Will anyone actually remember that "SOAP" was a television show? The answer to this question and more in this PCBS.

There’s a lot of “SOAP” in the sitcoms that I love. On a couple of different levels in fact. This season’s big breakout hit, ABC’s “Modern Family”, is like a toned down version of the 70’s hit. They’re both shows that really find their comedy in the interactions between the characters instead of the situations they’re in even though “SOAP” deals with some of the most outlandish situations I’ve ever come across. There are also a lot of actors from shows that I’ve loved randomly sprinkled in the cast of “SOAP”. How can you not love a show that’s got both the sassy grandma from “Who’s the Boss?” and the dad from “Blossom”? But most of all, I think “SOAP” was a show that was striving to move the social conversation forward and did so in a disarmingly ridiculous way. It’s a great example of socially responsible TV that accomplishes it’s mission without being preachy (even if basically every religious group at the time disagrees with me in a classically “Oh no! Gay people!” way). At one point in the series, one of the characters is abducted by aliens and replaced with an alien lookalike (played by the same actor). Now that’s good television!

A Brief Synopsis of “SOAP”: How can I explain a show like “SOAP”? Since it’s a sitcom, I actually watched the first four episodes to get a good idea of what the show was like (it’s not really fair to judge a sitcom on 22 minutes and well, my blog = my rules). Every episode opens with a recap of where things left off the week before but since this was the first few episodes they also included a more general description of the situation behind the situation comedy. Basically, the series chronicles the lives of two sisters and their families in Dunn’s River, Connecticut.. On one side of the tracks we have Jessica (Katherine Helmond a.k.a. “Mona” from “Who’s the Boss?”) and her husband, Chester. They’re the affluent Tate family with the big house, bratty kids (Billy, Eunice and Corinne) and a butler…who just happens to be played by Robert Guillaume. Here’s where I admit that when Jessica walked into the kitchen and called Robert Guillaume “Benson” I was genuinely shocked. How did I not know that “Benson” was a spin off from “SOAP”? Now that’s a blind spot. Just to make sure there’s always some conflict in the house, Mary’s father (known simply as “The Major”) lives with the family as well. He’s never quite gotten over the war and spends the bulk of his time hallucinating that he’s still in some WWII European theater. On the other side of the tracks, Jessica’s sister Mary lives in slightly more modest surroundings with her husband Burt (Richard Mulligan a.k.a. the dad from “Empty Nest”) and her sons from a previous marriage Danny (Ted Wass a.k.a. the dad from “Blossom”) and Jodie (Billy Crystal a.k.a. BILLY CRYSTAL). You think that’s a lot of stars for one show? How about this: the announcer at the beginning of each episode is Rod freakin’ Roddy. That’s right, the same guy that spent 20 years telling contestants to “Come on Down!” on “The Price is Right.” That’s star power at it’s finest. The show is basically a send up of daytime soap operas often relying on the ridiculous plot points that have become staples of the genre. In the first four episodes alone we learn the following:

• Jessica is cheating on Chester with her tennis pro, Peter (Robert Ulrich)
• Chester is cheating on Jessica with anything in a skirt (his secretary and as she describes it “half the building”). She’s decided to blackmail him by threatening to expose his dirty business dealings to the SEC.
• Peter is also sleeping with Jessica’s daughter, Corinne but he doesn’t know that they’re mother and daughter.
• Burt hasn’t been able to perform sexually with Mary for some time because of the guilt he feels for killing her first husband…who was in the mob.
• Danny’s followed into his father’s footsteps and joined up with the mob but now wants to get out and can, but only if he avenges his father…by killing his stepfather.
• Jodie’s contemplating a sex change so he can stay involved with his quarterback boyfriend who’s worried that he’s a “latent heterosexual”
• Remember the tennis pro that both Jessica and Corinne have been practicing their serve with? Turns out he’s also Burt’s long lost son from his first marriage.

