The It Was a Thing on TV Podcast Network

This week, we're celebrating Norman Lear's 100th birthday by looking at two of his less successful shows.  We start with Lear's adaptation of a play about a seedy hotel with even seedier residents, Hot l Baltimore.  Most of the players were relative newcomers, and three went on to much greater success in the decades that followed.

We're giving you two shows for the price of one this episode.  These shows premiered on the same day, the shows aired consecutively on NBC, and both looked technologically amazing for late 1976.  Alas, technology couldn't save the pair, as their final shows aired on the last day of the year.

What if Merlin the Magician lived in the 20th Century instead of during Arthurian times?  In 1981, CBS gave us an answer to that question when Merlin lived in San Francisco and owned an auto repair shop.  It appears CBS had faith in the series, but it went up against difficult competition from the start.

We previously talked about the 1990 MLB All-Star Game, with its long rain delay.  Now, we're talking about what happened during that delay.  CBS fired up an episode of its freshman hit Rescue 911.  It was a bit of an odd selection, maybe more so because this episode had a gruesome event, during a jovial event (The All-Star Game.)

Our journey to this year's All-Star festivities continues with the 1990 edition, one with great pitching, first appearances by several baseball legends, and a lengthy rain delay.  We'll continue talking about the rain delay on Thursday.

We're rounding the halfway mark in the baseball season and we have three special episodes lined up for the occasion.  First, we watch dozens of legends participate in an old timers game whose participants span almost 50 years of Major League Baseball, the oldest of whom pulls off the highly improbable.

In our second of two entries related to the upcoming Thor movie release, this episode looks at a TV movie from 1988 where Thor appears in the same universe as The Incredible Hulk...but that's not the Thor we know or remember.  Listener discretion is advised, as this was treated like a live watch.

The Fourth of July is coming early next week.  To celebrate, we look at one of our favorite episodes of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, where the gang puts on a wrestling event with a little support from Rowdy Roddy Piper's character.

Another Marvel movie will be released soon as we celebrate the return of Thor, so it's time for more entries related to actors and actresses in the MCU.  We go back to 1980 for Stephen J. Cannell's first series, with Jeff Goldblum and Ben Vereen playing detectives in the short-lived but fondly remembered Tenspeed and Brown Shoe.

We're sticking with the courtroom theme in this surprise live show where we go back to a show covered in Episode 117 as we look at a special episode of Personal Injury Court.

In this episode, Gino gives us the legal sauce in a case where a lady gets blinded in an eye by a bag of peanuts at a baseball game thrown by the team mascot.

Let's just say that the costume of the mascot is something that has been seen to be appreciated.

You can watch the episode and follow along at the official YouTube channel for Personal Injury Court. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXfEgepI5UA