pop cultured

Here’s one of my favorite Season 3 episodes of Happy Days. Richie and the gang want to buy tickets to a big football game. But the tickets are expensive so they come up with a plan to earn money fast by babysitting 15 kids on Mardi Gras night. They even come up with name for their venture: Camp Cunningham.

The kids turn out to be quiet a handful, especially the wild Booker Brown and an extremely obnoxious tyke named Miran.

When the kids get too out of control, Fonzie comes down to see what all the commotion is about. Realizing even he can’t control the unruly kids, Fonzie brings in his nephew Spike to take care of business.  This episode features another cameo by Laverne and Shirley (Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams).

Last night, the kids and I watched an old epsiode of Bewitched on OnDemand. We were treated to the bumbling antics of Aunt Clara. Remember her?

Actress Marion Lorne was best known for her portrayal of the scatterbrained Aunt Clara on the 1960’s television series, Bewitched. But Lorne started her career well before that,  with a successful stage career and a role on another  TV series, playing Mrs. Gurney on Mister Peepers (1952-53). She also showed up as herself on shows like “I’ve Got a Secret” and “Perry Como” and had a bit part in the Dustin Hoffman classic The Graduate. Worth noting is the fact that Lorne was over 60 years old when she made her movie debut (in Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train), although she performed on stage throughout her life

Lorne died in 1968, in the midst of her stint as Aunt Clara. She was due to receive and Emmy for her work on Bewitched, but died just 10 days before the ceremony.  Clara’s absence was never explained on the series. Still, viewers remember Marion Lorne warmly as the lovable Aunt Clara, Samantha Stephens’ favorite aunt.

I’ve said many times that My So Called Life was one of the most underrated television shows of all time. I caught it when it gained a cult following on MTV, after being canceled by ABC after only one season. The 19 first season episodes replayed for years on MTV and The N network. “Other People’s Mothers” was one of the series’ finest episodes.

Like most 15 year olds, Angela Chase (Clare Danes) doesn’t always appreciate her mother, Patty (Bess Armstrong). When her mother gets stressed out trying to plan an anniversary party for Angela’s grandparents, Angela says she’d rather go to her friend Rayanne’s house.  Of course Rayanne’s mom, Amber, is much “cooler” than Angela’s stuffy parents– she reads tarot cards and drinks margaritas in the middle of the day. Amber even lets Rayanne drink beer.

After an argument with her mom, Angela goes to Rayanne’s party, skipping  her grandparent’s anniversary party.

Rayanne’s party turns out to be  a nightmare. When Rayanne overdoses on a mixture of alcohol and pills, Angela calls her own mother in the midst of the grandparent’s shindig. Angela sees another side of her both her mother and Rayanne’s mother and realizes that she may actually be lucky.

Here is another  funny episode from season 3 of Happy Days. After Potsie (Anson Williams) sings a song to Joanie (Eric Moran) she develops a major crush on him.  Joanie goes to Fonzie for advice, not naming who her secret crush is.

There‘s a funny dream sequence where Joanie dreams that Potsie is the coolest and Fonzie is…well, a nerd.  Joanie begins sending Potsie love notes and gifts, calling him the nickname “Dren” (which is “nerd” spelled backwards). When it’s time for a secret meeting, Potsie is disappointed when he finds out that that the mystery lady is Joanie, who he sees as just a kid! But seeing that he’s hurt Joanie’s feelings, he lets her down gently.

I was just the right age when Fonzie, from the TV show Happy Days, was considered to be cool. I was in the sixth grade and Fonzie-mania was everywhere– even the most popular couple in school walked hand in hand with their matching “Aaaaaay Fonz” t-shirts.

So in the midst of Fonzie mania, circa the mid-1970’s, Happy Days was a Tuesday night staple. I sometimes watched Laverne and Shirley afterwards, but Happy Days was my favorite.The episode “A Date With Fonzie” from season 3 of the series introduced viewers to Laverne and Shirley.

