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Topic:
100 Greatest TV Episodes Of All Time: 1. "Chuckles Bites the Dust," ("The Mary Tyler Moore Show")
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halibut
Title: FF Admin & UK RSA
Registered:
Aug '00
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Date Posted:
8/21 10:57am
Subject:
RE: 100 Greatest TV Episodes Of All Time: "Murder by the Book" ("Columbo")
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One of Jack Cassidy's 3 appearances I believe. A great intro to a great series.
And it's taught me a valuable lesson. Since watching this episode, I never open my mail if there's a dead body in my garden.
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dp4m
Registered:
Nov '01
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Date Posted:
8/21 11:09am
Subject:
RE: 100 Greatest TV Episodes Of All Time: "Murder by the Book" ("Columbo")
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There was a brilliant article on Slate a while back (year? two?) about how Columbo was actually a show about class warfare in addition to being a great detective show. Good stuff.
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"Looks like you're about to get pwned" - Eric Cartman
"Awarding experience points for cleverly and creatively generating an enjoyable experience. How warped is that?" - Darths & Droids
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Zaz
Title: Manager, The Ampitheatre
Registered:
Oct '98
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Date Posted:
8/21 11:13am
Subject:
RE: 100 Greatest TV Episodes Of All Time: "Murder by the Book" ("Columbo")
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Oh, yes. The villains are generally snotty, moneyed creeps.
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JohnWesleyDowney
Registered:
Jan '04
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Date Posted:
8/21 3:04pm
Subject:
RE: 100 Greatest TV Episodes Of All Time: "Murder by the Book" ("Columbo")
- Date Edited:
8/21 3:20pm (1 edits total)
Edited By:
JohnWesleyDowney
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There was a brilliant article on Slate a while back (year? two?) about how Columbo was actually a show about class warfare in addition to being a great detective show. Good stuff.
That's an interesting insight, I'd never thought about it that way, but it's absolutely true. Probably one of the reasons it was so popular and durable, the class warfare angle.
I liked the fact we never saw Columbo's wife.
Spielberg didn't spend many years as a TV director, but he did some good work and learned a lot in that time, and this episode is some of his best TV work, IMHO.
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How many movies do you think Industrial Light and Magic has worked on? WRONG. http://www.ilm.com/ilm_services.html "Films fulfill an unconscious spiritual desire that human beings have to share a common memory." - Martin Scorcese
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Zaz
Title: Manager, The Ampitheatre
Registered:
Oct '98
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Date Posted:
8/21 4:00pm
Subject:
RE: 100 Greatest TV Episodes Of All Time: "Murder by the Book" ("Columbo")
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Absurd fact: When Emperor Hirohito of Japan visited California, whom did he want to meet? Peter Falk. Because he was a huge Columbo fan. 
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Zaz
Title: Manager, The Ampitheatre
Registered:
Oct '98
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Date Posted:
8/22 12:13am
Subject:
RE: 100 Greatest TV Episodes Of All Time: "Murder by the Book" ("Columbo")
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15
THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW
February 6, 1963
"Of The Dick Van Dyke Show's characters, Rob Petrie was the one who usually kept his head, while Sally, Buddy, Laura, and Mel were losing theirs all around him. That's a big part of the appeal of this utterly surreal episode, in which Rob seems to be losing not just his head but his imagination -- and both his thumbs. He stays up late one night watching a thriller about an alien from the planet Twilo who wants to take over the world. The extraterrestrial has eyes in the back of his head, eats walnuts, speaks with a British accent, and looks just like Danny Thomas -- in fact, the creature is played by Thomas himself, who, insiders know, co-owned the company that created The Dick Van Dyke Show. People who are exposed to Absorbitron, a chemical the alien possesses, lose their thumbs and their imaginations. When Rob wakes up the next morning, he finds the living-room carpet strewn with walnuts. In the kitchen, a smiling Laura (Mary Tyler Moore) opens an egg carton and offers him a walnut omelette for breakfast. At work, Buddy (Morey Amsterdam) is eating walnuts, not his usual pistachios, and there are walnuts in Rob's typewriter. Is Rob, pardon the expression, cracking up? He thinks so -- until he wakes up from his nutty nightmare. Seventeen-hundred walnuts were used in "It May Look Like a Walnut"; the ones that didn't open on cue were sent back, and that is what executive producer Sheldon Leonard wanted to do with the extravagant script when he first read it. But when Leonard saw how well the inventive walnut episode played in front of an audience, he gave it the thumbs-up."
I've seen this one and it is indeed very funny.
