| Author |
Topic:
100 Greatest TV Episodes Of All Time: "Over the River and Through the Woods," The Bob Newhart Show
|
Zaz
Title: Manager:
The Amphitheatre
Registered:
Oct '98
|
Date Posted:
6/6 10:10pm
Subject:
RE: 100 Greatest TV Episodes Of All Time: 62. "Hedda Hopper's Hollywood" (The Beverley Hillbillies
|
61
CAR 54, WHERE ARE YOU?
February 15, 1962
"Nat Hiken, one of the great comedy writers of TV's early years, had a commanding knowledge of men in uniform: Before creating New York City patrol-car cops Gunther Toody and Francis Muldoon, he gave Sergeant Bilko marching orders. Joe E. Ross plays Toody, the stocky, nonsense-spouting motormouth; Fred Gwynne is Muldoon, his tall, thin, dour, college-educated partner. In "How Smart Can You Get?" the NYPD's personnel department decides that Toody and Muldoon are too mismatched to be partners and pairs Muldoon with a rookie named Corrigan (Richard Morse), a Harvard graduate. Muldoon eventually becomes so preoccupied with Corrigan's highbrow conversation that he drives right past crimes in progress -- and ends the episode pleading to be reunited with Toody. That's the deal with great TV odd couples: Nothing breaks them up, no matter how odd they are."
Never seen this one.
|
|
|
Quote Reply |
Active Topic Notification |
Private Message |
Post History
|
Zaz
Title: Manager:
The Amphitheatre
Registered:
Oct '98
|
Date Posted:
6/7 2:38pm
Subject:
RE: 100 Greatest TV Episodes Of All Time: 61. "How Smart Can You Get?" (Car 54, Where Are You?)
|
60
MURDER ONE
September 19, 1995
"This galvanizing courtroom thriller comes on like gangbusters. "Chapter 1," its first episode, introduces a decadent Hollywood bad boy (Jason Gedrick), an evil millionaire (Stanley Tucci), and an underage blonde found murdered in her bedroom. Called in to plumb this moral cesspool is Teddy Hoffman (Daniel Benzali), a lawyer of irreproachable integrity. Benzali is the most commanding TV presence since John Houseman. But this incisive debut is also equipped with startlingly glossy visual panache and a brisk, Byzantine script, courtesy of creator and executive producer Steven Bochco. It all adds up to a television program as slick, stylish, and satisfying as anything you're likely to see at the local cineplex."
I'd love to see this.
|
|
|
Quote Reply |
Active Topic Notification |
Private Message |
Post History
|
Zaz
Title: Manager:
The Amphitheatre
Registered:
Oct '98
|
Date Posted:
6/17 7:03am
Subject:
RE: 100 Greatest TV Episodes Of All Time: 60. "Murder One"
|
59
GREEN ACRES
April 3 &10, 1968
"It is the theatrical event of the season: the Hooterville Barn & Repertory Co.'s staging of "Who." (The full title of the play was "Who Killed Jock Robin?" -- but only one word will fit on the marquee, an old wooden plank.) Sophia Loren is supposed to star in the 12-act mystery, but she is unavailable. Newt Kiley's police dog, Columbo, is set to appear but bows out. Arnold the pig steps in. The big ham gets rave reviews, and in "A Star Named Arnold Is Born," he's off to Hollywood for a screen test. Arnold doesn't last long in Tinseltown, but for one shining moment a star is born. And why not? Arnold has nearly as much range as Eva Gabor."
Hick surrealistism. One of the weirdest shows ever.
|
|
|
Quote Reply |
Active Topic Notification |
Private Message |
Post History
|
Zaz
Title: Manager:
The Amphitheatre
Registered:
Oct '98
|
Date Posted:
6/18 9:55pm
Subject:
RE: 100 Greatest TV Episodes Of All Time: 59. "A Star Named Arnold is Born" (Green Acres)
- Date Edited:
6/18 10:21pm (1 edits total)
Edited By:
Zaz
|
|
Double Post.
