Category Archives: Boob Tubery

A Very Special Television Event, Boob Tubery

Gramps

This marks the launch of a new Scratchbomb series called A Very Special Television Event, where I take a look at forgotten boob tube content of yesteryear, focusing on TV movies, miniseries, short-lived series, and one-off specials.

One of my favorite leisure activities is watching compilations of old commercials. I believe there are very few activities that can give you a better sense of the flavor of a certain time than watching its advertising. Sure, someone who lived through that decade can give you their impressions of what the 1990s were like, but you will get a much clearer view of The Clinton Years by watching a collection of Must See TV promos and a buffet of ads telling you to dial 17 digits just to save money on long distance calls. (Seriously, if you were not alive then you have no idea how huge that industry was. How serious? They even got George Carlin!)

Not too long ago, I was viewing a commercial compilation from 1995 when I was stopped dead in my tracks by this teaser for a TV movie starring Andy Griffith as a sinister kidnapping grandfather. Now here was a perfect distillation of what TV in 1995 was all about.

The made-for-TV movie has been part of the boob tube landscape since the invention of the medium. In its early days, this was the platform for renowned screenwriters penning prestige work; Rod Serling’s Requiem for a Heavyweight and Paddy Chayevsky’s Marty both began their lives as teleplays prior to their Hollywood adaptations. This pedigree continued through the 1970s and 1980s, when TV movies were often the preferred format in which to discuss Serious Issues: child abuse, homosexuality, substance abuse, adult illiteracy, and similar fun topics. By the 1990s, however, TV movies had become a salacious format, leaning heavily on quickie adaptations of tabloid fodder (think “Homer S: Portrait of an Ass Grabber”) and other lurid fare, With its threatening premise (“what if your grandfather was a violent nut?”), Gramps looked like it was very much a TV movie of the 90s, and I decided I must watch it immediately.

Luckily we live in a world where no copyrights are honored (thanks, Sam Altman!), certainly not for 30+ year-old TV movies, and I found the entire thing free to watch on YouTube. I expected it to be something very much of its time, along with Pearl Jam, baggy jeans, Fruitopia drinks, and deindustrialization. What I got instead was a view of something timeless, or perhaps out of time, as something produced by an alien civilization might seem to mere humans.

Continue reading Gramps →
Boob Tubery

Amerika the P.U.-tiful

Once upon a time, great lumbering beasts roamed the media landscape, crushing everything in their path and scoring great returns during sweeps week. These beasts were known as miniseries, and in the 1980s they ruled television’s earth. Following the success of Roots in 1977, every network strove to catch lightning in a bottle again by spending a tremendous amount of money and programming time on televisual epics. These productions were typically aired on successive nights so that it was necessary for viewers to tune in to the same station for an entire week (or longer). Many miniseries were based on popular novels, or dramatized historical epochs (or both), and they were often touted as not only entertaining but Very Important.

In 1987, ABC took a gamble and broke from this formula, banking on a miniseries that was neither adapted nor historical, but instead set in a dystopian future. This had been successfully done before—V, a miniseries depicting an alien invasion of Earth, had been a huge hit for NBC years earlier—but ABC’s production opted for a nightmarish future that seemed a little more plausible. The miniseries was called Amerika. Its premise: What if the Soviet Union took over the USA?

This fear-mongering concept might seem a McCarthyite relic to the modern reader, but while US-Soviet relations had warmed somewhat by the time Amerika was in production (glasnost and perestroika had already entered the lexicon), a fear of communist subversion on our side of the Atlantic remained. In the wake of the leftist Sandinistas’ victory in Nicaragua in 1979, many right wingers insisted that nation could be used as HQ for fomenting communist revolutions throughout the hemisphere, or maybe even act as a beachhead for a future Russian invasion. Ronald Reagan made a nationally televised address in 1986 to warn his fellow Americans that Nicaragua was “only two hours’ flying time from our own borders” and that the Sandinistas would allow the Soviets to “become the dominant power in the crucial corridor between North and South America”, which is why the US needed to give the CIA-backed anti-communist Contra forces whatever aid they wanted. (And also why the US needed to fudge the question of who was the real threat to human rights in the region.)

Amerika generated immense controversy even before it aired. Liberal journals warned it would damage US-Soviet relations, and that appeared to be quite likely when Moscow threatened to retaliate by shutting down ABC’s Russian news bureau. The network aired a Nightline-style program addressing the uproar, hosted by Ted Koppel and featuring a live town hall forum. (The miniseries became so “serious” that of course David Letterman had to take multiple shots at its self importance.)

