The It Was a Thing on TV Podcast Network

We venture into the absurd with this pilot, where one character gets his abilities due to solar radiation, while his partner is half motorcycle and half human.  This project had two future stars, as well as a third coming off his big movie a year earlier.  (Coming.  IYKYK.)  ABC passed on it, and apparently FOX had to decide between this and a classic FOX sitcom as a 1999-2000 midseason replacement.  FOX made the right choice.

Pilot Month 2026 rolls on with this Jim Henson entry, which aired during the 1987 installment of CBS Summer Playhouse.  Like at least one other pilot we have previously covered, this pilot dealt with the happenings at a children's TV show, as well as the personal lives off-camera.  Like at least that one other pilot, it became a footnote in TV history.

It's the beginning of an annual tradition on this podcast--Pilot Month.  We are giving you 12 pilots over the next 6 weeks.  We begin Pilot Month 2026 with yet another spinoff of M*A*S*H, but this one didn't make it.  Was it due to going to the well once too often, or was it possibly due to a good percentage of the country not seeing it due to political convention coverage?  Maybe it's because the main character left the parent show 5 years earlier.

Here is yet another case of a spinoff of a hit show being an utter disaster.  Joey Tribbiani moved to L.A., away from his friends.  Nobody told him spinning off from the flagship show was gonna be this way.  After two lackluster seasons, this series ended up as one of the biggest spinoff flops in history.

Mike's birthday happened earlier in the week.  As is tradition around these parts, during birthday time, each host picks an episode they want to cover as their Money in the Bank.  Mike chose this cartoon which was critical of the times in the 70s during season 1, but reverted to an animated sitcom with no controversial bite in subsequent seasons.

Usually, we don't cover shows that ran for more than two seasons.  An exception was made not because this was bad but rather the plethora of changes which arose, primarily with talent wanting raises.  Despite that, What's Happening Now!! actually had a longer run than the original series.

We're a little late to the 100th birthday celebration of Leslie Nielsen.  Surely, you'll forgive us.  (And don't call us Shirley.)

After the success of Airplane!, its producers brought a show with similar humor to the small screen with Police Squad!  The show was not a success for several reasons, but it was loved so much that it spun off into four movies over the last 40 years.

When we placed this on the schedule, it was to coincide with a 24/7 stream of the show.  A few days before we recorded, the stream ended.  To make matters worse, due to technical difficulties, the original Revisited show had to be scrapped.  Finally, it became a reality.  Relive the fun of Duke Moosekian, The Handsome Boy Modeling Agency, SPEWEY, and much more as we finally revisit Get a Life properly.

As you all know, we were supposed to bring you the Revisited episode of Get a Life today, but as Mike mentioned earlier this week, technical issues in the recording forced us to scrap it and redo it two weeks from now. However, since we have no episode this week, we are releasing our original episode of "Get a Life" from 2022 as a "Best of" for you this week. So enjoy Greg saying "Duke Moosekian".

We did it!  600 episodes!  As we do with milestone episodes, we cover a very special topic.  No topic is more special or more appropriate for this podcast than one of television's biggest bombs ever.  People thought the Happy Days magic would last via another spinoff.  Audiences initially said yes, but that quickly changed to a no, and the storybook relationship between Joanie and Chachi would end just as it began.