That’s four episodes. Four. About 88 minutes of television (without commercials). Looking at that list you realize that there are shows on TV today that don’t deal with that much plot in a season, much less in their first four episodes. But that’s the kind of show that “SOAP” turned out to be. Looking ahead at plot details from future seasons you see phrases like “alien abduction”, “leaves the priesthood” and “ventriloquist.” For that reason alone, I tip my hat to what could easily be called the most outlandish sitcom of all time.

Why is it a PCBS? Debuting in 1977, “SOAP” was a program that was determined to break boundaries and deal in taboo subject matter. Much like “All in Family” (which debuted in 1971) and “Maude” (which followed one year later in 1978), “SOAP” is a show that’s often remembered fondly for it’s firsts. It featured one of the first openly gay characters on prime time television with Jody and while the series did seem to often go for the easy gay jokes, it’s still monumental that the character made it to TV at all. The show received 32,000 letters of complaint before it even aired a single episode and 8 of the 195 ABC affiliates refused to even carry the program. Even in 2010, I have to admit that I was sorta shocked by some of the dialog and situations on “SOAP” (which is definitely a sign of something good). The other reason it’s a true PCBS is because it’s got the pedigree. Just look at the list of future stars in the cast list and it’s easy to see why people point to this show as a high point in sitcom history. If “Saturday Night Live” was where Billy Crystal really became a star then “SOAP” was where he learned the skills to get that shot. Robert Guillaume will always be remembered by most people for “Benson” (even though in my mind he’ll always be Issac from “Sports Night”) and that’s a character that started with “SOAP”. And yes, most people remember Katherine Helmond as the smart and slutty Mona but part of the reason that role was such a break-out for her has to be because of the 180 degree turn it was from the dingy, innocent Jessica on four seasons of “SOAP”. Even Ted Wass probably realizes that more people will remember him as Nick Russo on “Blossom” but without “SOAP” he’d never have gotten that role…or moved on to become a bit of an epic sitcom director (helming episodes of “Two and a Half Men”, “Accidentally on Purpose”, “Big Bang Theory” and the pilot for this fall’s “Melissa & Joey”…which he should probably be punished for). But still! Shows like “Modern Family” are the fruits of the seeds planted by sitcom pioneers like “SOAP” which means it’s definitely worth some attention.

How does it look in the rear view mirror? But beyond being shocking and star-making, it’s got something that a lot of other sitcoms don’t ever seem to get: Timing. “SOAP”, much like some of the best episodes of “Fraiser” 20 years later, is clearly based in the old traditions of live theater comedies. The dialog may be cheesy at times and the plots completely unbelievable but the snappy delivery of a clearly very talented cast makes it all just seem like a lot of fun. Take for instance a scene near the end of the fourth episode when Danny’s returned to the house after finding out that he’s got to kill Burt in order to leave the mob (and not be hunted down himself). The scene turns on two things: Burt’s misunderstanding that Danny’s gotten out of the mob and the audience’s ability to see Danny struggling to try and kill Burt while he remains oblivious to the fact. As Burt bursts with monologish happiness that Danny’s no longer involved with organized crime, we see Danny reaching into a kitchen drawer and pulling out a series of more ridiculously non-lethal objects that he might use to kill his step-father. A tiny knife, a corkscrew, a spatula all come out of the drawer before Burt asks Danny to grab the mayonnaise from the ice box. Danny raises the mayo above his head, ready to strike the unsuspecting Burt only to have Burt turn around and nonchalantly grab it  and spread it on his sandwich. It’s only when Mary comes into the room as Danny’s about to strangle Burt with the toaster cord that he realizes that he just can’t do it. It’s a scene that takes maybe a minute and a half but it demonstrates how the writers are using the soap opera conventions (mafioso hits and matricide, to name a few) as guard rails for ridiculously fun comedy. I’m not going to sit here and say that “SOAP’ is high art, but it’s not hard to see the French farce and commedia dell’arte roots that made this show a award-winning success despite it’s insanity.