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Zaz
Title: Manager, The Ampitheatre
Registered:
Oct '98
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Date Posted:
8/23 8:38pm
Subject:
RE: 100 Greatest TV Episodes Of All Time: "It May Look Like a Walnut" ("The Dick Van Dyke Show")
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14
WISEGUY
February 22, 1988
"On its surface, Wiseguy was just one more action show created by Stephen J. Cannell (Hunter, The A-Team), this one about undercover Fed Vinnie Terranova. But the series pioneered an unusual structure: multiepisode arcs that unfolded like miniseries within the series. Over the weeks, viewers, like Vinnie, came to know and even identify with the bad guys, sharing the peculiar intimacy the undercover agent has with his quarry. Wiseguy was about the seductiveness of evil, and rarely has evil been more appealing than in the form of sinister siblings Mel and Susan Profitt. Played with almost gleeful intensity by Spacey, Mel runs guns, topples governments, shoots dope, believes in the power of crystals, and admires 19th-century economist Thomas Malthus -- as well as his own sexy sister (Severance). In "Blood Dance," Mel cracks when an agent shatters the crystal he believes harbors his soul. "Send me home," he begs his sis. She obliges, giving him a drug overdose and a Viking funeral."
[mutter]I'd better PM solojones[/mutter]
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solojones
Registered:
Sep '00
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Date Posted:
8/24 9:06am
Subject:
RE: 100 Greatest TV Episodes Of All Time: "Blood Dance" ("Wiseguy")
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This is a great arc. Not that I'm biased or anything  Truth be told, I've not seen these Wiseguy episodes in a couple years, but this one left a pretty big impression. Obviously I agree about Spacey's performance in these episodes as the incestuous, childish, scary Mel Profitt. It's probably not hard for anyone who's familiar with his work to believe he could conjure such a villain and still be sympathetic. Indeed, I think it laid the groundwork for his casting in a number of mid-90s roles that helped make him an icon. But as for Wiseguy, I vividly recall the ending scene of Mel's run in this, with his sister who normally injects him between the toes in a scintillating fashion with drugs giving him an OD. A strangely fitting end.
I was not aware that this was a show that pioneered the TV arc, though. Huh. Quite interesting, and one of the best things to ever happen to TV.
-sj loves kevin spacey
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6 x 9 = 42 Proud member of the Colbert Nation  Obi-Wan Kenobi and Obi-Wan Kenobi in Ghost Ship Executor All Hail Cliegg's Blue Leg!
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Zaz
Title: Manager, The Ampitheatre
Registered:
Oct '98
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Date Posted:
8/24 8:00pm
Subject:
RE: 100 Greatest TV Episodes Of All Time: "Blood Dance" ("Wiseguy")
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Next:
13
ALL IN THE FAMILY
February 19, 1972
"Six months before Sammy Davis Jr. hugged Richard Nixon at the Republican National Convention, he kissed America's most lovable bigot. Davis's guest appearance raised the groundbreaking sitcom's level of racial repartee to new heights. In "Sammy's Visit," Davis comes to Archie Bunker's home to retrieve a briefcase he left in Archie's cab. The script captures the mixed feelings someone like Davis might elicit from someone like Archie: Respect (Archie lets Davis sit in his chair) and awkwardness (the classic gaffe, "Do you take cream and sugar in your eye?") mingle with prejudice (Archie refuses to drink a toast from a glass that has touched Davis's lips). "If you were prejudiced, you'd go around thinking you're better than anyone else in the world, Archie," says Davis. "But I can honestly say you've proven to me that you ain't better than anybody!" This dis is followed by that kiss -- planted on a startled Archie. Davis, incidentally, was a huge AITF fan; he considered his guest shot here as thrilling as his first big break in showbiz.
REWIND
"I loved the statement this episode made," recalls Jean Stapleton, who played Archie's wife, Edith. "Sammy Davis Jr. was great. I've always had doubts about the use of a real-life person in a fictitious story, in terms of playwriting. But the whole thing worked, and that surprised me and opened my mind."
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dp4m
Registered:
Nov '01
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Date Posted:
8/24 10:41pm
Subject:
RE: 100 Greatest TV Episodes Of All Time: "Sammie's Visit" ("All in the Family")
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Zaz posted:
Next:
13
ALL IN THE FAMILY
February 19, 1972
"Six months before Sammy Davis Jr. hugged Richard Nixon at the Republican National Convention, he kissed America's most lovable bigot. Davis's guest appearance raised the groundbreaking sitcom's level of racial repartee to new heights. In "Sammy's Visit," Davis comes to Archie Bunker's home to retrieve a briefcase he left in Archie's cab. The script captures the mixed feelings someone like Davis might elicit from someone like Archie: Respect (Archie lets Davis sit in his chair) and awkwardness (the classic gaffe, "Do you take cream and sugar in your eye?") mingle with prejudice (Archie refuses to drink a toast from a glass that has touched Davis's lips). "If you were prejudiced, you'd go around thinking you're better than anyone else in the world, Archie," says Davis. "But I can honestly say you've proven to me that you ain't better than anybody!" This dis is followed by that kiss -- planted on a startled Archie. Davis, incidentally, was a huge AITF fan; he considered his guest shot here as thrilling as his first big break in showbiz.