|
|
|
Quote Reply |
Active Topic Notification |
Private Message |
Post History
|
Zaz
Title: Manager:
The Amphitheatre
Registered:
Oct '98
|
Date Posted:
6/18 9:58pm
Subject:
RE: 100 Greatest TV Episodes Of All Time: 59. "A Star Named Arnold is Born" (Green Acres)
|
58
THE ODD COUPLE
November 12, 1971
"In "Fat Farm," Felix (Tony Randall) somehow convinces junk-food junkie Oscar (Jack Klugman) to join him at a health spa run by a dictatorial diet guru and staffed by large, humorless attendants. The show's usual great one-liners -- "I watched him eating six hot dogs during the game, and he only chewed two" -- are supplemented with terrific physical gags. When Oscar smuggles in deli contraband, Felix blows the whistle on him, guards confiscate Oscar's pastrami, and the doctor expels him. It's a perfectly seasoned recipe for delicious, high-calorie comedy."
Haven't seen this episode, but this was a funny show.
|
|
|
Quote Reply |
Active Topic Notification |
Private Message |
Post History
|
Zaz
Title: Manager:
The Amphitheatre
Registered:
Oct '98
|
Date Posted:
6/21 9:29am
Subject:
RE: 100 Greatest TV Episodes Of All Time: 58. "Fat Farm" ("The Odd Couple")
|
57
ON THE AIR
June 20, 1992
"In this hellzapoppin' parody of live TV in the '50s, a show starring matinee idol Lester Guy (Ian Buchanan) is nearing airtime. The director spews orders in an incomprehensible German accent. The broadcast of The Lester Guy Show (also the episode's title) is a debacle. At one point, a jealous, gun-wielding husband rushes home to catch his wife with Lester, who has somehow managed to step into a noose and is slowly swinging across the room. "It's not what you think," he croaks. Sure it is: inspired burlesque.
REWIND
"There was a lot of laughter on the set," says Buchanan of the series, which lasted threeepisodes. "Maybe we were too happy. Everybody I knew on successful shows was miserable."
Never seen this show or even heard of it...
|
|
|
Quote Reply |
Active Topic Notification |
Private Message |
Post History
|
Zaz
Title: Manager:
The Amphitheatre
Registered:
Oct '98
|
Date Posted:
6/22 9:10am
Subject:
RE: 100 Greatest TV Episodes Of All Time: 57. "The Lester Guy Show" (On the Air)
|
56
THE GEORGE BURNS AND GRACIE ALLEN SHOW
March 29, 1954
"It was a foolproof formula. George was the straightman; Gracie's scatterbrained sense of logic and inability to match pronouns with their antecedents did the rest. Case in point: "Columbia Pictures Doing Burns & Allen Story." The studio wants to make the couple's life stories and sends a team of screenwriters to the house for background. Getting nowhere with Gracie ("Were you the oldest in the family?" they ask her. "No, no. My mother and father were much older"), they inquire about George's old vaudeville partners. Announcer-pal Harry Von Zell, in all innocence, mentions Jimmy Pierce. "They worked together several months, then Pierce left George when he got married. George told me he has a wife and four sons in San Diego." That's all Gracie has to hear. TV comedy's greatest broken-field runner is off to the races -- certain George is a bigamist."
I've never actually seen this show, though I would like to.
|
|
|
Quote Reply |
Active Topic Notification |
Private Message |
Post History
|
Zaz
Title: Manager:
The Amphitheatre
Registered:
Oct '98
|
Date Posted:
6/24 6:42am
Subject:
RE: 100 Greatest TV Episodes Of All Time: 56. The Burns and Allen Show
|
55
THE PRISONER
September 21, 1968
"In this radical series, Patrick McGoohan played a character known only as Number 6 -- who, after angrily resigning from a top-secret organization, is abducted to "the village," a high-tech prison disguised as a placid English resort. Each week saw him resist the efforts of a different warder, always designated Number 2, to break his spirit. Who was Number 6? Why had he resigned? Who were his captors? In "Fall Out," the haunting finale, McGoohan finally meets Number 1 and tears a monkey mask from the man's face only to confront -- himself! What did it all mean? Pogo cartoonist Walt Kelly may have put it best: "We have met the enemy, and he is us."