Final Thoughts: In my mind, it’s easy to trace most of the popular comedies on TV today back to shows like “SOAP”. Most of the time people point to things like “I Love Lucy” or “The Dick Van Dyke Show” as the most influential sitcoms but to me those shows (while great) were basically just establishing the playing field for all future situation comedies. The living/dining/kitchen set. 30 minutes to resolve any issue. You know, the basic rules. It took shows like “All in the Family” to show us that father doesn’t always know best. “SOAP” revels in the fact that it’s exposing the imperfections of the modern family instead of pretending they weren’t there. It’s not hard to draw a line from the outrageous dialog on shows like “SOAP” to characters like “Glee”‘s Sue Sylvester or “Two and a Half Men”‘s Charlie…although the most direct decedent of “SOAP” might be FOX’s “Married…with Children.” Is it sometimes a little cheesy? Yes. Is it often a bit racist? Good lord, yes. But at the end of the day, the outrageousness of “SOAP” paved the way for the outrageous television we’re enjoying today. If you’ve ever enjoyed an off-color joke on a television sitcom, then you owe a debt to the folks in Dunn’s River, Connecticut.

He is not, in fact, gettin' on no airplane, Hannibal.

First off, let me say that “The A-Team” that I know, isn’t like the one that you remember. That’s because before today’s screening of the two-part pilot, “The Mexican Slayride”, I’d never seen an episode of the show. That means, to me, Templeton “Faceman” Peck will always be Tim Dunigan who was unceremoniously replaced by Dirk Benedict for the role after the pilot because the producers worried that he looked too young to be a Vietnam War veteran. It’s a move that makes no sense given the fact that EVERYTHING else about the show borders on the ridiculous. I would have loved to be sitting in that meeting with the producers as they discussed replacing a principle actor on an already piloted television series because he looked too young for the role even though they knew that the series was already veering into the absolutely absurd. But before I get caught up in a diatribe about the hilariously awesome, over the top nature of the quintessentially 80’s show that is “The A-Team”, let’s first review the basics. As stated at the beginning of the program, the members of the A-Team were an elite commando unit that, at the end of the Vietnam war, were tried for crimes they didn’t commit. In the pilot, we learn that they were involved in the robbery/liberation of a Hanoi bank. A mission who’s orders were destroyed (along with their commanding officer) in an artillery attack at the end of the war. Since escaping from military prison at Fort Brag (in North Carolina) they’ve joined the seedy underground of Los Angeles (in California) where they apparently help children, run cons, act as movie monsters and live rent free in a Veteran’s Home for the Insane. But! If you’ve got a problem and no one else can help AND you can find them (and pay them, apparently) you may just be able to hire The A-Team.

A Brief Synopsis of “The A-Team”: The pilot begins in a small Mexican town where an LA newspaper reporter named Massey (played Jessica Fletcher’s doctor friend from “Murder She Wrote”) is kidnapped by some local scoundrels. Cut back to LA where one of his fellow reporters, Amy Allen, is trying to convince her editor that Massey’s in trouble even though he’s been disappearing for months because of the depression caused by the death of his wife. Her editor balks and suspends Allen for two weeks with half pay so she can “learn to stop sitting on her brains.” Allen exits to the newsroom where she meets up with Zack (played by Horshack from “Welcome back, Kotter”) who gives her the pilot-worthy run down on the rumored commando force that’s been living in the LA underground for the last ten years. In a scene that can only be described as “blatant exposition”, Horshack lays out the team of John “Hannibal” Smith, B.A. Baracus, Templeton “Faceman” Peck and “Howling Mad” Murdock (their trusty pilot). Amy sets out to contact the A-Team so they can help her recover Massey from his ambiguous Mexican captors. She visits Murdock at the insane asylum and is pointed to a dark alley behind a Hollywood strip club…as you’ll do. She heads for the meeting point at 2 AM and runs into Hannibal (dressed as a hobo) and gives him a $20, sleeps in her car and meets up with Hannibal (dressed as a blatantly racist stereotypical Asian caricature known as “Mr. Lee”) who asks her for $150,000 and a photo of Massey. It’s 48 hours later that Hannibal (dressed as…oh wait…Hannibal) approaches her in a parking garage and let’s her know that she’s successfully hired the A-Team (able to deal with the homeless, racist characters and financial ruin? You can hire the A-Team!). The group converges on LAX where Face has secured a plane that no one’s mentioned up to this point, they drug BA (he’s afraid of flying and oblivious to needles!) and take off for Mexico. And that’s only the first hour of this two hour pilot. In the second half we learn important lessons like:

• No one in the A-Team universe can accurately shoot a firearm: Seriously. The count for the episode was something like 7,000 bullets fired and 0 actually connected. I get that they didn’t want to show blood or actual violence on TV back in the day, but c’mon, a monkey could hit at least one bad guy when they’re surrounded by a firing squad of farmers.
• Marijuana is bad: The A-Team figures out that the warlords that are holding Massey hostage are using fear to force small Mexican towns to work in their make-shift weed fields. The team coats the fields in bleach and then drops leaflets on them…in Spanish…which are never explained.
• Grenades are equal to M-80s: As a kid who spent his fair share of time blowing things up with M-80s, I know what those kinds of explosions looked like. Seeing the “grenade” explosions on “The A-Team” was vaguely reminiscent of those GI-Joe destroying explosions.
• Military justice means nothing: After securing Massey and handing the Mexican warlord and his “guerrilla”  general over to the local towns folk (for some street justice, one can assume) the team runs into General Lynch, who’s been hunting them down for 10 years since their escape from Fort Bragg, at the Mexican airport. Their solution? Punch him in the face and put him in the trunk of their car before taking off for the US of A. Suck it, military tribunals. You have no power here.

At the end of the day, the episode ends with The A-Team adding Amy Allen (Triple A!) as the latest member of their team of misfits. I can only assume that they spent the next 5 years getting into and out of trouble with other mercenaries and the United States military ending with a finale that cleared their name and undoubtedly set them all up for spin-offs…just in case.

Why is it a PCBS? It’s “The A-Team.” Whether you consider it the show that helped solidify Mr. T as the star he is or the launching pad for other 80’s stalwarts like “MacGuyver”, “The A-Team” is considered by many as the ultimate in ridiculous 80’s TV. It’s a show that’s so big it’s been remade into one of this summer’s big blockbusters with stars like Liam Neesom and Bradley Cooper stepping into the major roles. Seriously, for once, I don’t really have to defend why I should have seen an episode of a show other than by repeating it’s name….It’s “The A-Team” for crying out loud.

How does it look in the rear view mirror? Honestly, it’s awesome. “The A-Team” reminds me of a simpler time in television. There’s no call for realism, accurate depiction of situations or intense development of character on a show like this. If “Lost” was all about characters and “the journey” then “The A-Team” was all about explosions and super corny jokes. When we first meet Hannibal, he’s dressed as “The Aquamaniac” (a “Creature for the Black Lagoon”-esque character that doesn’t stop him from smoking insanely long cigars) and a random car chase ensues. No one seems tied to plot, character development or for that matter physics. The only point of the show is to tell an entertaining story and deliver a few zingers along the way. It’s easy to see how the 80’s were fertile ground for movies like “Die Hard” (Yippie Kay Ay, Mother Fucker!) and “Lethal Weapon” (I’m getting too old for this shit) when shows like “The A-Team” were weekly fair on TV. There’s something refreshing about truly escapist TV (that isn’t reality) in a world that begs us to take everything so seriously. While shows like “24” are challenging to our perception of true life political events (or at least started out that way), TV can also be completely and mindlessly fun. That’s what I got from the pilot of “The A-Team”, they were all really enjoying the laughably terrible circumstances that they were involved in, even if they all knew it didn’t much in the long run.

Final Thoughts: At the end of the day a pilot is supposed to make us want to watch more of the series as a whole. So did the pilot of “The A-Team” make me want to watch more of “The A-Team”? Honestly, it did. Growing up, Saturday afternoons were full of re-runs of shows like “The Fall Guy” and as much as I love Lee Majors, I wish I’d seen more of “The A-Team” as a kid. It’s easily the most roller coaster show that I’ve seen in a really long time. I don’t mean that it’s full of ups and downs that challenge the way we see the world. I mean that it’s a fun ride for a very short amount of time that is completely forgettable when it’s over. Sometimes that’s ok. Everything doesn’t have to be “deep” or “meaningful.” Sometimes it’s OK for a show to simply offer an escape from the troubles of the real world…even if the world that it presents is filled with the absolute worst shots ever.

