Z: Zoom

 ZONKS! I can't believe it! We have now reached...

Zoom

Once again, I had to choose something I never saw, even though I was in the target age range for the particular show. This is not the first time I mentioned this on my blog, however. 

Years before Zoom was a virtual meeting app that became dominant as a result of the pandemic shutdown, Zoom was a series for children on PBS. Originally it aired from 1972 to 1978, and was remade in 1999. When the shutdown began and people began using the app for schoolwork and meetings with co-workers, memes on Facebook came up about the series from the 1970s. I looked up the Zoom series as a result. 

Zoom presented children with recipes, plays, jokes, games, songs, movies, science experiments and informal chats suggested by viewers. There were no adults on screen, and the cast of children (identified only by their first names) would change every six months. Zoom was one of many PBS series produced by affiliate WGBH in Boston.

The intros to both versions of the show, as well as a full episode from Season 2 are below (click to see more here):

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Well, that's it for A to Z 2022. Hope you have enjoyed my posts. A Reflections post is coming on Monday. 

Y: Your Big Break

 

Your Big Break 

I have not bothered watching shows like American Idol and The Voice. But before those shows, there was this one that was syndicated from 1999 to 2001, which I watched quite regularly. This was also well after Star Search, which I recall watching sometimes, even if it wasn't my favorite. Your Big Break was on my local NBC affiliate on Saturday nights.

The show's gimmick was that the contestants were "Performing as" different music stars. Thus they are look-alikes and/or sound-alikes. Before performing, each contestant's life story was presented, ending with the host proclaiming, "This is your big break!" The first host was Christopher Reid (Kid of Kid n' Play) and the second  was Alfonso Ribeiro (formerly of Silver Spoons and The Fresh Prince of Bel Air). 

I selected a few sample clips below, to give readers the idea (those not already familiar with the show), from what I could find on Youtube:

X: Executive Suite

 

Executive Suite

 

Once again, I had to search for something I never saw as I was too little to have seen it. Since it was an hour-long show, I likely would not have been allowed to watch it, given my age at the time. Also, I had to cheat a little, since, as everyone knows, X is such a tricky letter. And no one's forgotten about The X-Files, right? Like the previously mentioned Quark, this show was mentioned recently after the passing of one of its cast members. Executive Suite was one of three short-lived series in the 1970s starring the late Mitchell Ryan (Dharma and Greg, Lethal Weapon). 

The series was on CBS in 1976-77, and was adapted from a 1954 movie of the same name that starred William Holden. It was an hour-long prime-time soap set at the Cardway Corporation in Los Angeles. Don Walling (Ryan) was the company president, and Howell Rutledge (Stephen Elliott) was the vice president and Walling's chief rival. The struggle between the two was the main plot. The remaining cast included family members of the two lead characters and other employees and board members of Cardway. It's a rather large cast, so click above to see the rest. The title makes it sound less like an hourlong drama and more like a work-place comedy.  

It was not surprising that I did not find any clips, but I did not find the opening theme either. The best I could find were these promos:

W: Who's Watching the Kids?

 

Who's Watching the Kids?

Believe it or not, the letter W was a hard one for this challenge. So I had to dig a little and perhaps mention something I never saw (but have read about in books on TV) or just barely saw. I then remembered seeing reruns of this short-lived sitcom from 1978 on TV Land in 1997. At that time, the still-new cable station was playing old shows that did not last long, and I happened to catch a few episodes of this one. Most likely I did not watch it the first time it was on, at least not that I can remember:) It only ran for three months in the fall of 1978. I'm not sure how many episodes I saw on TV Land, as only nine aired before the series was cancelled in December of 1978.

The show was created by Garry Marshall, and was a reworking of an earlier series, Blansky's Beauties starring Nancy Walker. Both shows were about Las Vegas showgirls, and shared some of the same cast members. Who's Watching the Kids?, however, emphasized the younger siblings of two showgirls. Showgirls Stacy Turner (Caren Kaye) and Angie Vitola (Lynda Goodfriend, later to play Lori Beth on Happy Days) shared an apartment, and both had younger siblings living with them: Stacy's sister Melissa (Tammy Lauren) and Angie's brother Frankie (Scott Baio, already known as Chachi on Happy Days). Also on hand were the girls' landlady Mitzi Logan (Marcia Lewis), Larry Parnell (Larry Breeding), a weather reporter next door who was assigned the task of watching the kids, and Bert Gunkel (Jim Belushi), Larry's cameraman, who also helped Larry keep an eye on Melissa and Frankie. Kids aired on NBC even though Blansky's Beauties had been on ABC.

Larry Breeding later starred on another short-lived series, The Last Resort. In 1982, he filmed a sitcom pilot called It's Not Easy, with Gerald McRaney. The new show was to begin that fall, pending the fate of McRaney's previous series, Simon and Simon. When that show was renewed at the last minute, It's Not Easy was put on hold until replacement for McRaney could be found. Breeding then died in a car accident in September 1982. His final appearance had been earlier that year on an episode of Laverne and Shirley. And for the record, It's Not Easy finally made it to the air in the fall of 1983 (with Ken Howard and Bert Convy replacing McRaney and Breeding, respectively), but was quickly cancelled. Its competition included Cheers on NBC and wait for it---Simon and Simon on CBS.

The series intro is below. Caren Kaye does not appear, as according the comments on this video, she was let go after a few episodes due to retooling. I have not been able to find the intro with her in it. Read the comments for more. It's a lot to explain here, and I can't seem to find anything on this on IMDb or Wikipedia, which you think would have explained this! 

