Alphecca

TV Sitcoms, and Other Stuff...

I just got home from work (yes, I work Saturdays and Sundays) and spent the past hour de-spamming and now that includes de-ping-spamming... *Sigh* Anyway, my current schedule at my real job is that I am off Mondays and Tuesdays.

My Weekly Report will be up around Noon tomorrow, I'll put it together in the morning. Tonight I'm going to take it easy and drink cheap wine and watch -- how sick is this? -- the first season of Green Acres... Nobody ever said my taste wasn't in my mouth... I like the old comedies I grew-up with.

And I have to say, to me, you could have crappy writing but with a good ensemble cast of pro's, you'd have a great TV show. Maybe that's why some of my favorite sit-coms include, besides Green Acres, such shows as the Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Odd Couple, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Petticoat Junction, the first couple seasons of Mash, and who could forget the Adams Family, News Radio (the late Phil Hartman was a one-man comedy team), and one of my all time favorites, The Carol Burnett Show.

A lot of shows are currently being remade. Folks, the only reason to remake something is if you can add something new and fresh to it or improve it. If the old movie was superb, don't bother trying again. You'll usually (Titanic was an exception) have a flop on your hands. Special effects don't make for a story to me although I suppose it's enough for those under 15-years-old. I never thought much of the original Gilligan's Island (although others think differently) so I don't really care if there's a remake.

But The Honeymooners is different. Simply put, this was one of the best shows ever put on TV. The cast, Jackie Gleason, Art Carney, Audrey Meadows, and Joyce Randolph, were so good, so perfect, so brilliant in their performances, that any new actor or actress who even attempts to recreate these roles is doomed to failure.

By the way, I never speak of my family but two of them played in the CBS orchestra and knew Gleason. Unfailingly they state that he WAS the greatest, and he was kind, generous, funny, loved to party and made sure that all who worked on his shows -- even the janitors -- partied with him. And he liked to party. But that's besides the point.

The point is that this was an unusual show (even by today's standards) showing a struggling couple (financially, if nothing else) who were supremely likable, had their fights, but always made-up in the end. The show needed no, and resorted to no sexual innuendo. Granted, it was the fifties. But I guarantee you the remake will resort to such. That's all Hollywood has to offer these days, along with tired special effects.

There would be no point, and indeed it would be considered folly, to try to improve on da Vinci's Mona Lisa. So too, how stupid could any movie studio be to try to do another version of the Honeymooners?

Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Call me an old fuddy-duddy.

Check back around lunch time for my Weekly Thing. And thanks to another kind person who hit the tip-jar. That makes four this month which is more than the previous three put together. Thanks so much!

Now where's that chablis?