"Houses with kids are always sticky."

(Since there are only so many hours in a day and I have only so much patience, there’s no way I could sit through full series of shows that I might not like. So I’ll be tackling television series in a few different ways. Sometimes I’ll just watch a pilot or specific episode of a show that’s noteworthy for one reason or another. In all cases, I won’t in any way try to be fair to the show and will make hyperbolic generalizations about it. Sorry if you love a certain show that I give this treatment to, if Emmy voters can do it so can I.)

Pilots really are tricky business. On the one hand, your pilot has to set up characters, situations and themes that your series will explore throughout its run. That means a lot of exposition which, as a rule, doesn’t make for the best television. If you don’t set up enough of the story, people will walk away from your pilot wondering what the hell they’ve just seen. On the other hand, pilots have to be engaging enough to entice viewers to watch episodes two through one hundred (the magic syndication number). Pilots really are a tricky thing.

The problem is you can have a great pilot for a series that turns out to be crap in the long run (e.g. “Heroes”) or a crap pilot that turns out to be a great series in the long run (e.g. “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”). It’s a balancing act and a crap shoot all at once and it’s with that in mind that I sat down to watch the pilot of late 80’s early nineties Emmy-darling “thirtysomething”. I was 7 when “thirtysomething” premiered, which is probably why I missed it the first time around. Turns out, it’s full of award-winning performances, writing and directing so I felt sorta bad that I’d ignored it for so long…a feeling that I can’t say I still have.

A Brief Synopsis of the pilot of “thirtysomething”: It’s important that I say that I didn’t hate it. Far from it. For 1987, it’s pretty edgy stuff. I mean in the pilot episode they explore the changing relationship of a couple after their first child, the dark corners of the male mind that lead to infidelity (however unsatisfying) and side-boob. That’s a lot to deal with in the first 49 minutes of a show’s life. The pilot introduces us to all of the central characters…and since it was just the pilot it would be cheating to pretend that I now know all their names. With the help of Wikipedia, I can tell you that we meet:

• Michael and Hope: a couple struggling to maintain the “themness” of their relationship now that their first child has arrived. Hope is a former career go-getter who’s wrestling with her choice to stay home (for now) with Baby Janey. Michael is running his own advertising agency with his friend Elliot.
• Elliot and Nancy: slightlty further into the abyss of their thirties, Elliot and Nancy are a married couple with two kids. While Elliot is working at the ad agency with Michael, Nancy apparently does nothing other than scold their son for tormenting his sister. While walking down the street, Elliot confesses an affair (because that’s where dudes talk about stuff like that) to Michael who’s recently begun to notice other women now that Hope has gone all stay-at-home-momish.
• Melissa: Apparently she’s Michael’s cousin (although that’s never actually communicated during the pilot) she’s the typical Cathy-reading 30 year old woman who’s trying to define herself via a relationship with a man. Seriously, she could have just walked into the room and said “Argh!” and it would have been equally effective. We also learn that she used to date Gary who really just wants to go backpacking.
• Gary: He’s got long hair! He’s got glasses on a string a lanyard! He likes backpacking! Gary’s the walking talking embodiment of the 80’s version of a guy struggling to balance his 60’s roots with his 80’s lust for a Volvo. Gary who alternates between getting touchy feely with Hope on the couch and chiding Michael for not wanting to go backpacking, is apparently an English professor at Haverford College (take that Harvard residuals committee). In the pilot he’s smarmy in a way that’s literally one step above Andrew McCarthy. If Zack Morris had aged to 32 and taken a time machine back to 1987, he would be Gary.
• Ellyn: While Hope’s been busy making a baby and leaving her job, Ellyn’s been at home with a pint of Ben & Jerry’s and a worn out VHS copy of “Working Girl”. While having lunch with Hope and the baby, Ellyn does everything but punch the kid in the face in an effort to quiet her. Ellyn’s gone all Jan Brady since the baby took Hope’s focus away from her and it shows when she tries to convince Hope that the best way to get over being so tired with the new baby is to go back to work. Nice try, second-wave feminist Ellyn, Hope’s too smart for that little ploy. I’m guessing that later in the series Ellyn begins acting out to get Hope’s attention by dating guys in leather jackets with motorcycles.

