Trio Trophy - Day Six

From the Co-Ed Fever bracket:

(4) The Greatest American Hero v. (13) G vs. E

The Greatest American Hero starts with school teacher Ralph Hinkley walking through the desert, going to get help for his stranded school bus. He is almost run over by FBI agent Bill Maxwell, who lost control of his car thanks to interference from a UFO. Both men, locked in Bill's car, are told by the aliens that they are to work together to save the world, and are given a red suit to help achieve this goal. It only works for Ralph, but when he's wearing it he has Superman-like powers.

Except that Ralph loses the suit's instruction manual before reading it fully, so he's not quite sure how to use the suit. This sets the tone for the series, a light comedic drama where Ralph and Bill (with the help of attorney Pam Davidson) stop bad guys while Ralph flies into walls, when he's not trying to help his students, which oftentimes feels like the same thing.

Stephen J. Cannell created the show, while William Katt, Robert Culp and Connie Selleca brought great chemistry as Ralph, Bill and Pam. Even so, the show is likely best known for two more incidental items: its theme song, which was a hit for Joey Scarbury (and turned into George Costanza's answering machine message), and for Ralph's last name changing when another Hinkley got a lot of TV time just a couple of weeks after the show's debut.

As the show continued, it focused less on Ralph's teaching (and more or less wrote out his son), and eventually married him off to Pam. The show lasted three seasons, with 44 episodes airing for ABC from 1981 to 1983.

Some clips here, mostly promos and the show's intro.

G vs. E took the eternal struggle between good and evil and put it into a kind of Pulp Fiction style. It saw the agents of The Corps, souls of people who died a violent death while not quite secure in going to heaven or hell, take on the Morlocks, souls of people who made the proverbial deal with the devil who are causing problems on Earth. The Corps members are tasked to either redeem the Morlock or kill them, sending them to the lake of fire for good.

Besides the obvious conflict of the title, the show also depicts the inner conflicts of Corps members, who are trying to redeem themselves while obeying the group's rules: no sex, no interfering with living loved ones, and no special powers to prevent one's final death. The Corps is also organized like a police force, so you also have the sort of tensions that would normally come up between partners and with superiors.

The show aired on USA Network for the 1999-2000 season, and would later appear on Sci-Fi. 21 episodes were made.

This link will take you to the first segment of an episode broken into five parts.

(5) Battlestar Galactica v. (12) Nothing Sacred

Battlestar Galactica answers the age-old question of what would happen if you combined the story of Exodus with Star Wars. When the twelve Colony Planets are attacked by the Cylons, it is up to the survivors, led by the titular ship, to roam the galaxy searching for the lost thirteenth planet... Earth! The series chronicled their quest, and contiuned struggle against the Cylons.

Lorne Greene played Galactican leader Adama, while Dirk Benedict and Richard Hatch played Starbuck and Apollo. Patrick Macnee played the Cylon Imperious Leader, who was always plotting on ways to send him Imperial Stormtrooper wannabees against the Galacticans.

The show opened to strong ratings, but at a cost that made anything less than top ratings hard to justify. Cost control and less complex plotting led to a drop in viewership, and ABC decided to cancel the show, to much outrage from fans. They would OK a follow-up series called Galactica 1980, which did not go well.

The show lasted 24 episodes for ABC during the 1979-80 season.

Whole episodes of the show - not to be confused with the Sci-Fi revival - can be found here.

Nothing Sacred chronicled the difficulties of running a modern urban Catholic parish. Father Ray (Kevin Anderson) was the leader of St. Thomas parish, whose unorthodox ways concerned his more traditional-minded parishoners. He was assisted by Father Leo, and older priest whose experience Ray counted on, and Father Eric, who was freshly ordained. Sister Maureen was a somewhat radical nun who was contemplating becoming an Episcopal minister, while Sidney was the agnostic business manager who tried to get as much out of every penny as possible.

As the parish tried to balance orthodoxy with contemporary belief and pressure from being a city parish with sinking attendance, they were later saddled with both a co-pastor from the diocese to keep an eye on Father Ray and a religious education director (played by Jennifer Beals) who may have also had her eye on Father Ray in a less ecclesiastical way.

While Kevin Anderson did a solid job of playing a cleric struggling with running his parish and keeping himself properly comported (celibacy, not surprisingly, was an issue), viewers didn't warm to a show that actually thought about religion in a straighforward way, and conservative Catholics managed to protest the show enough to get it off the air in some markets. It also didn't help that the show was on opposite Friends. Fifteen of the show's 19 episodes aired on ABC during the 1997-98 season.

