I Watched (Nearly) Every Post-Super Bowl Show Part II: The 1980s!

Hello!  Welcome to Part 2 of my series on the chronological history of the Super Bowl lead-out program.  If you missed Part 1, covering the 60’s and 70’s, you can read it here.

A lot of 80’s television is a total mystery to me.

I started paying attention to then-current TV in the mid-to-late 90’s, and the classic reruns playing in my household were still very much of the 50’s and 60’s ilk (“I Love Lucy”, “The Brady Bunch”, that sort of thing).  Not a lot of 80’s stuff going on, both too recent to be classic, but too far away to be current.  It’s just not really in my wheelhouse much.

I mention this so that it won’t surprise you much that, of the ten Super Bowl lead-out programs of the 1980’s, only one was a show I had ever seen a second of (discounting nonfiction fare like “60 Minutes”).  In my defense, though, a few of these are from shows I bet you’ve never seen a second of, either.  Unless you happen to be a big fan of “MacGruder and Loud”?  Or “The Last Precinct”?

Yeah, I’m here to tell you now: the episodes that aired after the Super Bowl from 1980 to 1989 are, for the most part, pretty dire stuff. We are firmly in the era of networks entering an arms race to showcase the Next Big Show. For the most part, they…don’t become the next big show. I know 80’s television is held in high regard by many, so you’ll have to forgive my dumb millennial transgressions, but the vast majority of the following ten episodes left me extremely cold.  Well, except for one or two exceptions, one of them being one of the best pilots ever made.  Who’da thunk?

But first, let’s watch a little news…

SUPER BOWL XIV

 Show: 60 Minutes

Episode: “Bette Davis/Thunderbirds/PDAP”

Aired: January 20, 1980

Network: CBS

By sheer happenstance, I was able to track down an essentially fully intact version of this episode (with commercials!) thanks to the “Museum of Classic Chicago Television” YouTube channel.  And you know what?  Not only was it a delight, but it also felt like the perfect artifact of the year 1980.

We open with an extended interview between Bette Davis and Mike Wallace which, frankly, has chronologically been my favorite thing I’ve seen so far in this project.  There’s a lot of talk nowadays about bravery and integrity in journalism.  And, look, asking questions in the White House media scrum knowing there’s an 80% chance the President is going to yell at you and a 95% chance that ding-dongs on the Internet will send you death threats is its own form of bravery.  But I’ve never seen anyone have the balls Wallace has here when he states as bluntly as possible to Davis, “You must admit that you were difficult [on set], Bette.”  I want to shit my pants just thinking about doing that, and here’s Mike just casually dropping it like he’s asking how she likes her steak cooked.  Oh, he then quickly clarifies he meant she was “impossible”.  Naturally, Bette gives it back as well as she takes: “only when it was a stupid director, then it was self-preservation.”  They don’t make any of this like they used to!

The second segment is about the US Air Force Thunderbirds, the demonstration squad that’s been dazzling audiences with air shows for decades.  The story itself is mostly notable for Harry Reasoner getting strapped into one of the planes and taken for a ride, but the framing of it is interesting.  Reasoner opens the piece by lamenting the loss of heroes in today’s society, of things to be proud of.  In no uncertain terms, he clarifies how deflating the 70’s were to the idea of “heroes” and looks to the 80’s for rehabilitation.  Whether you agree with the outcome or not, this feels like a real exposed nerve that the incoming Reagan years attempted to cover.  It also unfortunately feels coldly familiar.

The final, and main, segment is a Dan Rather piece about the Palmer Drug Abuse Program (PDAP), at the time heavily lauded by Carol Burnett’s daughter.  More than that, it’s a look at/take down of its founder Bob Meehan.  Now, people’s feelings on the guy clearly varied then, and they clearly varied now, so I’ll let you decide whether Meehan was a messiah or a cult leader (I personally felt like he’s very obviously the latter from the second I laid eyes on him, and that was before he gave several extremely bad answers regarding PDAP’s success rate and finances), but I will tell you my favorite detail.  It was the revelation of PDAP’s reluctance to let its participants out to see concerts, with the sole exception appearing to be a lousy band called Freeway; three guesses who the lead singer and drummer is.

It all ends with a brief Andy Rooney piece, which was football-related and frankly more coherent than countless parodies of Rooney would lead you to believe, and viewer mail.  All in all, I loved watching this piece of 45(!) year old snapshot of America.  Should this become a retro “60 Minutes” site?  Reply in the comments below!