Why is it a PCBS? “thirtysomething” won a slew of Emmy awards during its four years on the air. It’s a touchstone for that generation of Boomers who had to deal with the fact that they were selling out as they got paid buckets and buckets of money to sell out. And while I was originally going to say that it launched the career of Timothy Busfield while simultaneously burying the careers of 6 other actors, I was proven wrong. Basically half the cast went on to be a part of either “Alias” or “Brothers & Sisters” or both. The style of “thirtysomething” also influenced shows for years to come. Watching the pilot I couldn’t help but think of shows like “Sisters” (Swoozy Kurtz, FTW), “Once & Again” and all the other “adults dealing with real problems” shows that came in the 90’s and early 00’s. “thirtysomething” also pushed boundaries of what was acceptable to talk about and show on prime time network television. So if you can’t sleep at night because the image of Dennis Franz’s ass is burned into your memory, thank “thirtysomething”.
How does it look in the rear view mirror? These 7 people make up the world that we’re introduced to in the “thirtysomething” pilot and while I can relate to the ideas behind the struggles of the transition from 20’s to 30’s (although I’m still in my 20’s, for now), I felt that it was all come through in a very Lifetime movie of the week kind of way. The struggles of men and women to deal with life, children and each others is something that TV’s tread and retread over the years and while I can appreciate the fact that “thirtysomething” gets to yell “FIRST!” on a lot of these issues, the fact that they bit off so much in the pilot was a bit off-putting. Showing me that Elliot and Nancy and broken in episode one isn’t as strong a choice as making me fall in love with Elliot and Nancy and then stabbing me in the heart with the revelation of his infidelity. I feel like I’ll start to see a pattern as I get through more and more 80’s dramatic television of shows that go for the cheap shock over the longform character development. Of course, developing a character in one direction and then breaking that convention with a shocking event totally goes against my description of a successful pilot at the top of this post but whatever, it’s my stream of consciousness, suck it. “thirtysomething” feels like it’s trying too hard to say something about the people, places and things that it portrays. While 80’s audiences might have gasped and tuned in for more at the first signs of taboo subjects (like adultery and side-boob), I tend to prefer my dramas a bit more subtle than that. Think about the pilot for “Mad Men”. It spend the first 55 minutes convincing you that Don Draper is a hard working ad man with a penchant for the ladies and booze…only to turn around in the last 5 minutes and turn that notion completely on it’s head. (and I’ve already contradicted myself, awesome) But you know what I mean. It’s the choice between Crock Pot and Flash Fry drama. With Crock Pot, you get the slow simmer of characters who have time to develop flavor and idiosyncracies. They’re always more complex than you first think and constantly suprise you with their subtle flavors. Flash Fry, on the other hand, takes characters and immediately introduces them to heat at level 11. Yes, the sizzle and pop is there in the beginning, but over time the characters get burned to an unrecognizable crisp. (+1 for the meat analogy).

Final Thoughts: At the end of the day, the pilot for “thirtysomething” is exactly what it promised to be: the story of people struggling to find an identity in that gray area past your twenties and before your fourties. I think today’s thirtysomething’s would make for a somewhat more interesting show (what with 30 being the new 18 and all). will I watch another episode of “thirtysomething”? Maybe. After I post this, I’ll bring up the series with friends and see what people remember about it. Does it stand the test of time in their minds or was it just the “Gray’s Anatomy” of 1987-1991? Part of me thinks that people will remember it fondly. Like the Happy Hour at your favorite bar way back when. You always knew who would be there, what they were serving and how the evening would end. That’s just not quite the way I want to spend the last few months of my twentysomethings.