A Very Special Episode About a Very Special Episode Pt 2
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Wow, clapping, clapping, clapping. And then I don't agree with this part she says, but if I were ready, it'd be with you.
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And I'm like, yeah, and he smiles all goofy, as if that's enough to make up for that throbbing he supposedly had in his pants all day. And then they just go dance.
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Hello there's a song that we're singing.
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Come on, get
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happy. Whole lot of love is what we'll be bringing.
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We'll make you happy.
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Welcome to the pop culture Preservation Society, a podcast for people born in the big wheel generation who spent half of their birthdays at shakey and the other half at Farrell's, we believe our Gen X childhoods gave us unforgettable songs, stories, characters and images, and if we don't talk about them, they'll disappear, like Marshall will and Holly on a routine expedition. And today, we're continuing our very special discussion about very special episodes by diving into the very special episodes that were very special to us.
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I'm Carolyn, I'm Kristen, and I'm Michelle, and we are your pop culture preservationists.
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Welcome to part two of our discussion of the very special episode, just like last week, we're talking about heavy topics that were addressed on lightweight shows, sitcoms and family shows that usually aimed only to crack us up, but now wanted us to learn. So last week, we gave you an overview of this phenomenon that thrived on 70s and 80s TV. And this week, we're each taking a deep dive into one very special episode that made an impression on us. If you recall last time we talked about the very special episode, King which was different strokes. Thank you. I was like, what is the Mr. Drummond show?
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Different Strokes was the king of the very special episode, followed very closely by the facts of life, naturally, that was a spin off of Different Strokes. But you saw these on virtually every show. One thing we talked about, or we mentioned, but we didn't go into, because we have several episodes, is Little House on the Prairie was also, I think every other episode was a very special episode. It just wasn't really marketed that way, right? Because a lot of would say next Tuesday on life or whatever, serious, yes, but my goodness, very special things were happening to those people in
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every week. Yeah, whatever social issue Michael Landon wanted to address that, yeah. Well, I think while we would say that the 80s was the heyday of the very special episode. And Kristen, you just said the king of the series that featured very special episodes would maybe be different strokes. I want to venture to say that those were probably the descendants of what I would say is truly the king of the very special episode, and that would be Norman Lear. I really think we have him to thank for the whole idea of bringing in these serious, dramatic, heavy topics and putting them into a sitcom environment and finding ways to discuss them in a light hearted way, but not, if that makes sense. You had to keep the comedy somehow you did. And that took really clever, creative writers. Yeah, that was one of the things I noticed the most as we were revisiting some of these episodes, and the one I'm going to talk about today and the ones we talked about last week, is how clever you had to be. And you you tiptoed on a really fine line. I would say, some of the ones we talked about last week as we went a little longer into the 80s, they might have gone over that line a little bit at times, and I think maybe that that added to their demise. But it took a really special writer to be able to kind of, what's the word I want to strike a balance, to strike a balance. And I think no better place was that done than in the very special episode that I would like to share with you guys today. That was my favorite, and it was one I didn't even remember until I started to do some research for today's episode. And then I was who screwed dude at the wazoo because I went to what I would consider now maybe the ultimate source for very special episodes, and that is a double volume set of books titled tonight on a very special episode when sitcoms get serious, by Lee gambin. The fact that this set contains two volumes lets you know that there is no stone unturned when it comes to very special episodes. So as I was going through one of these volumes, I came upon an episode of one day at a time called Barbara's friend. Barbara's friend was a two parter on what I would probably say was one of the most important TV.
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Shows that I watched growing up, I wanted to be Barbara Cooper in one day at a time. Oh, yeah, me too. I mean, I emulated her. I just her outfits her. I wanted her hair. That was never going to happen. But that show, it was different to me, really, than any other show that I'd watched before. Valerie Bertinelli was probably my almost real girl crush. I know we talk about Christine McNichol. She was the best friend that I wanted to kind of play with and hang out with. Valerie Bertinelli was like aspirational to me. She was that kind of a girl crush. And I want to let our listeners know that obviously, with the love I have for one day at a time, and I'm sure most a lot of our listeners do, we will devote an episode in the future, totally about one day at a time, because there is so much to talk about. All right, so let me remind you about Barbara's friend. Okay, it might just take a few sentences, and then I think you guys are going to remember this. It was a two parter. It was in the third season. So this has us in 1977
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this episode begins with Barbara rushing into their family apartment, and she slams the door so hard, and it's kind of funny, because the beef storyline in this episode, the kind of funny comic relief is Snyder has gone on a diet and none of his clothes fit him anymore, and Julie Mackenzie Phillips is having to tailor all of his clothes, So he's getting his pants kind of pinned when Barbara rushes in, slams the door and oh my gosh, he gets stuck with the pin, and he screams out loud, but Barbara says, Don't tell her I'm here. The her that she's referring to is a new student named Melanie who has moved into the neighborhood and has decided that Barbara is her best friend, and basically is this clingy, odd, strange, young girl who will not leave Barbara alone, and is convinced that she and Barbara are best friends, so Barbara is doing whatever she can to avoid her right when the phone rings, okay, and Barbara threatens Julie and says, Julie, if you if that's Melanie, and you tell her, I'm here. I'm gonna put Nair in your shampoo. That's such a 70s joke. It's such a scenario. Turns out it was not Melanie on the phone. It's Cliff Randall. Okay, guys, just when I heard the name Cliff Randall, because we don't see Cliff Randall yet, we just hear his name. I I was who screwed dude out the watch. I was too. And you just said that, if you recall, he was like Barbara's boy, the guy she always wanted. And sometimes he was her boyfriend, and sometimes he wasn't, but she just pined for Cliff Randall. He happened to be the one on the phone. She takes the call, and turns out cliff is asking her on a date for that evening to a Grateful Dead concert. This is going to be important you guys. Okay, so she's all excited about that. When Guess who comes by and mom opens the door, Melanie. Melanie is out the door. Oh no, Melanie comes in, and the family, as well as viewers, are getting a front row seat to just how off Melanie is. Talk about clingy. She's just hanging all over Barbara, even Anne Romano, who at one point said, Barbara, just give her a chance. Now, says, oh, Barbara, I'm sorry, I get it. This is This is scary. This is so interesting, because didn't you all have I mean, yes, everybody's mother did that. Everybody's mother was like, Don't be cruel. You have to be nice. And you're like, but Mom, you don't understand. She doesn't let me breathe. I mean, I remember, literally, at one point, there was one girl who would physically be all over. She physically wouldn't like when I say, cling, it's it was literal. And I'm like, Mom, help me. She's like, No, you just gotta be nice. Get her off of me. This is such a relatable thing, right? Well, and I can relate to being the mom in this situation with my own daughters at different times where they where I was like, come on. And then maybe that friend would come over to the birthday party or something, and I'd be like, Oh,
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what do we do? And it's a quandary as a parent, and as, you know, as a human being. Actually, I was always so angry that my mom didn't get it. But then, in retrospect, then I would beat myself up for being cruel. Was I really being cruel? I don't know. I don't know. It's a quandary. It was that fine line too, that now as adults, we kind of understand as boundaries and things like that. But of course, the three of us wanting to be rule followers and liked and not wanting to hurt people's feelings, you know you're the one who gives them an inch and they're going to take the mile, and that is exactly what Melanie did. So Melanie, in all of her hoopla, convinces Barbara that they need to go to the soda shop together, because Melanie knows that her boyfriend is going to be there, and she wants Barbara to meet her boyfriend. Well, Barbara is kind of shocked, like Melanie, you have a boyfriend. Well, how did I not know that? So next scene, we're at the soda shop where they're hanging out, and then Melanie, all of a sudden, says, Barbara, there's my boyfriend. And Barbara turns around, and who do we see strolling in? Oh no, Cliff Randall. Oh no, yes, because Cliff had been nice to Melanie in a math class, which Melanie in her odd ways, Fast Forwards and.
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Assume she took it too far, boyfriend and girlfriend. Well, when Cliff sees Barbara in the booth, of course they're going to the Grateful Dead concert that night. So he saunters over to kind of fill her in on like, what they're doing. And Melanie interrupts with like, oh, Cliff, hi. And Cliff is like, who are you? It's really kind of, it's funny. This is painful. It is painful. We're right on that kind of CUSP, again, of that kind of writing, because you're feeling the pain for Melanie, but you're also like, Melanie, you're such a dork. And of course, he doesn't remember you, and he is so funny, if you remember Cliff Randall, he's kind of like, almost Chachi ish.
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He has, like, his shirts unbuttoned a few buttons down. He has a huge lapelle collar on anyway, and he's a little bit clueless, so he's just not understanding this whole Melanie drama and what's going on. And for us kids at the time, this whole scenario probably was hilarious. Oh, and their moms watching it with us were probably like, oh, that poor girl. I know I would have been very uncomfortable watching this like for like this, just for the situation, not for everybody in the situation. I would have been like, I think I need to go into my room read a book. Well, I'll tell you that kind of the next scene I'm going to describe, this is what really put me back in time and who screwed dude me. So cliff is sitting there chatting. Meanwhile, Melanie has presented Barbara with his glass giraffe. She said, this is a symbol of our friendship. I found this glass giraffe and it reminded me of you. And so we have this glass giraffe that's sitting on the table. Cliff's chatting a little more. And then he says to Barbara, okay, I'll pick you up at seven o'clock tonight for the concert. Uh, oh, no. Melanie is not dealing very well with this. Cliff gets up and walks away. Melanie starts yelling at Barbara, how dare you my best friend. You stole my boyfriend. And she goes off on this tirade. Okay, meanwhile, Barbara's kind of had enough. This is the straw that's broken. The camel's back, and she says to her, I'm not your best friend. I'll say, You're not my best friend, you're my worst I am not your worst friend. I'm not your best friend. I'm not any kind of friend. If I was your friend, I'd be your only friend. And with that, she accidentally knocks over the giraffe and breaks on the floor. This is the part I remember. Oh my god, I just got who scared dude so hard. That's what I remember. And we're we're all like and I'm sure it had gone to commercial in real time, because the next scene, we are back in the apartment, and the phone rings, and Barbara is on the phone, and we hear her saying, Melanie, is that you and no, Melanie. No, you shouldn't. No Melanie. And so, and Barbara's voice is getting a little bit more escalated. And then they do have a shot, and we see Melanie is laying on this bed with a bottle of pills opened, and the pills are spread around her on this bed. You sense this
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urgency, almost like this, exactly this fear that's happening. And you hear her calling Melanie's name over and over and telling her to stop and don't and then Anne asked Barbara what's wrong? And Barbara says, Oh, Mom, help. Melanie is trying to kill herself.
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And that was the end of the part of our two partners. And I remember that scene because they stop it right with, you know, Melanie's trying to kill herself, and she's holding the phone, and it's like, oh my gosh, this is, this is not your every day, one day at a time, so we have to, it's terrible. Yeah, my sister's name is Melanie, so I know I just all of this is coming back to me, of like, this bad feeling, oh, I don't like the way I'm feeling right now. Well, and I would love to tell you and all of our listeners that they could go to YouTube or something and watch this episode. But as you remember, last week, we talked about some of these very special episodes are very hard to find, and I actually had to purchase the entire DVD season three. I'm actually kind of jealous, because I would watch that every night, like before bed. So a week has passed, thank goodness. Our second part is on. We come back right to the scene that we left. Barbara is still on the phone, yelling for Melanie, and at this point, Schneider is now involved. He's back, probably getting his pants tailored, and he is he and mom are telling Barbara, keep her on the phone so we can trace the call. I'm pretty sure this is the episode that taught me about tracing a call. Would you please write a book and it will, it will go viral like the all I need to know I learned in kindergarten. Yours needs to be all I ever needed to know. I learned from TV shows, because you have so that you learned a nightcap making worthy, yeah, yeah, it's true. Barbara is having to keep Melanie on the phone, because Ann has told her, don't hang up on her. Just keep her talking. Keep talking to her. And then, based on some crazy Schneider logic, he deducts that Melanie must be in a motel. So he heads out to find his like Union buds, because they're going to track down where this motel must be. How Schneider? How I.
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Technology. What are they going to intuit? They go to the motels that they know rent by the hour, because they're like, Randy. They're all Randy. And they like to pick up special friends and go to the motel, the hotel motels. That's why this is it. And then he by the hour. Yeah, he's explaining why. You know, a young girl wouldn't have a lot of money to pay for a nice hotel where she could, you know, she'd be staying overnight. And they probably asked questions why a teenager was checking in. So it's probably a seating motel that rents by the 30 minutes or by the hour. And then there's they can hear a siren in the background, just the one and yeah. So they're able to narrow it down. Thank goodness, because Schneider and his longshoreman friends are able to get there and get an ambulance called, oh my god, Schneider saves the day. So they got the ambulance, and next scene, we are in the hospital waiting room because Melanie has been whisked to the hospital. The doctor comes out and he informs Barbara and Anne that Melanie is going to be okay. Physically, it was dire, but they got her there in time. But mentally, she has to still heal. This is there's a lot more going on here, and so you're letting that sink in. And then Melanie's parents come into the waiting room, and the mother starts yelling at Barbara, saying, You are the reason that my daughter tried to kill herself. Oh yeah. And was not going to have any of that. And then the doctor got involved, and he said, Listen, this, this is a cry for help, and tells the parents, you need to make sure she sees somebody and, you know, be with her on this journey. And the mother was like, she's done this before, and she just wants attention. That's why we had to move from where we used to live, because people couldn't know about it. Oh, my God. And the next part of the monolog that this doctor has is basically saying why mental health is important and you need to get help when somebody is asking for it instead of moving Exactly. It was just as much an episode about, you know the suicide attempt as it was about removing the stigma of getting help when you need it, and getting it for your children when they're asking for it. Because at one point, Melanie had shared with Barbara, like, my parents don't understand me. No one understands me. No one likes me. And so she's dealt with this before, and the way her parents dealt with it was they moved Wow. And so the dad finally gets some balls and says to the wife, we are going to get her help, and we're going to go along beside her, and we're going to get help too. And he rises to the occasion. So the very end of the episode, Barbara is still feeling really awful about what happened. She's feeling really guilty like she created this scenario, and Anne is trying to tell her, No, you didn't.
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And Barbara's like, Yes, I did. It's all my fault. And she said, You know, I just want everyone to like me. I don't want anyone to ever be mad at me, like some people you know aren't gonna like you, and to bend over backwards and to do some things that you might not normally do, just so people will like you might end up not always having the best outcome, and we're still learning those lessons today. Exactly. You know, as women in our 50s, how many of us are people pleasers? Raise Your Hand four years of therapy of someone telling me over and over again, you are not responsible for how people react to the things you say, and that's kind of the end of the episode. I mean, it was, there was some more meaningful moments, and there's comic relief and everything. But it was this moment of saying, oh my gosh, even when you think you're trying to do the right thing, it might not be the right thing. And I also it dawned on me that really, one day at a time was probably the first and maybe only Norman Lear show that had people our age, or at least younger characters, be the main characters. I mean, it was mostly about but we did have Anne's storyline, and that was a big part of it. But also we had teenagers who were main characters, and what they were facing was a big part of the storyline, and in turn, you know, we could relate to a little bit more. So, yeah, so that was my very special episode. For many reasons. I just got hoosker dude so many times watching it between Cliff Randall and the giraffe and Clifford, I remember thinking that cliff was not a cute name. I just didn't think it was a cute name, and I didn't sorry to all the cliffs. So you have a perfectly good name. But I just remember for a heartthrob, for somebody who had a crush on I'm like, No, shouldn't it be like, Randy or something? I don't know Cliff just seemed awkward and like a grandpa name or something. I was thinking up until then, I probably didn't know any cliffs that I can think of. And then the only Cliff I've known, really since then would be cliff on, cheers, well, and cliff on all my children. Oh yeah, Cliff and Nina cliff, I love one day at a time. We'll come back to that someday, and we'll give it all the attention that it deserves.
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Okay, next up, we have an episode for my.
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Show that actually tackled a lot of important subjects on a regular basis, but this one is the very specialist, because it really was trying to make a point for the kids. This storyline is not for the sake of the story, it's for the sake of empowering young women to not fall for their horny boyfriend's bullshit. So this is an episode I've been calling Leif Garrett wants to get in buddy's pants. Subtitle, lave Garrett has needs. This is from a 1978 episode of the family drama, family starring Christy McNichol as buddy Lawrence, Leif Garrett as her boyfriend, Zach Meredith Baxter Burney as buddy's much older sister and an unknown actress named Lisa welchel, aka Blair, from the future facts of life, as the new girl in school that lave Garrett thinks might be an easier lay should buddy choose not to put up. So this is a good example of a long form PSA about not being pressured into sex by horny boys. So I had to do some reflection on this one, because as long time listeners know I am team Sean Cassidy in 1977 and 1978 you couldn't like both life, Garrett and Sean Cassidy, you had to choose, and that was just a no brainer for me. And I had real feelings about Leif Garrett, bad ones, bad feelings, and they persisted while I went through this very special episode just a couple of weeks ago, and then we had a commenter on one of our posts recently featuring Leif Garrett. Apparently, this guy was good friends with Leif Garrett and thought he was just the nicest guy, and thought maybe us dissing him in our post was unfair, and I had to sort of call myself on the carpet about that and ask, why Kristen, do you have these nasty feelings about Leif Garrett? And now I'm wondering if I developed my feelings about him from watching this episode of family as if he wasn't playing a character, like it was the real I think it's very possible, like it was the real life Garrett, who was being a horn dauger with Christy McNichol. You projected that scene and that character on him also. Can I just add to him? We have never dissed life Garrett in a post. So it wasn't what he was probably a calm. I think it was probably, oh, maybe it was a comment response to a comment that someone had made. Because I was like, we are very respectful of life. Garret at the pop culture probably jump to conclusions based on my own feelings about him, I would have just assumed that we were dissing. We've talked about we've talked about why in the past, he wasn't one of our crushes, and we've said because he looked like he smelled like dirty mop water, that kind of thing, that was our taste. We don't like dirty mop water, so we liked more clean cut guys. And could I have seen him through the lens of this episode of family? So just keep that in mind as we go through this episode. And my apologies in advance to life. Garrett, for my possibly misguided feelings about you. It might have been about Zach. Might have been Zach I was hating on. So the backdrop of this episode is buddy's Sweet 16 party. She's turning 16, and she's having a big party. Who should she invite? What caterer Should we hire? I'm a caterer. Zeta Thompson, what are you doing? Beauty is a caterer in the 70s. Where should we do our disco dancing? At my party? Should we move the furniture and do it in the living room? So so many questions about this party. And as if that's not stressful enough, buddy's boyfriend Zach, sees her looming 16th birthday as a pinch point in their relationship, the sexy kind. So when Lisa welchel aka Kathy comes to town with brown hair, by the way, she's got brown hair, Zach is a little overly helpful to this new pretty girl. He sure seems to be spending a lot of time with Kathy aka Lisa welchel, and Buddy is pissed about it, and after a fight in the school library, which, okay, round of applause for a great use of a very realistic setting. By the way, life, Garrett runs after buddy, and he insists you're the lady of my life, but Kathy is willing to give me something that you're not. It's just awkward silence on on the show, just awkward silence after a long enough time for the viewing audience to catch on to what Zach wants. Buddy says, Oh, I see she's peeved. Now, notably, they don't say the word sex a single time in this entire episode, not even euphemisms for sex. Every time she refers to her predicament. There is a pregnant pause, excuse the pun, and maybe some raised eyebrows. And then the other person goes, Oh, I see like they're just waiting for the viewer to catch up. So Zach follows that truth bomb with well, how important am I to you, buddy? And then buddy says, V.
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Scary. And he says, well, then I think it's time you proved it. Oh, gross. That's so Dicky, so dickey. More silence, and Buddy can't believe what has just landed in her lap. So the rest of the episode is buddy grappling with this decision. The whole episode becomes a Will she or Won't she exercise, and lave Garrett keeps up the pressure campaign. He says, My parents are going away for the weekend, and I think we should do something special for your birthday. Wink, wink, wink. And she says, Yeah, I know I'm having a party, dummy. And he says the lamest line of the whole show, I can understand you being afraid being with a man, but I do have needs.
