Genius Award winner John Amos, stay for the great closing version of the theme song.
7) Diff'rent Strokes: It returns to Starz this week, but it goes a notch below Good Times because Danny Cooksey was never on Good Times.
8) Erin Gray: In this clip, recently posted on the excellent Bionic Disco YouTube channel, Ms. Gray shows why she's a BOTNS favorite. I don't remember being quite as...enthusiastic about the cars in the B.J. and the Bear episode we talked about on the podcast.
9) Ken Berry: And also on that same YT channel, in this spot for Kinney Shoes, the late versatile performer proves he's not to be outdone by--oh, who are we kidding, he's a nice guy, but he's totally outdone by Erin Gray.
10) Jaclyn Smith: She did us all a service this week on The Hollywood Reporter's podcast It Happened in Hollywood by assuring us that all the hair on Charlie's Angels was real, unlike the wigs and extensions they use today. Yep, David Doyle was all natural.
In this week's bonus episode, we play a couple rounds of Golden Girls Mad Libs, combining two of podcasting's biggest trends -- grammar and senior citizens. We learn a little about parts of speech, the girls themselves, and maybe, just maybe ourselves.
The Academy Awards season comes to an end this weekend, and it seems like one of the quietest, dullest ever. It's a good reminder that the real action is not in cinema but in television. No, we don't mean HBO and FX, but 1970s and 1980s TV.
1) Oscar Madison: Still the best Oscar in TV history.
2) David Horowitz: The consumer advocate was a small screen staple during our era with appearances on The Tonight Show and his own Fight Back! Dude could have saved a lot of time by just shaming evil corporations on Twitter.
3) The Golden Girls: The series continues to be prominent in the culture, and this week we saw an announcement of a Golden Girls Cruise in 2020. This news proves that some things will always endure, like the desire of people to exploit fandom for money.
4) Paul Shaffer: The star of A Year at the Top and some other things will return to TV with a chat show on AXS. It sounds like he will be interviewing...many of the same people who always turn up on AXS.
5) Penny Marshall and Farrah Fawcett: Me-TV's website published a cool article about that time the two starred in a commercial together:
6) Alice: Warner Archive is completing the long-running (some might say too long, but we couldn't possibly comment) series on DVD with the ninth and final season next month.
7) Man from Atlantis: Warner Archive also announced it is releasing the series' pilot movie as a Blu-Ray. You know what that means, right? Yep--Alan Fudge in high-def!
8) Kelsey Grammer: His new legal drama premiered on Fox, and while his constant talk of a Frasier reboot makes us uneasy, we figure at least it keeps him from talking up a Cheers reboot.
9) Roger E. Mosely: Will guest-star on the CBS reboot, but not as T.C. because there is already a T.C. on this version. I guess this establishes that "our" version of the series occurred on Earth-2, and the current CBS telecast depicts events on Earth-1.
10) Jim Henson's Storyteller: Yet more reboot talk, this time centered around Neil Gaiman's plans to launch the beloved Jim Henson series which everyone seems to have loved but no one seems to have actually watched.
Welcome once again to the thing we call the Ten: 10 people, places, shows, things, minerals, or vegetables from the BOTNS universe of shows of the 1970s and 1980s. 1) Abraham Lincoln: On this Presidents Day holiday, let's take some time to remember the ill-fated attempt to copy Welcome Back, Kotter: The late-seventies sitcom Mr. Lincoln, I've Been Thinking, with Honest Abe as a country lawyer who exits the rat race to settle down as a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse...or at least he THINKS he can settle down until he sees the motley assortment of misfits in his class.
2) Bob Newhart: His show is on Hulu, as we mentioned last week, and, hey, it's not TV, but he did play the prez in 1980's First Family. That movie was ON TV, so that should count for something. And the ADS were on TV:
3) Regina King: The former 227 star managed to not get massacred on this play:
4) Hal Williams and Marla Gibbs: Friend of the pod and member of our Facebook group (come on over and say hi and join in!) Jim posted this great pic of the 227 stars at a recent event:
5) Crime Story: Dennis Farina kicks all kinds of "a" in this underappreciated 1980s NBC period cop show, which just landed on Amazon Prime. OK, so the series went off the rails a bit at some point. Who among us hasn't gone off the rails at some point? And I don't know about you, but I'M not nearly as cool as Dennis Farina was. So there.
6) The Greatest American Hero: Many of us believe the greatest American hero is Al Bundy, but here we refer to the 3 season light superhero fantasy show, which is now on Amazon Prime and which would make a great subject for the podcast. It's hard to believe the series ran only 45 episodes.
7) Wiseguy: The critically acclaimed but seldom watched series is now on Amazon Prime. I detect a theme here... I think Prime may be helping us program an entire upcoming season.
8) The Brady Bunch house: The surviving cast appealed to the public to help it decorate the house with vintage items as part of its HGTV-supported project to renovate the joint. I'm glad that the show's representatives are showing the same devotion to verisimilitude that was such a hallmark of the series.
9) Love American Style: It was just Valentine's Day week, and what better way to learn about the human condition and the vagaries of romance than by watching this show? Too bad it's not streaming and is way underrepresented on DVD.
10) Paul Williams: We're just not ready to quit Paul Williams yet:
On this week's bonus episode of the show, we discussed our encounter with the great Mr. Robert Pine and attached our earlier Lowenbrau episode as a bonus. For those of you who weren't listening to us then, we hereby give you a special encore presentation of the original show notes. This time, we have added a few notes adding context and updating the original info! The "new" notes are in boldbelow the originals.
Remember, after each regular BOTNS episode, we offer show notes and a YouTube playlist the day after the podcast premieres.
*Arthur Prysock, the singer of the "Let It Be Lowenbrau" jingle, was a jazz singer who lived from 1929 to 1997. All-Music Guide says: Arthur Prysock was perfectly at home singing jazz, blues, or R&B, but his smooth-as-silk baritone made him a superbly effective (and underappreciated) pop crooner in the manner of his chief influence, Billy Eckstine.
I should mention that even after learning the truth, I STILL want to think it's Lou Rawls each time I hear the song.
*The great Robert Pine's most famous role was as Sgt. Gertraer in the NBC show CHiPs, but he has had a long and varied career. He's still around at age 75 and is the father of actor Chris Pine. I have a feeling this won't be the last we see of Pine on the podcast...
Mr. Pine is now 77, and indeed it was far from his last appearance! Check our archives for our Pick Your Pine episodes.
*Spuds Mackenzie was a Bud Light-loving terrier who rose to fame in the 1980s. He (actually a she, but who's counting) was always surrounded by babes who, of course, also loved Bud Light.
Spuds' real name was Honey Tree Evil Eye (seriously, though supposedly it was Evie for short). How in the world did I not include that in the original notes? Honey Tree lived 1983-1993 and was active in Bud Light commercials from 1987-1989.
*The 1976-1977 Knicks were only 40-42, but in the 1977-1978 season, they finished second in the division and won a playoff series before losing to Philly in the Eastern Conference finals. Hopefully Dolan and his boys saw a good game that night.
Midseason acquisition Bob McAdoo was that team's top scorer. I'm sure current Knicks fans ould love to go back in time to the days of McAdoo and Earl Monroe, Bill Bradley, Clyde Frazier (all were on the 76-77 squad).
*Munich-based Lowenbrau ("Lion's brew") beer was brewed by Miller at the time of this commercial, but now it is part of the massive Anheuser-Busch InBev empire.
And I still don't see it anywhere.
Here's a bonus Lowenbrau ad that made its way to YouTube after we recorded the original episode:
