Television Turmoil: $#*! My Dad Says

Television Turmoil is a look at the worst and weirdest series to make their way onto the small screen.

For the past two decades, CBS has remained at or near the top of the broadcast network game thanks to a mix of catering to a slowly aging audience and sticking to a mostly rigid formula of what its programs look like. Watching an evening of CBS prime-time programming feels a bit like driving around a cul-de-sac. Sure, you can tell that each house is technically different from one another, but you’re not sure what exactly sets them apart. Comfort and routine are key to the CBS brand at this stage. Even when something outside the norm gets made, it often feels like it must play inside the confines of what CBS sees as “network television.” Which is what makes $#*! My Dad Says one of the worst outliers in this era of the network.

Based on a Twitter feed by blogger Justin Halpern, one of the most popular at the time for the nascent social media site. $#*! My Dad Says (pronounced Bleep My Dad Says) follows Henry Goodson (Jonathan Sadowski) a down on his luck writer with a surname that is the closest thing to a real joke the show provides. Desperate for money, Henry moves back in with his father, Ed (William Shatner) and has to deal with constant visits from his brother Vince and Vince’s wife, Bonnie (Will Sasso and Nicole Sullivan). As the title suggests, there is plenty of $#*! this dad ends up saying.

Neither the show’s premise nor its tried and true multi-cam production are outliers to the CBS style. What makes the show stand out is how all in it goes on being an “edgy” sitcom. CBS had found success with faux-edgy sitcoms like Two and a Half Men and Two Broke Girls so why not a third show that didn’t have “two” in the title? Those shows mistook dick jokes and overt racial humor for “edge,” and viewers rewarded them. It only makes sense that the next logical step is to add an expletive to the title and let fate work out the rest.

It is perhaps a bit too pat to say, but $h*! My Dad Says is well and truly shit. For as boiler-plate as most CBS shows are, there is a baseline of mediocrity that sort of blends all but their worst programming together. This is a rare show, so thin in both premise and character that all that stands out are the tasteless and unfunny jokes. Within seconds of his first appearance on screen, Shatner is pointing a shotgun at his son’s genitals and threatening to turn him into a woman. The awfulness of Shatner’s titular dad attempts to be the “hook” that keeps us all coming back, like a repugnant version of Archie Bunker. The problem is that no one on the writing team gives poor Ed a character outside of “racist and mean.”

To be fair, no one is much of a character in this show. The cast exists for the express purpose of delivering jokes, and there is little time for something as trivial as stakes and character development. It probably isn’t much of a surprise that normally game comedic actors like Sasso and Sullivan are essentially sleepwalking through this program. There is nothing much to do here but walk into one of the three sets that are used in an episode, belt out some jokes that went stale in the 90s, and pause long enough for the laugh track to be added in later.

Ultimately, the problems this show faces stem from that wafer-thin premise. Perhaps there is a reason that no one else has really attempted to adapt a popular social media account into a sitcom since. Even if the people involved carved something manageable from nothing, they would still have to contend with that all-time stinker of a title. It remains a mystery why anyone allowed the show’s actual title to include a word that couldn’t be said in advertising or on the network itself. Best I can tell, it was a ploy to attract attention to a show that needed all the help it could get. They got that attention, just not in the way they expected.

It is sad to think about, but even in the recent history of 2010, the prospect of including one of the “big swears” in the title of your show courted a significant amount of controversy. The vast majority of this came from that bastion of censorship, the Parents Television Council. Their primary argument was the classic “I don’t want my kids to see this” ploy. Advertisers were also skeptical about the name despite repeated assurances from the network that the dreaded swear was never said aloud. Even Shatner got in on the fun with a statement only he could make, saying, “The word ‘shit’ is around us. It isn’t a terrible term. It’s a natural function. Why are we pussyfooting?”

Overall, the controversy gave $#*! My Dad Says a big debut number of over 12 million viewers. The number dropped steadily once the audience realized how shallow the show’s premise and characters actually were. They aired 18 episodes of the show before retiring Dad. An expected ending when you have so little to offer.

Quality is rarely a determining factor in what attracts audiences to a show. Often, all you need to do to achieve success is provide something for your viewers to engage with. $#*! My Dad Says instead doles out cheap laughs on even cheaper sets with actors who would rather be anywhere else.