REWIND
"I loved the statement this episode made," recalls Jean Stapleton, who played Archie's wife, Edith. "Sammy Davis Jr. was great. I've always had doubts about the use of a real-life person in a fictitious story, in terms of playwriting. But the whole thing worked, and that surprised me and opened my mind."
This episode truly was both a) excellent all around AND b) groundbreaking in nearly all of the ways people say about it.
-----signature-----
"Looks like you're about to get pwned" - Eric Cartman
"Awarding experience points for cleverly and creatively generating an enjoyable experience. How warped is that?" - Darths & Droids
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Zaz
Title: Manager, The Ampitheatre
Registered:
Oct '98
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Date Posted:
8/26 7:38am
Subject:
RE: 100 Greatest TV Episodes Of All Time: "Sammie's Visit" ("All in the Family")
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12
FAWLTY TOWERS
1980 (U.S.)
"One of the rock-ribbed rules of American programming is: Nobody wants to watch a show about someone who isn't likable. (This is sometimes called the Dabney Coleman rule, after the actor who has had a few critically acclaimed but low-rated sitcoms about less-than-admirable characters.) Thus it falls to the British to give us an Absolutely Fabulous (see number 47) or a Fawlty Towers. Basil Fawlty -- the English innkeeper cocreated and portrayed by Monty Python alumnus John Cleese in 1975 (the U.S. debut came in 1980) -- is definitely not likable. He is, in fact, sly, sarcastic, suspicious, rude, raging, and resentful, particularly of his wife, Sybil (Prunella Scales). When Sybil starts a three-day hospital stay for an ingrown toenail -- coinciding with the arrival of German guests -- Fawlty's faults run riot in an achingly funny episode. "The Germans," which includes a talking moose head and a fire that breaks out during a fire drill, climaxes when Basil gets a concussion and cannot follow his own urgent advice to the inn's staff about their new guests: "Don't mention the war!" Not only does the befogged Fawlty mention it, but he launches into a hysterical Hitler impression; and the unforgettable sight of the 6'5'' Cleese goose-stepping through Fawlty Towers and shrieking in mock German puts "The Germans" high in our pantheon."
Oh, ye classic. Makes me laugh to just think of it.
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halibut
Title: FF Admin & UK RSA
Registered:
Aug '00
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Date Posted:
8/26 7:41am
Subject:
RE: 100 Greatest TV Episodes Of All Time: "The Germans" ("Fawlty Towers")
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A definite classic, but so are all the Fawlty Towers episodes. If one ever needs to understand what is meant by "farce" in its purest sense, watch this show.
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Don't you know about the bird?
Everybody knows that the bird is the word!
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Zaz
Title: Manager, The Ampitheatre
Registered:
Oct '98
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Date Posted:
8/26 6:12pm
Subject:
RE: 100 Greatest TV Episodes Of All Time: "The Germans" ("Fawlty Towers")
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I once saw Prunella Scales essay Her Gracious Maj. Elizabeth II. Once I got over the shock--it's Mrs. Fawlty!--I thought she did a great job.
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The_Four_Dot_Elipsis
Registered:
Mar '05
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Date Posted:
8/27 5:34am
Subject:
RE: 100 Greatest TV Episodes Of All Time: "The Germans" ("Fawlty Towers")
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Everyone always mentions "The Germans" as the best episode of Fawlty Towers...but over the years it's kinda lost it for me. "The Hotel Inspectors" I've come to love a lot more.
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"Reboot the fans. The franchise is fine." - HedecGa
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halibut
Title: FF Admin & UK RSA
Registered:
Aug '00
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Date Posted:
8/27 7:57am
Subject:
RE: 100 Greatest TV Episodes Of All Time: "The Germans" ("Fawlty Towers")
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Zaz posted:
I once saw Prunella Scales essay Her Gracious Maj. Elizabeth II. Once I got over the shock--it's Mrs. Fawlty!--I thought she did a great job.
I'm probably related to her at some level. Same surname.
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Everybody knows that the bird is the word!
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