I was recently reminded of the existence of Amerika, and the memory brought back the fear young-me felt when it first aired. I did not watch the miniseries back then, but I did see commercials for it and was vaguely aware of the hubbub around it . The idea of Amerika scared me as a sub-10 year old because frightening the public was clearly the intent of its creators, as exemplified by this promo.

Having now watched Amerika, I can say there was nothing to fear from the miniseries apart from death by boredom—even minus commercials it runs an agonizing 12+ hours yet somehow feels twice as long. However, Amerika has certain perspectives on, for lack of a better word, Americans’ ideas of American-ness that may seem eerily familiar to the modern viewer.

Continue reading Amerika the P.U.-tiful →
Boob Tubery

This Season on “Complicated Antihero”

HBO’s critically acclaimed series COMPLICATED ANTIHERO returns for another season of gritty, uncompromising drama.

COMPLICATED ANTIHERO wakes up in a seedy motel room next to a stripper who is totally naked and nude but still asleep. The end table is strewn with empty fifths of Jack and overturned pill bottles. He sits up in bed and places his weary head in his heads while we hear Metallica’s cover of “Turn the Page.”

COMPLICATED ANTIHERO

You try to be a good man. But what is a good man? What is good? What is right and what is wrong? What is “is”? Does anything mean something anymore? Not from where I’m sitting.

CUT TO: COMPLICATED ANTIHERO pouring wet concrete down a snitch’s throat.

* * *

COMPLICATED ANTIHERO is at his EX-WIFE’s house. She smokes and looks on disapprovingly while he watches his  SON play with blocks. He has a look of paternal pride mixed with an immutable element of sadness and also wears a badass leather jacket.

EX-WIFE

You wanna be a father to him now, after all this time? You’re gonna teach him right from wrong? (sardonic laughter) You ain’t no father.

COMPLICATED ANTI-HERO

You think you know what a father is? You think anybody knows what a father is? You think anybody knows anything?

CUT TO: COMPLICATED ANTIHERO running over the mayor with a tank.

* * *

Police interrogation room. COMPLICATED ANTIHERO sits handcuffed to a desk and his face is a little beat up but not so much we can’t see his eyes still burn with righteous indignation over all the world’s injustice. His nemesis, DETECTIVE WISNIEWSKI, gets right in his face.

DETECTIVE WISNIEWSKI

You might beat this rap, scumbag, but mark my words, I will take you down if I have to do it all by myself. Because YOU represent everything that’s wrong with this world. We used to have RULES. We used to have RIGHT and WRONG. We used to have CLEARLY DEFINED BORDERS BETWEEN THINGS.

COMPLICATED ANTIHERO lets out a wan laugh.

COMPLICATED ANTIHERO

Did we?

CUT TO: COMPLICATED ANTIHERO whipping everyone in a subway car with a bike chain lit on fire.

* * *

COMPLICATED ANTIHERO sits in a confessional, his hands clasped in prayer and clutching a rosary.

COMPLICATED ANTIHERO

I used to have faith, Father. I used to believe in things like right and wrong. But I don’t see them in this world no more.

PRIEST

I wish I could tell you otherwise, my son. But I’m afraid I don’t see them in this world either.

A single tear runs down COMPLICATED ANTIHERO’s cheek, lit by the slightest hint of moonlight creeping through a latticed window. It also lights up his stubble and makes it look great.

CUT TO: COMPLICATED ANTIHERO forcing some dude to eat an anvil.

* * *

COMPLICATED ANTIHERO genuflects at his FATHER’s hospital bed. There’s tubes up his father’s nose  because he’s gonna die of some cancer thing.  COMPLICATED ANTIHERO grasps his father’s wizened hands in his own and chokes back the tears welling in his throat.

COMPLICATED ANTI-HERO

You never cared for me, Pop! You never taught me right from wrong! You never taught me nothin’!

DYING FATHER

I taught you the most important lesson of all, son. There ain’t no right and wrong in this world.

DOCTOR

So, let’s see how our patient is doing…

COMPLICATED ANTIHERO pistol-whips DOCTOR with crash cart.

* * *

 A dream sequence. COMPLICATED ANTIHERO watches helplessly as a bird pecks away at his hands, eating the flesh all the way to the bone. The bird flies away.

COMPLICATED ANTIHERO wakes up, in a different motel room next to a different totally naked nude stripper. He sits at the edge of the bed and rests his head in his hands.

COMPLICATED ANTIHERO

What does it mean? What does anything mean?

CUT TO: COMPLICATED ANTIHERO throwing a flaming school bus at an orphanage.