Posts by Gino Sassani

Baby here again. Yeah, I'm that German Shepherd Chow that keeps you UPS/Fed Ex guys on their toes. I just turned 15 at Christmas, and everyone around here keeps calling me an old dog. Apparently that means I can't learn new tricks, and maybe it's time for me to retire. I'll tell you what. Just come around here when everyone else is sleeping, and I'll show you a few new tricks I bet you haven't seen before. And that spells T E E T H. And as for retiring? Not sure what that means, except that I'm not tired to begin with.

Bailey Daily (Christensen) rushes to a closed diner in the pouring rain. She’s wearing a soaked wedding gown and has three dogs in tow. For the record, there’s not a German Shepherd in the bunch. The couple who own the diner decide to let her in, because they figure there must be a great story behind that image. Boy, were they wrong. What we get is a reenactment of how she dated and dumped three guys only to end up with their dogs. The last one she left at the altar, which explains the wedding dress. Looks like she got the better end of those relationship deals. We get the bad end of the deal, because we have to listen to those stories which are played out in sappy drama and poor acting.

“They called us Pilgrims, but today we are thieves. We trust in God’s design. Our faith helps us to cross an ocean. Faith and a contract with strangers, The Merchant Adventure Company, without whose support we could not afford the journey…. 102 passangers arrived in the New World, guided by the Lord. But there were some things God neglected to mention.” 

Everyone knows the good ship Mayflower. We all know who the pilgrims were. Every November school children all over America reenact the first Thanksgiving in pageants more myth than history. We can hardly expect anything more from a Hollywood production on the events surrounding those events. If you’re not looking for an historical lesson, this will be an interesting and somewhat entertaining take on the material.

"He's back. The Sarge is back."

But not for long. Phil Silvers was aptly named. If anyone in show business had a silver tongue, it was Phil. He started, like most comedians of the era, in Burlesque and Vaudeville. There he honed the natural talent that would make him one of the first true television stars in the industry. With The Phil Silvers Show he introduced us to the character of Sergeant Bilko. From 1955 to 1959 Silvers and his Bilko character would take the television landscape by storm. In 1956 the show became the very first series in television history to win three Emmy Awards in a single year. That year the wins came in the Best Comedy Series, Best Actor (Silvers) and Best Director. The last honor went to the show's creator, Nat Hiken. 

"Baby, if you've ever wondered, wondered whatever became of me, I'm living on the air in Cincinnati,
Cincinnati, WKRP. "

It almost sounds like a take on Harry Chapin's WOLD, and in many ways it is. The song was hot for a while on radio stations. It seems that DJ's couldn't resist songs about DJ's. Who saw that coming? Of course, the song is the opening theme to WKRP In Cincinnati. The show is back on DVD thanks to the folks at Shout Factory. If that's not big news, this absolutely is: it's back with most of the original music intact including the opening and closing themes. For fans of the show, it's the news we've been waiting for for decades now.

“No war was ever like this.” 

McHale’s Navy actually started life as a dramatic episode of Alcoa Premiere, hosted by Fred Astaire. It was April of 1962 when Ernest Borgnine would introduce the audience to his most famous television role. The network loved the character but not the show’s format. By October of the same year the television series would debut not as a serious drama but a half-hour comedy. Who knows how a dramatic series would have performed? The comedy became a classic. People couldn’t get enough of the stuff, and two movie versions were produced during the show’s four-season run. These films have been collected here on a single DVD release.

"Most women like a man with a bad reputation. Mind you, I'm not really bad. It's just I'm not troubled by my wicked thoughts. In fact I rather enjoy them. It's all perfectly natural. Man may have evolved from the trees, but his eyes still swing from limb to limb."

Years before he became the iconic suave British secret agent with the license to kill, Roger Moore might just have put himself in the running through his six-year run on British television’s The Saint. The show was part of the British Invasion of spy shows that came close on the heels of the first James Bond film Dr. No. Moore played Simon Templar, known throughout the globe as The Saint. While Templar wasn't really a spy, he acted like one most of the time, and the series managed to cover most of the conventions of the genre. There was always a pretty girl or two for Templar to either romance or rescue...often both. Like Bond, Templar was a globetrotter. Episodes took place all over the world. One episode might be in New York City, another in London, while the next two weeks took us from Rome to Paris by way of Monte Carlo.

"And then there's Maude."

In football there's always a lot of talk about coaching trees. You know the idea. Some great mastermind who saw his assistants go on to have success of their own and who passed that lucky charm down to others for, perhaps, generations. All In The Family would be the television equivalent to a coach with a long tree. There were an incredible number of spinoffs that lead to other spinoffs. Archie's neighbors The Jeffersons moved on up to the East Side and had their own several years of success. That show saw maid Florence had her spinoff from that show called Checking In. Meanwhile Archie's daughter had her Gloria series, and after Edith's death Archie settled into Archie Bunker's Place. Even the Bunker home had a spinoff called 704 Houser Street when a new family moved in.