The It Was a Thing on TV Podcast Network

Back when we reviewed "Throb" last year, Greg and Chico were reminded of this movie a pre-Fast and the Furious Paul Walker did back in 1998. Two loser surf brothers from Hawaii are sent by their father to Yellowstone, where they are mistaken for park rangers and have to do battle with a paranoid Dennis Hopper doing weird Dennis Hopper things.

We probably think this is the first time in Disney+ history that more than one person watched this movie at one time.

In 1983, as Laverne and Shirley came to an end and as Happy Days was wrapping up its run, Garry Marshall came up with this series about high school friends, one of whom became a computer millionaire and the other becoming his assistant.  The show came across as more of a showcase of Michael Richards' brand of physical comedy than anything else.  The best part of this pilot was the ads before and throughout the show.

Pilot month resumes with this entry about a lawyer who has a habit of having panic attacks while litigating cases.  The cast was loaded.  It had potential.  Unfortunately, beyond panic attacks, this show had an identity crisis and did not make NBC's fall schedule in 2010.

It's the start of our annual Pilot Month and we're starting off with a pilot two of the three of us didn't see much of, so one of us took one for the team.  There's a kids show with a lion puppet and Marcia Gay Harden is involved.  That's about all we cared for.  It was a CBS Summer Playhouse entry, so it was earmarked for failure.  We promise it gets better from here.

A couple of years ago, on a Live Show, we watched Tim Conway, in one of the many Dorf VHS tapes, play Baseball. Now, in our latest Live Show, we see him try to teach us how to play Bingo. Is this one of the most painful things we've ever had to sit through? Get your dabbers ready as we watch Dorf Da Bingo King!

Here's a link to download or watch the program if you want to follow along via archive.org - https://archive.org/details/vintage-vhs-dorf-da-bingo-king

As you surely know, the occasional personnel change on a TV show occurs for various reasons, ranging from health issues and death to just going in a different direction.  In 1982, one of television's most popular shows, The Dukes of Hazzard, experienced such a change over salary issues.  Out were the popular Bo and Luke Duke, in were Coy and Vance for a lackluster season, before Bo and Luke returned.

Some shows age like a fine wine.  Others age like bad milk.  This show falls under the latter, a show which would never see the light of day in 2025 but did get 13 episodes in 1988.  Scott Bakula stars in this series as a new hotshot lawyer who has a way with the ladies, a year before Bakula would hit it real big.  In true 1988 "don't give a darn" fashion, there was enough misogyny and quasi-racism to go around.

The 21st century has brought new forms of inspiration for TV shows.  This show is an example of that, taking one social media user's rants about his father as the basis of a comedy series.  In what we believe is beautiful casting, the father is played by William Shatner, whose 94th birthday is coming this Saturday.  With the Shat, you never know what $h*! he may say.

It's Lost in Translation time on the podcast!  To start, we look at the second attempt to Americanize the classic British comedy Fawlty Towers, but with Bea Arthur as the lead.  It followed a stinker of a show.  (Condo, see episode 79.)  However, it also was up against one of the most popular series of the 1980s.  Despite being evicted after 13 episodes, that number is still more than the number of episodes of Fawlty Towers.

This coming Monday, Mike is celebrating his birthday (the big 5-0) and he chose this as his Money in the Bank pick, a cult classic about a police inspector with a hair trigger temper, as well as a hair trigger on his very large Magnum gun.  It was good enough to squeak by for two seasons.  As for this selection, trust Mike.  He knows what he's doing.