AG Monday
Geek culture meets 70s variety TV. Much fun (?) ensues!
Geek culture and schlocky variety shows collide! When you watched Star Wars or read superhero comics, you probably didn’t think, “Why isn’t there more singing and dancing? And how about some comics doing schtick?” But the producers of 1970s TV variety shows thought that would be a good idea. It wasn’t, and in this episode, we show you why.
Of course, we talk about the infamously cringey Star Wars Holiday Special…But there’s so much more. Do you think you’re ready for Donnie and Marie doing Star Wars? Or how about Legends of the Superheroes, starring among others, Adam West and Burt Ward returning as Batman and Robin, in one of the most painfully unfunny, un-entertaining efforts to bring superheroes to the small screen? Star Wars on The Muppet Show! Paul Lynde’s bizarre Halloween special!
And you don’t dare miss William Shatner doing acutely Shatneresque “interpretations” of classic rock hits, such as “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” and “Rocket Man”! Or Leonard Nimoy’s crooning through “The Ballad Of Bilbo Baggins”!
Ancient Geeks is a podcast about two geeks of a certain age re-visiting their youth. We were there when things like science fiction, fantasy, Tolkien, Star Trek, Star Wars, D&D, Marvel and DC comics, Doctor Who, and many, many other threads of modern geek culture were still on the fringes of culture. We were geeks before it was chic!
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For anyone brave enough to partake of some of the content we discuss this week, we have assembled a lot of links on Reddit.
The thing about being on vacation, is that I’m close to WiFi at all times. I got it started on the drive to the store earlier, and will finish it while cooking.
One question: how bad was 70s TV overall? I’ve been trying to recall what I watched in the 70s. I’ve come up with a long(ish) list. the problem is most of that was on local TV, which was dubbed into Spanish (a major minus already*), and some of it might have been from the 60s or even earlier.
*Dubbing for anything other than programming aimed at children should be forbidden everywhere. It’s artistic vandalism.
Much like a faithful churchgoer Saturday night TV in the early ’70s was watching All in the Family, MASH, Mary Tyler Moore and Bob Newhart with friends at someone else’s house as I did not have a TV.
If I add up all the time that I had access to a TV in the ’70s the years that would stand out would be 1974-’75 when I lived in San Francisco. There were four of us guys in one house who had relocated to San Francisco to to get out of small town midwest. We had an old, used black and white TV that sat on the kitchen table. We could just afford the basic cable offering of 10 or 12 Bay Area TV stations that didn’t encroach on our budget for weed and beer. The best of the channel lineup for us were the several outlets that broadcast Star Trek reruns for at least four hours every weekday. The other highlight of that time was watching Tricky Dick announce his resignation. Most of the rest of the ’70s either I didn’t have access to a TV or the one I owned didn’t work and I was too broke to get it fixed.
I do recall watching the Star Wars Bar scene* on a Richard Pryor TV show in 1977.
*TRIGGER WARNING!
Just read the header again. 70s variety TV. My comment is off topic. Too late to take it down.
@Kathy: Tom and I had an offline convo about this, although some of it came up in the 70s superhero ep.
To @Mister Bluster‘s point, there were good sitcoms from the 70s, but not a lot of dramas that are worth revisiting.
@Mister Bluster: No worries. It is close enough!
I watched some of the videos on the reddit link.
I thought the Captain Marvel skit had some funny moments. Most of it works if you see it as a parody of psychiatry rather than of super heroes.
The Bob Hope clip I played only because Olivia Newton John was in it. I love her. I even saw Xanadu (I know*). It was 100% ridiculous, but funny in parts. Like when Hope says “Why am I laughing instead of the audience?” at around 4:13. Of course, it doesn’t help the other performers keep loosing it.
* That horrible box office flop has the distinction of having its soundtrack album go double platinum. Imagine the money they’d saved if they had just released the album.
@Kathy:
In hindsight, pretty bad—with the exception of sitcoms, for which the 70s was likely the heyday of the genre.
It’s really unfair to compare 1970s TV to that of the 2000s and later. Everything had to be suitable for everyone from toddlers to grandmothers. And that means a lot of what aired tended to be rather cheesy from the standpoint of a sophisticated audience. The thing about “prestige TV” is that is could be aimed directly at that audience.
@James Joyner: I do think that the mass audience thing is part of it. But there were some things in 70s sitcoms that weren’t exactly pure mass appeal entertainment in a way that made it uninteresting or bland.
But there is still something uniquely bad about a lot of 70s dramas.
As I have noted on the podcast, looking at the 70s stuff makes we furtthe reevaluate Star Trek: TOS in even higher esteem. The writing, acting, and production values quite impressive, even if there are eps, scenes, and performances that weren’t at the top.
But even stuff like the Twilight Zone and Outer Limits was superior to a lot of stuf fin the 70s.
Likewise, there are some good 80s dramas that simply outshine those of the 70s.
Agree about comparing mass TV to prestige TV
@Kathy: I may have had the single (I do fondly remember the song). I think I tried to watch the movie one VHS but gave up on it.