SUPER BOWL XV

Show: “CHiPs”

Episode: “11-99: Officer Needs Help” (Season 4, Episode 11)

Aired: January 25, 1981

Network: NBC

I don’t know that I get “CHiPs.”

Admittedly, “11-99: Officer Needs Help” is the only episode I’ve seen out of its entire six-season run, thus I can’t speak to how representative it is to the “CHiPs” as a whole.  All I can say is that it is way lower-stakes than I was really expecting.  The main conflict feels like something the Hardy Boys could have taken care of: a warehouse worker schemes with some criminals to steal a bunch of stereos, and it’s up to the California Highway Patrol to retrieve them!  The mystery of “who’s the inside man” isn’t super compelling; we know from the first scene, and Ponch figures it out almost casually.  There’s a novelty at play with several clearly-on-location shoots on Los Angeles highways.  The episode itself isn’t even all that bad; it moves along, and there’s some timely themes regarding the use of technology vs. trusting human instinct.

But…I can’t quite figure out why “CHiPs” was such a phenomenon.   Obviously, it was huge enough to make Erik Estrada a household name, at least for a while.  But I thought he and his co-star Larry Wilcox were just okay.  Their chemistry together is present, but absolutely nothing special.  The only storyline I found myself engaged with was the rookie dispatcher, who keeps tumbling over her codes and APBs.  It’s such a weird choice (as is the eventual revelation as to why she’s so nervous) that I was forced to respect it.

Otherwise, meh.  Cool theme song, though!  Maybe that’s why everyone liked “CHiPs”!  “Dah dah dah DAH dot da DA DAAAA!”

SUPER BOWL XVI

Show: “60 Minutes”

Aired: January 24, 1982

Network: CBS

Despite finding the previous post-Super Bowl 60 Minutes episode, I couldn’t even determine with confidence what segments even aired this night.  The best guess I have comes from the New York Public Library, which has a page listing all CBS News programs in the 80’s.  On January 24, 1982, a show aired with the following segments: “The Best in the West/What the General Knew/Thunderbirds”.  The three segment format alone fairly obviously makes this a 60 Minutes episode, but what sealed the deal for me was the “Thunderbirds” segment, which we just reviewed a couple of minutes ago.  Guess CBS figured shooting Harry Reasoner into the sky was too good not to rerun.

Beyond that, I haven’t a clue what this may have been about!  Were I to venture a guess in regards to the other two, I presume “The Best in the West” is about the shopping mall in Las Vegas, and as far as “What the General Knew”, it would be the power of hawking cheap car insurance with Shaquille O’Neal.

SUPER BOWL XVII

Show: “The A-Team”

Episode: “Children of Jamestown” (Season 1, Episode 2)

Aired: January 30, 1983

Network: NBC

Okay, now this I get.

First, a note of clarification.  Contrary to some lists/articles floating around out there, the pilot for “The A-Team” did not air after Super Bowl XVII.  The pilot, “Mexican Slayride”, aired the week before.  “Children on Jamestown” is the second episode, and already changes are afoot: Tim Dunigan is replaced by Dirk Benedict as “Face”, where he would stay until the series’ conclusion.  I have no real insight into the scheduling, but putting episode two of something after the Super Bowl feels like a major power move.  “We know you’re going to love this show so much right off the bat, we don’t need a big event episode!”

Well, clearly it was a correct call.  I knew “The A-Team” mostly through countless parodies, as well as that classic theme song.  Of course, I knew this is where Mr. T started solidifying himself as an icon*.  But I had never actually seen an episode.

*Although I only recently figured out that “I pity the fool” is not from “The A-Team”.  It is, in fact, from ROCKY III.

And, look…it’s for the most part deeply silly.  I’m not even sure the premise makes all that much sense; if the idea is they have to stay off the grid to avoid the law, how is that reconciled against taking on mercenary missions where you fire rocket launchers everywhere?  How incognito can you be when one of your four members looks like Clubber Lang?  But, it’s undeniably fun.  The chemistry between the four is infectious, and all the different personalities shine through.  George Peppard in particular is able to somehow make Hannibal, a guy who on paper is too cool-for-school (he treats every gun pointed to his head as a minor annoyance), feel like an actual leader.  The whole runner about trying to get his boots back is great!