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He says it, like, twice. He like, doubles down on those needs. So many needs. Lave Garrett has needs, and he expects buddy to take care of them. He even has the audacity to pretend to feel compassion for her. He understands if she's not ready, that's okay, but I'm ready, and you can't expect me to wait. And oh, my God, it gets worse. And he suggests that if he has sex with Lisa welchel, that could take the pressure off of buddy. And this is where I'm like, Is this why I hate Liv Garrett, yeah, I think this might say, though, that back in 1977 like, when my mom would talk to us about sex and and saying no and being pressured, it was very much this story of, like, if you really can the guys, yeah, the the guy's going to say, Well, if you really like me, you'll do it and all this kind of stuff, but you be so I feel like we're all being shocked now, because something we taught our kids, and it doesn't matter if we boys or girls, all about respect, right, and respecting someone else, and not put that type of pressure on someone, but this, all of this that you're talking about, that we're being shocked at, I think, was very, very real life and absolutely still is in some places, but now, thank goodness. We've all come a long way, and our kids have come a long way, and our kids know that they can be like, Well, I don't care. Then go, you know, fulfill your needs yourself, Buster, and think about it. Leif Garrett is not pulling this out of thin air. This is something that he's been taught by society, by friends, who knows, who knows, but it's, it was clearly trotted out all the time. That's enough. Very real scenario for 1977 Yeah, it is. But I will agree that that that kind of torturing her with, well, if you know, if you don't want to, that's okay. I'll just do it with Kathy, yes, kind of that's Yeah. And it didn't even seem it was really weird. It wasn't even like he was threatening her with it. It was almost like he was trying to, like, you know, I'll just do it with her and you can still be my girlfriend. Yeah, it was, that was a little cringy. It was super cringy. And he's leaving these bread crumbs of toxic masculinity all over the episode, like when buddy, when buddy's dad has the urge to buy a Corvette and say to Thompson, is like, Get over yourself. Old man. Leif says to Buddy, you know, if your dad likes that car, he should keep it. He has different needs from your mom. So this was something that men and boys were told that they have special needs that have to be taken care of, and they need to be taken care of by us. But and Buddy, so quick, so aware, so honest, as you know, ever since that girl came to town, all you talk about are needs. So I think we can sort of officially say that the idea that men have needs has been put to bed. I believe we're post needs we're living in a post needs society. I don't care how crazy it makes you, you're not gonna die like nothing's gonna explode down there. And I'd like to think that there are a lot more women writers at the table now than there might have been in the 70s. I'd love to see the credits of who wrote this episode, because that's really who gave life the lines. Okay, that's interesting. Yeah, that's a very interesting point. And there weren't many women in any writers rooms in 1978 that was so it was likely mostly men. I need to add here that whenever Lisa welchel is on the screen, all you see is a lovely girl acting like the new girl, trying to be nice to everybody so she doesn't get rejected. She absolutely does not act like Zach says, a girl who would give him something that buddy will not. I don't know where he got this information about Lisa welchel, maybe it's wishful thinking. Maybe she's just a useful cudgel to help him get what he wants. But it's smart on the part of the writers, because the lazy thing to do would have been to bring in the new pretty girl and have her be all alluring and predatory and horning in on buddy's territory. But she's not. She's just nice. So let me watch poor buddy.
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Me try to get help and guidance from her older sister and brother, only for them to be clueless, not know what she's talking about again, because no one says sex and then recoil when they actually realize what she's asking about, because she'll say things like, you know, what was it like your first time? And they're like, Ah, no, I'm not answering that question. That's private information. Poor buddy, nobody will help her. I take this to be a lesson for parents. They're saying, please be open minded, please don't freak out. Just answer their questions because they're really struggling. Don't leave them hanging like that. Help them make the good decisions. Because if you recoil and say that's private and I don't want to talk about it, they might do the thing that you don't want them to do. So the most dramatic moment of the show is when buddy asks Meredith Baxter Burney, her older sister for a ride to Zach's house the night his parents are out of town in Vegas. Buddy has resigned. She's gonna do it by this point, MBB, as I've been calling her, she knows that she messed up as an older sister. And the whole drive over there, you're like, MBB, say something, please. Buddy is so uncomfortable. It's like she's walking up to the guillotine, and Meredith Baxter Bernie is driving her there. They're just sitting there in silence. It's so painful. And Buddy is wearing her snazzy blazer plus bell bottoms outfit that you know she picked out for her first time. And you can't believe it when she gets out of the car in her first time outfit and she starts slowly walking up the front walk to Zach's house. And I'm screaming at Meredith Baxter Burney, I'm just dying with every step she takes, and MBB just watches out the window with this worried look on her face, and I'm like say something, please. But then buddy stops, and she turns around, and she starts walking back to the car because she has a tummy ache.