Next Time: We head to the world of syndication and enjoy some Burt Reynolds voice-acting with the alien sitcom Out of This World.

Little House on the Prairie reinvents a TV classic

Photo: Netflix

Late in the first episode of Netflix’s Little House on the Prairie remake, Charles and Caroline Ingalls are arguing about their decision to move the family to Kansas. It soon becomes clear that the bulk of the decision rests on Charles’ shoulders, something Caroline regrets. Their conversation eventually turns to family, both the ones left behind and the ones who have passed away. It’s a clunky scene narratively that proves emotionally resonant in the long run. The scene also serves as a guide to what this new version of the show is all about.

Loosely based on the book series of the same name, Little House on the Prairie first debuted in 1974. A 9 season run and a long history of syndication helped make the show a staple of American pop culture. Remade for the streaming era, the new series still follows the Ingalls, but the town of Walnut Grove is nowhere to be found. Charles and Caroline (Luke Bracey and Crosby Fitzgerald) take their daughters Laura (Alice Halsey) and Mary (Skywalker Hughes) to Independence, Kansas, in search of opportunity. The series follows their attempts to stake a claim in the Kansas wilds. All the while they contend with fevers, rowdy townsfolk, and the Osage people who are not pleased with settlers claiming their land.

The trickiest aspect of the show turns out to be the last part. The writing attempts to give the Osage characters the interiority they deserve. Ultimately, they still end up serving as supporting players in the Ingalls’ story. This isn’t strictly a problem with the Native American roles either. Every side character is only as important as their ability to be a friend or foe to the family and their American dream. While that works to create tension, it leaves the world feeling smaller than intended. This becomes more noticeable later on when the traumas of the Ingalls are more pronounced.

Yes, the new Little House is partially about the harsh realities of life in the pioneer days. That involves sifting through the various traumas the family endures both before and after we meet them. The results of this approach remain mixed. At their best, these serve as avenues for character development. In the most egregious situations, they strain your interest. This is the case in the show’s 4th episode, which involves the entire family hallucinating their worst fears during a bout with fever. The series wisely shies away from being as bleak as many other “realistic” portrayals of life in the settler days. That streak of optimism remains the link that connects both versions.

Like its predecessor, Netflix’s Little House is designed to appeal to as wide a swath of people as possible. While I remain unmoved by its slow pacing and halfhearted attempts to address the era’s racial dynamics. I can see the appeal. There’s enough of the original show’s DNA here to appease viewer nostalgia while updating the story for modern audiences. As remakes go, it falls squarely in the middle. Not a terrible place to be, but hardly memorable.

Little House on the Prairie is currently streaming on Netflix.

Another Brick in the Wall #6 – The Final Conflict/Slagar the Slaver

Swanson, Kiorein, and Stairmaster reach the end of Redwall season 1 as Matthias and Cluny have their, not quite epic, final confrontation. Then, the gang move on to season 2 with a new villain and a time jump. Plus, we talk about the show’s ongoing animation woes and the perils of having your shadows touch. Want to request a future bonus episode? Donate to our Buy Me a Coffee page https://www.buymeacoffee.com/tvtuners

Television Turmoil: Automan deserved a better setting for its super-heroics

Television Turmoil is a look at the worst and weirdest series to make their way onto the small screen.

It’s hard to say exactly where we would be in terms of special effects without the influence of Tron. The 1982 Disney feature was a modest success at the box office, but quickly captured the imagination of nerds everywhere. As one of the earliest films to use extensive CGI, Tron also captured the attention of the industry as a showcase for what current technology could accomplish. The impact was immediate, and it wouldn’t be long before imitators began cropping up. None of them were as quick to draw as Automan.