V: Veronica's Closet

 

Veronica's Closet

 

I have actually talked about this show on my blog before. At that time, I had a flashback to this show, then found episodes on Daily Motion which have since been removed. Only a few people I know seem to remember this, one of the many work-place sitcoms that surfaced in the 1990s. This one ran from 1997 to 2000, and during its first year, was shown in the Thursday slot after Seinfeld (in its final season). But over next two seasons, the time slot was changed several times and in June of 2000 it was cancelled, leaving four episodes unaired. USA Network then reran the show, showing the previously unseen episodes in December of 2000. 

Four years after Cheers left the air, Kirstie Alley returned to TV as Veronica "Ronnie" Chase, recently divorced owner of a lingerie company called Veronica's Closet (a take-off on real-life lingerie company Victoria's Secret). Her staff included Perry Rollins (Dan Cortese, former MTV personality), the dimwitted publicist and a former underwear model; Leo Michaels (Daryl "Chill" Mitchell, formerly of The John Laroquette Show, and currently on Fear of the Walking Dead), the harried market manager; Josh Blair (Wallace Langham, formerly of The Larry Sanders Show and later of CSI), her assistant, who continually denied that he was gay, finally coming out in the last season; and Olive Massery (Kathy Najimy, from Hocus Pocus and the Sister Act movies, and King of the Hill), the Chief Financial Officer. Seen during the first season was Robert Prosky as Ronnie's father Pat, who was also her chauffeur (he was written out without explanation). Ron Silver came on board the second season as Alec Bilson, who now owned the company with Ronnie, but his character was not popular with viewers. As such, Silver was dropped from the cast with the explanation that Alec had died from falling into a volcano. It was then revealed that before he died, he'd gotten married to June (Lorri Bagley), a regular on the final season. June got a share of the company from Alec until she was bought out by Olive. 

As I said, the episodes I'd once found on Daily Motion are no longer available, and can't seem to find any full episodes on Youtube either, though the opening theme for all three seasons and a few clips are available. 

U: Unhappily Ever After

Unhappily Ever After

This was one of the four sitcoms that launched the now-defunct WB Network in early 1995, along with The Parent 'Hood, The Wayans Bros., and Muscle. All but Muscle returned for WB's first full season, each lasting until 1999. The WB closed in 2006, as did rival network UPN, the two merging into the CW.

Unhappily Ever After was basically the opposite of Married...With Children, the show that had helped launch the Fox network just eight years earlier. The focus was on the Molloy family of Los Angeles: alcoholic patriarch Jack (Geoff Pierson), a cynical and chronically depressed used-car salesman; Jennie (Stephanie Hodge) his irritable ex-wife (who was killed off in the final season), and their children Ryan (Kevin Connelly), Tiffany (Nikki Cox) and Ross (Justin Berfield, pre-Malcolm in the Middle). Bobcat Goldthwait was the voice of Jack's stuffed rabbit, Mr. Floppy, to whom only Jack could talk. Joyce Van Patten played Jennie's mother Maureen for the first two seasons. Gradually Tiffany became the focus of the show once her mother was killed off. 

In my area, there was no WB station for most of the time that network was around. Really hard to explain this in full, but one might seem to guess that I never saw this. Yes and no. At home, no, but when I left for college in fall of 1995 I saw maybe a few episodes over the two years I was on campus (we got cable hooked up in our housing). I can't remember a specific episode, but I do remember the opening theme song, Ray Charles's "Hit the Road, Jack," used beginning in the second season (watch below). Episodes can be found here on Youtube.  

Bonus: Forgotten Cartoons Based on Prime Time Shows

Everyone remembers watching cartoons on Saturday while eating cereal in their pajamas. Since I didn't include any cartoon shows in my regular posts, I chose to post on some here. Specifically, cartoons that were based on prime-time TV shows. There are far too many to list in one post, so I will list a few that have stuck in my mind. More can be found in this link. Also, some prime-time series were made into animated specials (some can be found here).

Fonz and the Happy Days Gang: The gang from Happy Days (minus Potsie) went on time-traveling adventures, trying to get back to Milwaukee in 1957. Going them were Cupcake, a "future chick," and a dog, Mr. Cool. The intro, narrated by Wolfman Jack, is below:

Laverne and Shirley: The famous duo joined the army in this animated version of the hit series. Their immediate superior was Sgt. Squealy Pig, voiced by Ron Palillo (formerly of Welcome Back, Kotter):

The Fonz's and Laverne and Shirley's respective shows joined forces in 1982, welcoming another cartoon segment based on a hit show. Months after Mork and Mindy left the air, its characters were brought to animated Saturday morning TV:

And one that wasn't actually based on a series, but rather on the star of a popular prime-time show, The Gary Coleman Show. The cartoon was based on a made-for-TV movie starring the Diff'rent Strokes cast member, The Kid with the Broken Halo.  Coleman's character, Andy LeBeau, was dispatched to help a child in need and resolve his problem by his supervisor and fellow angel, Angelica. The antagonist in each episode was Hornswoggle, who tried to mess up Andy's plans. Andy's friends (who didn't know he's really an angel) included Tina and her brother Spence, Bartholomew and Lydia.

Another celebrity who was popular in the 1980s, Mr. T of The A-Team, also had a Saturday-morning cartoon based on him.