Richie (Ron Howard) is in a major dating slump, so Fonzie (Henry Winkler) decides to help him out by showing him his best tips for getting girls. After a very funny scene in the grocery store, Fonzie decides to take drastic measures and sets Richie up on a double date. Richie’s date ends up being with Shirley (Cindy Williams) and the episode ends with Richie’s family interrupting the date.

Season 3 of Happy Days provided some of the series’ best writing for sure. I’ll recap other episodes from this season over the next few weeks.

Here’s a classic I Love Lucy episode, from 1952. In “The Freezer”, Lucy and Ethel get a second hand walk-in freezer and decide to stock it with a bulk order of beef to save money. They unwittingly order 2 sides of beef, not realizing that that amounts to 700 pounds of meat! The butcher won’t let them return any of the beef, so the girls head down to the local met shop and try to finagle some deals with the customers. They promptly get kicked out of the butcher shop.

In the end, the girls get home and have to hide all the meat from their husbands .  Lucy attempts to store the meat in the broken furnace and she accidently gets locked in the freezer. Later, when Ethel and Ricky find her, she’s a “human popscicle”. Worse yet. Fred has fixed the broken furnace and lights it so Lucy tells them  all to “grab a knife, a fork and a bottle of ketchup and follow me to the biggest barbecue in the whole world!”

This Mary Tyler Moore episode from 1973 is one of my favorite sitcom episodes ever. Mary, known for her disastrous dinner parties,  is hosting a dinner party for the distinguished Congresswoman Geddes (Irene Tedrow) .  Mary asks Sue Ann (Betty White) to help her make the main course. Sue Ann makes it for her—6 servings of veal Orloff.

But when the guests arrive—including her friend Rhoda, who brings an unexpected date, and the uninvited arrival of newsman Ted Baxter- Mary panics.

The best part? Mary’s boss Lou Grant (Ed Asner) helps himself to a huge serving of the veal—3 portions worth. After a mortified Mary whispers to him that he took half the food and she doesn’t have enough for the rest of the guests, Lou hesitantly puts some of the veal back on the platter, saying “I guess I wasn’t as hungry as I thought”.

Lucille Ball was most commonly known as that “wacky redhead”, but she actually had some blonde moments as well.

 Lucille started her career as hat model and later as a glamorous Goldwyn girl and was known for her beautiful hair, often dying her naturally brunette hair to platinum blonde. Her trademark red hair came years later and yes, it was a dye job.

And behind the scenes, Lucille was anything but wacky. She was one of the most powerful women in television and definitely a force to be reckoned with. While she was best known as the accident prone housewife on  the 1950’s sitcom “I Love Lucy”, Ball actually had a long and successful career in the movies  for  2 decades before that, co- starring with actors like Bob Hope and William Holden .

She died in 1989, but make no mistake about it: Lucille Ball was a legend even in her own time. 

Anyone who grew up in the 70’s and watched PBS has got to remember this one: Ubbi Dubbi, the language from the “Zoom” show. Each episode, Zoom would feature a segment of kids speaking in this mysterious language.

I could never get Ubbi Dubbi right, although the instructions aren’t all that hard. To speak Ubbi Dubbi, you have to say ”ub” before each vowel sound in a  word. For example, “pop cultured” would be “pubop cubultubured” in Ubbi Dubbi.

I always had a hard time trying to speak Ubbi Dubbi. But thanks to the internet, the kids today have it much easier. The Zoom website at PBSkids.org actually has an Ubbi Dubbi translator!

You’d have to be at least in your mid-40’s to even remember this show. My World and Welcome To It was a very short-lived television series, airing for only one season in 1969-70. The show featured a unique (at the time) blend of live action and animation.

Starring William Windom as John Monroe, a cartoonist who lives through his animated daydreams, the series was actually based on the cartoons of New Yorker cartoonist James Thurber. Joan Hotchkis played his wife and Lisa Gerritsen (Mary Tyler Moore Show and Phyllis) played their precocious daughter, Lydia.

Even though My World and Welcome To It won 2  Emmy awards (including Outstanding Comedy Series) , it was axed after the first season. The show aired in reruns in 1974- which is how I probably remember it.