One of the weirdest shows ever, and way ahead of its time.
|
|
|
Quote Reply |
Active Topic Notification |
Private Message |
Post History
|
soitscometothis
Registered:
Jul '03
|
Date Posted:
6/24 7:21am
Subject:
RE: 100 Greatest TV Episodes Of All Time: 55. "The Prisoner" (1968)
|
|
I love The Prisoner. I first saw it when I was in my early teens, and it made an impression. Very weird, but it did it with style. I love McGoohan's deadpan intensity throughout.
-----signature-----
|
|
|
Quote Reply |
Active Topic Notification |
Private Message |
Post History
|
Zaz
Title: Manager:
The Amphitheatre
Registered:
Oct '98
|
Date Posted:
6/27 11:22pm
Subject:
RE: 100 Greatest TV Episodes Of All Time: 55. "The Prisoner" (1968)
|
Yes, great stuff.
54
THE COSBY SHOW
October 10, 1985
"Cliff Huxtable's parents, Russell and Anna (Earle Hyman and Clarice Taylor), are celebrating their 49th wedding anniversary, and Cliff and Clair (Bill Cosby and Phylicia Rashad) want to do something nice for them. In "Happy Anniversary," they commission a portrait and surprise the couple with a cruise to Europe. They also throw a dinner party in their Brooklyn brownstone, and after the meal, Cliff and Clair's children, college student Sondra (Sabrina Le Beauf), 16-year-old Denise (Lisa Bonet), 14-year-old Theo (Malcolm-Jamal Warner), wisecracking 8-year-old Vanessa (Tempestt Bledsoe), and irrepressible 5-year-old Rudy (Keshia Knight Pulliam) join their parents and entertain Grandma and Grandpa by staging an impromptu production number on the stairs, lip-synching favorite tunes such as Ray Charles' "Night Time Is the Right Time." By showing the three generations of Huxtables together, this episode -- heartwarming without being sappy -- made implicit the series' underlying message: Strong, positive children are parents' most important, invaluable legacy."
|
|
|
Quote Reply |
Active Topic Notification |
Private Message |
Post History
|
Zaz
Title: Manager:
The Amphitheatre
Registered:
Oct '98
|
Date Posted:
6/29 7:43pm
Subject:
RE: 100 Greatest TV Episodes Of All Time: 54. "Happy Anniversary" (The Cosby Show)
|
53
THE PHIL SILVERS SHOW
November 15, 1955
"Always looking for an angle, Master Sgt. Ernie Bilko (Phil Silvers) is delighted when Corporal Ed "The Stomach" Honigan transfers into his troop in "The Eating Contest." Bilko quickly arranges a high-stakes eating contest at Fort Baxter. But Honigan -- played hilariously by a boyish, rail-thin Fred Gwynne (in his TV debut) -- eats only when he's miserable, and he's already over the girl from Tulsa who jilted him. This predicament sets Bilko, the unregenerate con man, into his most glorious, manipulative overdrive."
|
|
|
Quote Reply |
Active Topic Notification |
Private Message |
Post History
|
Zaz
Title: Manager:
The Amphitheatre
Registered:
Oct '98
|
Date Posted:
6/30 9:28pm
Subject:
RE: 100 Greatest TV Episodes Of All Time: 53. "The Eating Contest" (Sgt. Bilko)
|
52
GILLIGAN'S ISLAND
October 3, 1966
"In "The Producer," Hollywood deal-maker Harold Hecuba (Phil Silvers) is looking for talent in "out-of-the-way places" when his plane crashes on our favorite tropical isle. To impress the impresario, the castaways mount a musical version of "Hamlet" with Gilligan (Bob Denver) in the title roll. It ain't Shakespeare, but it does get the producer's attention.
He quickly rechristens it "Harold Hecuba's Hamlet" and swipes all the singing parts for himself (a quicksilver bit of shtick for Silvers, above, with cast). At the end of this inventive episode, Hecuba steals away -- and steals the idea -- leaving a sadder but wiser Gilligan to pronounce the moral: "Well, that's showbiz."
|
|
|
Quote Reply |
Active Topic Notification |
Private Message |
Post History
|
General Kenobi
Title: Comms Admin
SW & Film Music
Classic Trilogy
Registered:
Dec '98
|
Date Posted:
7/3 1:37pm
Subject:
RE: 100 Greatest TV Episodes Of All Time: 52. "The Producer" ("Gilligan's Island")
- Date Edited:
7/3 1:38pm (1 edits total)
Edited By:
General Kenobi
|
|
The Producer is probably my favorite episode of Gilligan's Island. Anytime I hear a melody from Carmen, I think of this episode (and also The Bad News Bears). Hamlet (Gilligan) singing "I ask to be or not to be" to the tune of Habanera is hilarious, as is Polonius doing the "neither a borrower nor a lender be" lecture to the Toreador song. And Phil Silvers is great with his shtick as well as the regular cast.