They even manage to make their sudden turns into seriousness feel somewhat realistic, such as when they all tell reporter Amy Allen (Melinda Cullea) to start accepting death so that she’s no longer scared of the mission ahead.  These are all Vietnam veterans after all, and they’ve all seen some serious stuff (I genuinely wonder how many TV shows before this featured Vietnam vets at their center).  Throw in John Saxon as a sunglasses-wearing head of a religious cult, and you got yourself a really fun hour!  A-Team?  More like A+Team!

SUPER BOWL XVIII

Show: “Airwolf”

Episode: “Shadow of the Hawke” (Season 1, Episode 1)

Aired: January 22, 1984

Network: CBS

“Damn you.”

“Too late.  God already did.”

• An actual exchange from the pilot episode of “Airwolf”

So if I thought I didn’t get “CHiPs”, I really, really didn’t get “Airwolf”, to the point where I actually had to browse Reddit to get an understanding as to why this was a hit in its day.  The cast is a bizarre hodgepodge of people you would never think to even see in the same building, let alone share a scene, up to and including our two male leads Jan-Michael Vincent and…Ernest Borgnine!  David Hemmings plays the villain, which adds some weird legitimacy to the whole thing, but also…what?  Also, it’s very clear that the real main character is the titular helicopter, but we don’t see much of it in this inaugural episode outside of a sequence in the beginning and end.  We learn midway through that Vincent’s character (Stringfellow Hawke) plays the cello.  I think this is meant to be serious.

In its defense, the two-hour pilot is one of those “movies that establish the premise” kind of deals (ie. not likely to be indicative of what the show was like week-to-week).  I assume once “Airwolf” is able to revert to “mission-of-the-week” stuff, more specific character dynamics can begin to set in.  But, clearly, America saw enough in this initial outing that the show ran for three more years (including a fourth season with an entirely different cast, only made to hit the required number of episodes to qualify for syndication).

For me, I found myself frequently puzzled and borderline-bored by “Shadow of the Hawke”, in which Hawke agrees to recover the stolen Airwolf helicopter for “The Firm” in exchange for information on his missing brother.  It doesn’t help that I don’t quite get Vincent himself, either.  I found him an unengaging lead, although he wasn’t alone in that regard.  The whole enterprise was too sullen and self-serious for me.  I got a major boost of energy when Borgnine showed up, if only because his presence was the exact opposite of everything “Airwolf” had been for the first thirty minutes, and Hemmings helped throughout, but on the whole, I just didn’t warm up to it.

I suppose if you were a gearhead kid growing up, “Airwolf” would have hit like crack; the helicopter itself and the fight sequences it engages in are easily the highlight of the episode (and the most high production value thing I had seen in this project up to this point).  I think that, along with its sullen, almost cynical tone, is what drew people to the show initially.  It accurately reflected the era it was made in, no easy feat (Libya and Gaddafi are directly referenced by name several times).  But for me, the true highlight comes in the episode’s final moments, as Hawke tearfully plays the cello while staring off into the sunset.  As an eagle flies into frame, I wondered if maybe I’d been too hard on poor ‘Airwolf’. 

SUPER BOWL XIX

Show: “Macgruder and Loud”

Episode: “Pilot” (Season 1, Episode 1)

Aired: January 20, 1985

Network: ABC

ABC enters the chat!

This is another entry where the content is, if not fully and officially lost, at least impossible to find.  The opening 15 minutes of the pilot to “Macgruder and Loud” were uploaded twelve years ago on YouTube, but that’s about all that’s findable.  I presume the other 75 minutes or so were uploaded as part of a playlist back in 2012, but for whatever reason, they’ve been taken down.  It’s clearly floating around there somewhere, but I wasn’t able to secure it.

It’s likely for the best; the 15 minutes I was able to watch weren’t terrible.  It’s all competent to a degree.  But the premise feels…flimsy.  The gist to this Aaron Spelling Production is that Macgruder (John Getz) and Loud (Kathryn Harrold) are a married couple that both work as LAPD police officers.  Due to anti-fraternization policies, they must keep this a secret from their boss.  That appears to be about the long and short of it, although the first call we see them respond to is a domestic disturbance (see what happens when people get emotionally involved?).  There doesn’t seem to be a lot of juice here to propel it to a years-long run, and America appeared to agree.  “Macgruder and Loud” only made it to 15 episodes before reaching an annulment.  

