Actually I've been watching the first season on DVD.  Oliver was very idealistic about farmers and their down to earth qualities.  He didn't want to just hang out in the country, he actually wanted to farm.  And yeah Haney sold him a bum farm (he actually took out the furnishings already in the house and sold them…

Has any great show done as much harm as Seinfeld?  Being "about nothing" killed the concept sitcom, not having any life lessons killed off the Norman Lear-style "issue" sitcom, and that opening theme finished off old fashioned theme songs.

Or watched it on CBN, the ancestor of ABC Family.

Actually "Dark Shadows" was about the only soap opera of its time that wasn't broacast live.  Which is why there's very few episodes of 60s soap opera that survive (the most famous exception being the episode of "As The World Turns" interrupted by the JFK assasination.)

My Living Doll (starring Julie Newmar).

Instead of going on the convluted arguements this piece engages in we could use some far simpler arguements:
—Marsh/Christgau/Bangs are wildly overrated figures far better at making polemics than you know actually telling us how good the album is
—critics are not godlike figures, and always make mistakes
—they couldn't…

You do realize that English departments have only 180 days a year to cover an almost infinite amount of published literature?  Everybody in this thread acts like school literature departments have all the time and resources they need.  They're going to have to edit somewhere, and if one of the major purposes of…

Uh what's with all those sales on the GnR album?  I thought after that whole Lady Gaga/Amazon controversy that album selling at bargain basement prices didn't count.

This kind of commentary reminds of what Americans used to mock in the British rock press, times one thousand.  Remember when the NME or Melody Maker would slap somebody like Gay Dad on their cover or invent a new genre like "Romo"?  And how these acts would be outsold 10,000 to 1 by Take That?  Nobody actually buys or…

Now I'm desperately hoping for a kid's choir version of "Southern Man".

Trying to reply to Asianshoebox: did your family only have one TV?  If that was the case you kind of had to watch everything together.  I remember watching 3sCo/Dynasty/miniseries like "Lace" ("which one of you bitches is my mother?") with my mom back in the day, and now I seriously wonder how I could watch that with…

For that matter the blonde model on "eight is enough" was the one they tried to sell as the sex symbol, while today the long haired brunette (Elizabeth?) wins most people's votes in a landslide.  I wonder if that and the Jennifer/Bailey thing are related; shows in that day were so into the blonde thing they ignored…

Short answer is that after Norman Lear revolutionized TV comedy with All in the Family/Good Times/many others everybody though they could mix serious stuff with comedy every once in a while.  Hence the "very special episode" phenom.  The problem was very few sitcoms had the skills of Lear's creative team and created…

They also took the Frank Zappa (was too much of a self aware smartass) and Louise Lasser (too drugged out and stressed to do much) hosted episodes out of syndication.  Although I know the Lasser episode is on the season DVDs,

The infamous "Turn On" (a sex themed spin off of "Laugh In") supposedly got pulled halfway through its sole airing in 1969 on some affiliates, although nobody's got proof of that actually happening.  It definately was pulled by a West Coast affiliate or two due to its bad reception on the East Coast.

Wasn't the first hit TV show with an openly gay character Billy Crystal's role in "Soap" in 1977?  I remember "Hot L Baltimore" from 1975 had a gay male couple, and many people thought is was the reason that show was short lived.

Not a reality show, but there was a syndicated soap opera that ran for a few months in 1977, "All That Glitters", that was based on the idea of a society where only women were in power.

From what I understand, Uwe's movies actually do break even when you factor in DVD sales.  After all when you don't pay actors multimillions for the false notion that "big actors mean big box office" and budget very tightly, it's much easier to make a profit than you think.

It used to be common for decades for networks to air failed pilots during the dead time of summer. 

Paging I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners, and the Tonight Show With Johnny Carson…