-----signature-----
|
|
|
Quote Reply |
Active Topic Notification |
Private Message |
Post History
|
Zaz
Title: Manager:
The Amphitheatre
Registered:
Oct '98
|
Date Posted:
7/3 9:48pm
Subject:
RE: 100 Greatest TV Episodes Of All Time: 52. "The Producer" ("Gilligan's Island")
|
51
PERRY MASON
October 17, 1963
"Weren't all Perry Mason mysteries basically the same? Didn't the burly barrister (Raymond Burr) do the same thing every week: gain an acquittal? Not in "The Case of the Deadly Verdict." After almost 200 consecutive courtroom victories, Mason actually loses a murder trial to prosecutor Hamilton Burge. No need to alert the media; Perry's loss is already headline news. Client Janice Barton (Julie Adams) is convicted of murder and sentenced to the gas chamber. Perry and his ace sleuth, Paul Drake (William Hopper), use the rest of the hour to find the real killer. A gripping, precedent-setting episode in which Perry really earns his fee."
I remember this one...the shock of seeing Mason lose a case!
|
|
|
Quote Reply |
Active Topic Notification |
Private Message |
Post History
|
Rogue1-and-a-half
Title: Manager: Amphitheatre
Registered:
Nov '00
|
Date Posted:
7/5 7:57am
Subject:
RE: 100 Greatest TV Episodes Of All Time: 51. "The Case of the Deadly Verdict" (Perry Mason)
|
Zaz posted:
56
THE GEORGE BURNS AND GRACIE ALLEN SHOW
March 29, 1954
"It was a foolproof formula. George was the straightman; Gracie's scatterbrained sense of logic and inability to match pronouns with their antecedents did the rest. Case in point: "Columbia Pictures Doing Burns & Allen Story." The studio wants to make the couple's life stories and sends a team of screenwriters to the house for background. Getting nowhere with Gracie ("Were you the oldest in the family?" they ask her. "No, no. My mother and father were much older"), they inquire about George's old vaudeville partners. Announcer-pal Harry Von Zell, in all innocence, mentions Jimmy Pierce. "They worked together several months, then Pierce left George when he got married. George told me he has a wife and four sons in San Diego." That's all Gracie has to hear. TV comedy's greatest broken-field runner is off to the races -- certain George is a bigamist."
I've never actually seen this show, though I would like to.
I should comment as I've recently seen a couple of episodes of this show, though not this one in particular. It's a very interesting show, particularly for its time. It has a really bizarre attitude to the fourth wall.
George is constantly stepping off the set, literally off the set, and standing next to it and talking directly to the audience in his patented manner. The amusing thing about the episodes I saw is how the story will unfold on the set and then George will step off the set and say what a great episode this story will make for the show; he then generally decides it won't work because no one will believe it.
So he breaks the fourth wall while filming his show to tell us that what we're watching is his real life and not the show. That kind of meta thing seems quite ahead of its time actually and it works really brilliantly. There's a great bit where he's outside the set talking to us and Gracie calls him from the set and he excuses himself and steps back into the set and starts ignoring us again. It's really bizarre and really interesting and pretty funny.
I'm not used to seeing older shows so comfortable with being self-aware. Whatever; for all that, Burns and Allen are the perfect comedy team and the writing is really sharp. ("She said the national sport of Spain is fighting bulls and the national sport of England is cricket and I said I'd rather live in England because it must be easier to fight a cricket.") I think the whole series is available on DVD now and I'm putting it in my Netflix queue sometime soon. So, track it down if you can.
-----signature-----
All they found of the Duchesse d'Alencon was her head.
|
|
|
Quote Reply |
Active Topic Notification |
Private Message |
Post History
|