Two final things about it: “Macgruder and Loud” was apparently pimped endlessly during the Super Bowl, which anecdotally led Johnny Carson to quip “Did you see that new show, “Frequent and Loud”?’ which, if true, is a venomous enough burn that you can forgive its lack of an actual pun.  Two, I suspect much of the show’s failure can be attributed to its all-timer clunky title.  “Macgruder and Loud.”  What is anybody supposed to make of a title like that?  Besides being sneakily unintuitive to say, it doesn’t really sound like a cop show.  Maybe a boring lawyer show?  Perhaps an Odd Couple-type comedy.  Of course, the show “Macgyver” would premiere a few months later and completely market correct the “Macg–” name, and that would be that.

SUPER BOWL XX

Show: “The Last Precinct”

Episode: “The Last Precinct” (Season 1, Episode 1)

Network: NBC

Aired: January 26, 1986

To quickly review the premise of “The Last Precinct”, a cop comedy that lasted only eight episodes before disappearing from the pop culture ether, there would be reason for optimism regarding its potential status as a “Brilliant But Canceled” artifact.  It’s a colorful cast of misfits who are all huddled under one less-than-desirable precinct, with a desire to be a POLICE ACADEMY-esque laugh-a-minute sitcom, with nerd culture beloveds like Ernie Hudson and Adam West amongst the cast.  I had actually been looking forward to this pilot for quite some time.

But, uh…”The Last Precinct” is not good.  Its main crime, sadly, is that it’s not funny at all.  It’s not even always clear what kind of humor it even wants to ride on.  The Mike Post-penned theme song relies on a maddening array of wacky sound effects, and the opening twenty minutes has a lot of juvenile “dumb noises and blonde bimbos” kind of stuff, so fine, I can accept it wallowing in the gutter to court teenage boys.  On the other hand, it also wants to be a complex comedy of errors, with people and things not being what they seem.  A big part of the pilot’s story revolves around a blind gangster’s dog being switched with a drug-sniffing dog, which is not the worst idea in the world.  But “The Last Precinct” is terrified that we won’t be able to keep up, so it frequently puts up text on the screen saying stuff like “this is the drug-sniffing dog, REMEMBER?” and it’s like, yeah man, you just switched two things, we’re not watching the fucking COURT JESTER here.

It’s often too lazy to even do a joke at all.  One of the misfit cops is a transgender woman*, which has to constitute some sort of first for network television.  You start looking at the year “The Last Precinct” was made, and you start getting nervous about the cheap shots the show will take at her.  Ah, but “cheap shots” would veer too closely into resembling “punchlines”.  It’s mostly satisfied to just point out that she used to be a man, then dusting off its hands and slinking away.  It does the same with the cop who is also an Elvis impersonator: outside of a couple of lines of dialogue that reference song titles, the main joke there is “he sings Elvis songs”.  Funny!

*That is to say, “from penis to vaginaaaaa”.

Adam West as the clueless commissioner, decades before finding a second life as a beloved voice actor on “The Simpsons” and “Family Guy”, is easily the best thing in the entire pilot.  Alas, he appears in only about three or four of the episode’s 75-minute runtime.  Yeah, that’s the other thing, the pilot is double-length which is too fucking long for something trying to be this manic.  The actual show was an hour, and it didn’t air a second episode until April, by which time I’m sure its goose was already cooked.  “The Last Precinct”?  Let’s hope so!

SUPER BOWL XXI

Show: “Hard Copy”

Episode: “Pilot” (Season 1, Episode 1)

Network: CBS

Aired: January 25, 1987

Another year, another too-long pilot for a show that fizzled out and was never heard from again.  “Hard Copy” (not to be confused with the syndicated shit-stirring tabloid show that first aired in 1989 and made Googling the 1987 CBS show a near-impossible task) barely made it into March before getting yanked from the schedule.

To “Hard Copy”’s kind-of credit, its central premise of “‘Hill Street Blues’, but for journalists” is a valid one, and it’s one of the only network dramas I’ve seen from the 80’s and 90’s to treat law enforcement as less than sacrosanct: reporters are directly calling out police commissioners to their faces for failing to properly follow up on obvious crimes.  Also noteworthy are its main trio of actors: Michael Murphy (who would go on to play the title role in TANNER ‘88), Wendy Crewson (who I mainly know as the buzzkill wife of Tim Allen in THE SANTA CLAUSE) and Dean Devlin (who would eventually find his groove as a high-level producer of things such as INDEPENDENCE DAY, GODZILLA and THE PATRIOT).