No video, apparently Opus Dei has done their job.

From the Public Morals bracket:

(4) The Outer Limits v. (13) Action

The Outer Limits took control of the nation's TV sets in the shadow of The Twilight Zone, but with stories that were more often rooted in science fiction. Episodes ranged from conflicts with alien beings (such as in the first episode, "The Galaxy Being") to the use of new technology in a dangerous or ethically questionable manner ("The Sixth Finger").

The first season of the show featured writing on par with The Twilight Zone, and had similar luck with the actors it used, as episodes featured Donald Pleasance, Cliff Robertson, Robert Culp, and Martin Landau, among others. It is better remembered, though for its production values. Visually, the show took much from film noir and German cinema, resulting in a distinct look. Most episodes also featured some sort of creature whose costuming would go on to influence future sci-fi shows, notably Star Trek.

ABC had no idea how to sell such a distinct sci-fi show, and ordered that the second season take an approach more like other sci-fi shows, like Lost in Space. This led the original production team to quit, with their replacements unable to either make the show as it was or as ABC wanted it. It got the hook in 1965 after 49 episodes.

Several clips here, with the caveat that the black and white clips are from the original series, color ones from the mid-1990s revival.

Action gave viewers an inside look at Hollywood through the eyes of Peter Dragon, a movie producer whose last film, Slow Torture, was a costly bomb. The pressure to follow it up with a hit is increased when his company buys the wrong script. Peter does have some help in this, between his newly hired VP of Production, Wendy Ward (a former child actor turned call girl who was Peter's date to the Slow Torture premiere) and Stuart, the President of Production who is treated more like an assistant. There was also a continuing subplot involving Peter's ex-wife, who married Dragonfire's CEO to spite Peter, even though the CEO is gay.

Lots of inside Hollywood satire, as well as a fair number of cameos of people playing themselves (including Keanu Reeves, Salma Hayek and Sandra Bullock, among others). The show had more explicit language and sexual humor than your usual network show (even by Fox standards), though the language was mostly bleeped. Jay Mohr played Peter with his trademark smarmy charm, while Ileana Douglas's Ward deftly maneuvered between being a sharp studio exec and a filthy, filthy whore.

The show may have been a little too much inside Hollywood for viewers, or Fox finally found its limits for gay-related humor, as only 8 of the show's 13 episodes aired in 1999. The other episodes would air on FX and Comedy Central.

Clips to be found here.

(5) Frank's Place v. (12) That Was the Week That Was

Frank's Place saw Frank Parrish, a Boston-based college professor, move to New Orleans to run a restaurant that he'd inherited. His original plan to sell the place backfired, as he did not consider that one of the waitresses would use voodoo to get him to join the family business. Once in the Big Easy, Frank has to get used to working and living in a culture - Southern, working-class - that he was not prepared for from working in academia.

Tim Reid starred as Frank, and fit naturally into the subtle humor of the show. The writing garnered the show an Emmy (one of three that it won, in addition to 6 other nominations, including Outstanding Comedy Series). Unlike most sitcoms, the show was filmed using a single camera and no laugh track, a common practice today but more or less unheard of in a sitcom in 1987.

And, as expected for a TV show that is ahead of its time and critically praised, ratings never grew for the show. CBS moved it around, and the costs involved with the single camera technique was the final nail in the coffin. The show lasted 22 episodes in the 1987-88 season.

No real video to speak of on the Internets.

That Was the Week That Was presaged both the boom in US versions of British TV shows in the 1970s and current news satires like The Daily Show. David Frost brought the British version of the show to the US, using humor to examine race, religion, current events and politics. Frost would go on to host the US version, whose cast and contributors included Henry Fonda, Henry Morgan, Alan Alda, Gene Hackman, Buck Henry, Woody Allen, and Tom Lehrer (who provided a number of songs for the show, including "The Vatican Rag" and "National Brotherhood Week").

While the show debuted to good ratings, thanks to its timely humor and its singular format, it began to lose viewers in 1964 when it was regularly pre-empted by paid political programming related to the Presidential election. Coincidence?

As the show was done live, it's hard to get an episode count, though as the show only aired on NBC from January 1964 to May 1965, I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt. I can't find video from the show, either (there are no DVD sets, and it doesn't seem to have been syndicated), but this review gives a more complete accounting of what the show was like.