Both "Nightshift" and "Missing You" are Marvin Gaye tributes, though "Nightshift" also salutes Jackie Wilson.

I think Madonna's exclusion more reflected the music-industry conventional wisdom that she was a gimmicky flash in the pan while Lauper had a long, varied career ahead of her.

True, though they both wrote #1 songs that were performed by others like "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "Blinded by the Light."

A lot of those HBO films get forgotten, but it was very funny and he was so likable even amidst the greed. This scene is priceless when as CEO of RJR Nabisco, he learns that the company's huge investment in smokeless cigarettes will be a bust (some NSFW language).

There are good arguments both ways given that the script has Senator Geary intentionally mispronouncing "Corleone" and later mocking Michael about it.

I worked at a movie theater one summer where we occasionally would have celebrity patrons. Weird Al was the only one who ever bought his ticket like regular folks.

They portrayed it as a modern, teenage "Laverne and Shirley" right down to the show-destroying tension between the two leads.

Yep, ignoring the various Allan Melvin characters was like failing to mention a 600-pound Magilla Gorilla in the room.

I love how he describes a defense pact with the postwar British as akin to "Goin' into business with someone who's closin' up shop all over the world."

There are no letters that can encapsulate the way he pronounces the last word in "Well, Sheriff, how are you?"

Though the premise is a little dodgy, the "Stranger in Town" episode seems to reflect Andy Griffith's ambivalent feelings on small-town life. Andy literally stands up to Mayberry's version of an angry mob to lecture them about their suspicion of outsiders and those who act a little differently.

And no respect for "Sam Hall?" Damn your eyes!

"If you can keep your head when all around you are…." BLAM!

According to Wikipedia, Bikel actually is in Mensa, which is not hard to believe if you've ever seen him on a talk show or live.

As a Yankee fan, the best part of that exchange was Larry David as Steinbrenner blaming the Phelps/Buhner deal on bad advice from his "baseball people."

HBO, with John Frankenheimer directing, made "Path to War," which documented how LBJ plunged us deeper and deeper into Vietnam despite his personal ambivalence toward the stated objectives there.

"The Verdict Was Mail Fraud" strikes me as a noirish "Double Indemnity" knockoff, but since Raymond Chandler already covered murder, I see Troy as a Fred MacMurray type character getting hooked into a chain-letter scheme by the alluring Dolores Montenegro.

For the last few years, CBS just kept "Trapper John" on the air so they'd still be able to use Gregory Harrison on "Battle of the Network Stars."

Yes! Ian Wolfe was also brilliant in one of the great "Taxi" scenes. Hearing his long-estranged father is in the hospital, Alex goes to visit him. Seeing Ian Wolfe lying in bed, Alex is taken aback by how much his father has aged, but it had been a while, etc.

And Flo's daddy on "Alice" and her short-lived spinoff, though he probably made more money writing "Joy to the World," and, perhaps, "The No No Song."