The real issue, besides (again) being too long of a pilot (72 minutes), is that all the acting feels very heightened; our lead actors are constantly declaring things LOUDLY.  It’s also just…kinda dull, with none of the distinct characters or crackling dialogue that would make the aforementioned “Hill Street Blues” or later hits like “NYPD Blue” and “Law & Order” such standouts.  It just doesn’t work.  On the other hand, it ends on a saxophone-scored freeze frame of Devlin about to crack open a beer.  I liked that part.

SUPER BOWL XXII

Show: “The Wonder Years”

Episode: “Pilot” (Season 1, Episode 1)

Network: ABC

Aired: January 31, 1988

After fizzling out with the “Macgruder and Loud” pilot after their inaugural Super Bowl broadcast, ABC followed it up three years later with one of the greatest pilots in television history.  Sometimes, it pays to just keep trying!

Although I wouldn’t claim to be an expert on its entire six-year run, “The Wonder Years” was nevertheless a seminal show for me when I was a kid, it being easily the most interesting and creative of the then-current Nick-at-Nite lineup.  Its appeal to me at the time is hard to explain, considering it’s a show drenched in nostalgia, both for the late-sixties/early-seventies as well as that fraught age of pre-teenagehood, neither of which I had enough context for to really look back on in any way just yet.  But the tone was so unique and warm and inviting (Daniel Stern’s narration was always so soothing to me), and the characters were so specific, yet universal: the emotionally unavailable father, the meathead older brother, the socially-conscious sister, the frazzled mother trying to hold everything together, the impossibly dorky friend, and in the middle of it all, the young man who’s realizing he’s changing: new school, new circumstances, new feelings for that girl across the street he hasn’t hung out with in awhile.

All of the above, by the way, is set up so efficiently in this first twenty-four minutes of “The Wonder Years”’ life, proving that you don’t need two fucking hours in order to hook a prime-time audience.  The pilot manages to be sweet, funny, sad, sometimes in the same scene.  It perfectly marries the time of turmoil inherent to being on the cusp of thirteen with the time of turmoil inherent to being on the cusp of the 1970’s (there’s a joke about the school changing its name to Robert Kennedy that is as honest as it is bleak).  The revelation of the fate of Winnie’s brother is so moving, and slightly scary.  The famous ending is perfectly wistful.  There’s essentially nothing I don’t like about this episode.  It’s difficult for me to know what else to say about it.  It speaks for itself.

Change is terrifying and hard.  The “Wonder Years” pilot is comforting and easy.  It’s perfect.

SUPER BOWL XXIII

Show: “The Brotherhood of the Rose”

Episode: “Part 1”

Network: NBC

Aired: January 22, 1989

We end the 80’s with a post-Super Bowl first: Part 1 of a mini-series!  It’s also the only time a network would do this, which is a shame.  The multi-part TV movie seems like an easy fit for the Super Bowl lead-out slot: there isn’t this push to maintain a show’s artificially juiced ratings, since you only need to keep momentum for another week or two before getting to move on.  I suspect “Brotherhood of the Rose” stands alone as a result of timing; in 1988, the post-Super Bowl slot had only recently become a place for event programming, and by the 90’s, the type of show that got awarded the time slot would change significantly.  Alas!

As for the first two hours of “Brotherhood of the Rose”, it’s not too bad.  It’s extremely dad-core, an espionage thriller/book adaptation starring Robert Mitchum, David Morse, and Peter Strauss.  Morse and Strauss play a pair of brothers who get scooped up from an orphanage by Mitchum to become elite assassins; when a mole infiltrates their network of spies, the two are paired against each other.  But, is Mitchum all he appears to be?  It feels tailor-made for the average Super Bowl viewer to accidentally leave on the TV and half-watch until going to bed.

It’s the kind of low-key movie where exposition is communicated by characters telling people things they already know (“you know how I picked you up from that orphanage!”).  And I gotta tell you, the score is ridiculous, carried mostly by a very silly horn melody that makes the whole movie seem a little cornier than it really is (it doesn’t help that they play it during every ad bumper, of which it feels like there’s a hundred of them).  But, it’s really not that bad and is at least entertaining.  And the production values are higher than you think, with a nice aerial stunt appearing near the end of this installment.  Whether I’d go back and watch Part 2 to see how the thing concludes…well, I haven’t as of this writing, but…I may!  We’ll see.