The Trio Trophy - Day Two

Welcome back to the Trio Trophy, a tournament to determine the best TV show that died of view lonliness or was buried alive under an avalanche of network notes.

Shows are grouped into four brackets of 18 shows. Each day will present four match-ups, from which you will choose the best show in each match-up (or abstain if you so choose). Voting is open for 48 hours from the time the match-ups are posted. There'll be new match-ups every weekday.

Today, the "play-in" games from the other two brackets.

From the Co-Ed Fever bracket:

(15) Now and Again v. (18) When Things Were Rotten

Now and Again is your average story about a guy who is killed in a subway accident, but has his brain put into a body the government created for espionage work. The government hasn't been able to build a brain for the body (there's a metaphor in there somewhere), and haven't completely reformatted the one they have, as the newly-brained agent finds himself longing for a home he never lived in.

Pretty good cast here, with John Goodman playing brain donor Michael Wiseman, Dennis Haysbert as the government scientist in charge of the program, and Eric Close as the new and improved Michael Wiseman.

This was another attempt by CBS to shed it fogey image, and another one that didn't stick. CBS cited the cost of the show as the main reason for dumping it after 22 episodes in the 1999-2000 season. Those three Saturn Awards apparently meant nothing.

Plenty of clips from the show to be found here.

When Things Were Rotten is best thought of as a very early version of Robin Hood: Men in Tights. Almost 20 years before that film, Brooks recast the Robin Hood story as the triumph of the dim over the slightly more dim, with the usual assortment of Brooks' trademark humor.

The cast included some very familiar TV names, such as Dick Van Patten as Friar Tuck and Bernie Kopell as Alan-a-Dale. Throw in Dick Gaultier as Robin and you can see a bit of Get Smart in the show, too.

Critics enjoyed the show, but it was a little too different for TV audiences, who never quite tuned in. It probably didn't help that it aired opposite Little House on the Prairie. ABC stuck with the show for 13 episodes in 1975 before sending it off to the dungeon.

Not much by way of video out there, but perhaps the opening credits will give you a taste of what the show was about.


(16) Maximum Bob v. (17) Upright Citizen's Brigade

Maximum Bob was based on the Elmore Leonard novel of the same name. Beau Bridges played "Maximum Bob" Gibbs, a judge in Deepwater, Florida, whose heavy sentences for minor infractions (such as the death penalty for drinking in public) served to highlight the strangeness of everyone else, from his wife (a former water attraction mermaid turned channeler) to the swamp-living, possibly inbred Crowe family.

About the only sane person in the bunch was defense attorney Kathy Baker, who stayed on in Deepwater to both protect people from Gibbs and help put deserving criminals behind bars.

A summer series for ABC in 1998, they declined to pick it up after a 7 episode run that won critical acclaim but few viewers, even though it aired in NYPD Blue's regular time slot.

Can't find video for this, which is odd. It seems like the kind of show that would be out there.

The Upright Citizen's Brigade started out as a Chicago-based improv troupe, and on the way to going national they got their own show on Comedy Central. Styled as a group dedicated to creating and supporting chaos, the UCB would go into action any time it detected high levels of normalcy.

Each episode rotated around a theme, and every episode in a season mentioned something that would become the focus of the season's final episode (for example, the second season finale was a mockumentary about a drug called supercool). Episodes also featured cast members interacting with real people, such as the UCBer who tried to get a convenience store clerk to post a flier about baby fights.

Interestingly for a show that didn't trade in pop culture references or impressions, cast member Amy Poehler would go on to a show that seems to only trade in them, Saturday Night Live.

The show had three ten-episode seasons on Comedy Central. Apparently a fourth season would have prevented the network from showing PCU five times a day.

Plenty of video available, and to mix it up you can see clips here.

From the Public Morals bracket:

(15) Keen Eddie v. (18) Miss Guided

Keen Eddie was a fish out of water police drama starring Mark Valley as Eddie Arlette, a NYPD detective who goes to London to work with Scotland Yard to bust a drug ring and accepts an offer to keep working for them. He is partnered with Monty Pippin, whose variety of sexual misadventures become a focal point of their partnership.

Eddie also has to deal with a surprise roommate, Fiona Bickerton (Sienna Miller). Fiona is living in the flat that Eddie rented from her parents while pretending to go to university. They strike an uneasy truce, which slowly became more of a friendship as the season progressed.

Originally intended as a midseason replacement, it was bumped back to run in the summer of 2003 on Fox. The delays, combined with the horrific lead-in of American Juniors, led to the show's cancellation, with the last few of the show's 13 episodes airing on Bravo.

You can watch clips of Keen Eddie here.

Miss Guided was the latest show to walk in the footsteps of Welcome Back, Kotter, with Judy Greer playing guidance counselor Becky Freeley. She returns to work at her alma mater, Glen Ellen High School, only to find that the faculty now includes Lisa Germaine (Brooke Burns), a former classmate who is as attractive and popular now as she was in high school. Both have their sights set on Spanish teacher Tim O'Malley, who seems oblivious to the struggle. The stand-out in the supporting cast is Chris Parnell, who plays the clueless - and slightly creepy - Vice Principal Bruce Terry.

The show came from Ashton Kutcher's studio, explaining his appearance as a subsitute teacher and Rumer Willis' bit part as a student.

The show premiered after an episode of Dancing With the Stars, but after moving to its regular Thursday timeslot (where it ran back-to-back episodes), ratings tanked, leading ABC to cap things at seven episodes and not renew it for 2008-09.

Clips for the show to be found here.

(16) The Slap Maxwell Story v. (17) Call to Glory

The Slap Maxwell Story is pretty well described by its opening credits. In them, we'd see Slap get, well, slapped, by someone who has taken offense at something he wrote, said or did. A sports writer whose best days were behind him, Maxwell would spice his columns will all sorts of rumors and unprovable claims, whose seriousness never seemed to quite get him fired for good.

His working persona was not that far off from his private one, as Slap was pretty much insensitive to everyone, most notably his ex-wife, Annie, who you think wouldn't have to put up with it any more. Slap did have a kind-of relationship with his newspaper's secretary, which was on or off depending on how much of a jackass he'd been.

Slap was the sort of character who could only be played by Dabney Coleman, who has made a career of playing cantankerous louts. And, as in pretty much every case where he's done so, the viewers didn't quite see what the critics were raving about. The show put in a 22 episode season in 1987-88 for ABC.

This clip gives you a taste of Slap's charming personality.

Call to Glory set the tone for The Wonder Years and pretty much all of NBC's '60s nostalgia programming with its combination of topicality and period music. Craig T. Nelson plays Colonel Raynor Sarnac, an Air Force pilot whose professional and family lives intersect with many of the historic highlights of the decade.

As forward-thinking as the show's concept was, and as successful as it would be for others, the show may have tried a little too hard to cover all the highlights. ABC had high hopes for this show in the 1984-85 season, but it only lasted 19 episodes.

The only clips of Call to Glory I could find were on YouTube, and had little to do with the show (one was a clip of a SR-71 Blackbird, the other actual footage of JFK's funeral that was used in an episode).