Debuting a little over a year after Tron, Automan attempted to adapt the style of the film’s virtual world to the TV screen. Created by Glen A. Larson, a man very familiar with imitation, the show followed Walter Nebicher (Desi Arnaz Jr.), a neurotic police officer who mainly worked in the precinct’s absurdly large computer room. Walter’s gifted programming skills eventually lead him to create a crime-fighting A.I., the titular Automan (Chuck Wagner). Automan (short for “Automatic Man,” a strange choice when “automated” was right there), can generate his own hologram and enter our world to help in the endless fight against crime. Rounding out the cast, we have Walter’s love interest: Roxanne Caldwell (Heather McNair), Lieutenant Jack Curtis (Robert Lansing) and Captain E.G. Boyd (Gerald S. O’Loughlin). All of whom have increasingly useless roles as the show goes on.

The defining feature of Automan was his reflective body. Using a costume made of tiny reflective balls, it could reflect nearly all the light shone on it. Add some polished plates and put chroma key effects all over them, and you have the finished product. While likely impressive for TV in the early 80s, the effects don’t hold up today. Most of that seems to be because of the chroma key, which often ended up spreading to Automan’s face in certain shots and is a pain to look at for longer than a few minutes.

In addition to his holographic body, Automan could also merge with Nebicher to become a singular being while keeping all of his invulnerability. In fact, the only real established weakness for our hero was the massive amount of energy he used by existing in our world. The writers used this in the early episodes to explain why he only operated at night, and then quickly forgot about it. Something that also happened with his merging ability.

Automan also had a trusty, and weirdly horny, sidekick named Cursor, a floating polyhedron who could draw the shape of an object and generate it. Despite only communicating in what sounds like Casio keyboard boops, Cursor never passes up an opportunity to flirt with a woman. Cursor’s typical role in the show is to draw Automan’s current preferred method of transportation. This is usually the Autocar, a Lamborghini with the same reflective patterns as Automan, but also capable of weaving in and out of traffic at high speeds and making sharp 90-degree turns similar to the Light Cycles in Tron. There is also a helicopter, a motorcycle, and even a tank that all make appearances throughout the show’s short run.

With all of these fantastical ideas, the show must be packed with some fun storylines, right? Sadly, no, these abilities and tools are just the things Automan uses to catch the generic criminal of the week. In fact, if you took out Automan altogether, the show would just be a goofier version of your standard 80s cop procedural. Despite trying to be a superhero show, Automan himself doesn’t get involved in many heroic situations. There is an episode where he takes up acting to catch a criminal and one where he becomes an erotic dancer to, you guessed it, catch a criminal, but he rarely does things of his own volition, which makes him a decent depiction of an A.I. but a bad superhero.

Debuting the same year as Larson’s other disastrous attempt at a superhero show, Manimal, Automan only fared slightly better, lasting 12 episodes before getting the axe. In terms of actual quality, Automan is probably the most inoffensive show I’ve watched for this column so far. For one, it actually explains the concept to you, unlike Manimal. Sure, it’s corny and full of boilerplate storylines, but the chemistry between Walter and Automan really helps sell the copious amounts of 80s cheese. Plus, who doesn’t love seeing a shiny car or helicopter defy the laws of physics?

Its overreliance on cop show cliches isn’t the only thing it has in common with the other Larson program. Outside of the main duo, the cast might as well be played by cardboard cutouts for how much material they’re given. Similar to the animal transformations in Manimal, Automan’s vehicles always seem to pop up right as we are approaching an ad break. The shows even use the same exterior shots for certain scenes. You could essentially make an episode of either by switching some names and substituting cars and helicopters for animals, or vice versa.

1983 was not a kind year for Glen Larson. In total, he produced four shows that made it to air that year. None of them received a renewal, and in the years after, only two of his programs lasted longer than a season. Automan stands out as the show with the most potential. A light-hearted program with some goofy sci-fi that got saddled with having to be your standard hour-long adventure show. The rare program on this feature that deserved better.

Next Time: We dive into the modern age with a look at CBS’ foul-mouthed William Shatner vehicle, $#*! My Dad Says.

Another Brick in the Wall #5 – Asmodeus/Underground

Swanson, Kiorein, and Stairmaster approach the end of Redwall season 1 as Matthias fights a giant hypnotic snake and Cluny continues his descent into madness. Plus, a look at the great horse names from the Kentucky Derby and the possibility of a gorilla rampage. Want to request a future bonus episode? Donate to our Buy Me a Coffee page https://www.buymeacoffee.com/tvtuners