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And that's when MBB gets out to help her. Buddy says she feels sick, and she's holding her little tummy, and Meredith Baxter, Bernie, thank God. She says, I think you're not ready to take this step. And this is so sad, it actually made me cry. Buddy says, but if I don't go in there, I'm gonna lose this Oh, and your heart just breaks for her. And I have so much rage and hatred for lave Garrett in this moment, it couldn't have been good for his career, if it affected anybody else the way it affected me, it couldn't have been good for his career. And buddy says I just thought if I tried to become a woman really fast, I could just get it over with, but I just don't have those feelings yet. Am I weird? And MBB packs her up and gets her home. Toots sweet, with her tummy ache. And apparently she never called Zach to say I'm not coming. And he must have been sitting there all night with his wiener in his hands, because the next scene is at her party, her sweet 16 party. And here comes Zach, and he says, we had a we had a date buddy. And here's the come to Jesus moment at the door during her sweet 16 party. Buddy says, with confidence,
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how she wants
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that. I'm sure I want that too soon, but not
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yet.
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I'm just not ready to meet your needs until I've met my own. But
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if I were ready, it'd be with you, and you're like,
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wow, clapping, clapping, clapping. And then I don't agree with this part, she says, but if I were ready, it'd be with you.
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And I'm like, yeah. And he smiles all goofy, as if that's enough to make up for that throbbing he supposedly had in his pants all day. And then they just go dance. They're like, dancing, yeah,
Unknown Speaker 34:05
it's very awkward. It's totally choreographed, totally choreographed, like it's a part, part hustle, part bus stop, and it's to burn baby, burn disco and burn so great, though, the writers did such a great job of putting words and to so many adolescent girls' mouths. Did they watch that episode? Girls who didn't feel like they had someone to talk to, like MBB, right? And then they can watch that episode and they can think, Oh, I'm in the same situation. And that sounds good. That's what I'm gonna say. So that's what I'm gonna say. How the writers stepped in as sort of parents like you. You call it our electronic babysitter a lot and and it did a lot good in a lot of situations, because not everybody has an adult sister that they can go to, and not everybody's mom was like, you can ask me anything most parents, Oh, no. Mom's just gonna go, say no, say no, say no, yeah, of course. Not, of course. But not.
Unknown Speaker 35:00
Give you language to be able to be honest. Way to go. Christy McNichol, really? I mean, so succinct. It makes me wonder if she stayed up all night like writing it out in her little Mead notebook so she would get it just right. The
Unknown Speaker 35:21
very special episode that was very special to me is a family ties episode called a, my name is Alex, and this is considered the greatest episode of the entire 176
Unknown Speaker 35:35
episodes of family ties a, my name is Alex, is a one hour very special episode that aired on March 12, 1987 now, I was a senior in high school at the time, and to be honest, I probably hadn't watched family ties as regularly as I had from when it began in 1982 and then like 1982 to 1985 I watched it every single week, I'm sure. But I don't think I was really watching it that year, probably because high school, right? But I'd have very definite memories of this episode. So to refresh your memory, if it's been a while since you've seen it, or maybe you missed it, Alex's childhood friend is killed in a car accident. Alex has survivor's guilt because he refused to ride with the friend. Alex seeks therapy to deal with that, plus a lot of other issues in his life. Can you say control freak? Anyone? Right? Yep, but it's not just the very special subject matter that makes this episode so great. It's the writing, the acting and the very unique and unusual staging of a sitcom that all combined to make this episode so special. This episode came to Gary David Goldberg, the creator of family ties. Who you guys? We could do a whole episode on him. He was a writer on Bob Newhart, Phyllis mash Lou Grant, as well as creating and producing many other shows, Ubu productions, named after his black lab. Ubu. Remember, sit Ubu. Sit Ubu. Sit good dog. Remember, and at the end of every show that he produced, your everybody in the room would go, sit, boo, boo, sit. Good dog, woof.
Unknown Speaker 37:07
Anyway, sadly, he died in 2013 of a brain tumor you. But anyway, the idea for this episode came to him in a dream in the fifth season of family ties, right after he lost his parents, beloved parents, two weeks apart. Oh, wow, which devastated him. He was grappling with his grief, and he knew he had to write about it. He had to, like, exercise it. He said I watched a really great, long interview with him where I got a lot of this information, and I'll put a link to it in this week's Weekly Reader, if you were a fan of this episode or him, or family ties, whatever.
Unknown Speaker 37:42
But he's like, how would I write about this? When I write for comedy, right? Like, we're writers, we know, a lot of times to get to exercise something and to make more sense of it, we write about it. But he's like, this doesn't gonna really fit, you know? And he basically dreamt the entire storyline of a My name is Alex, one night for real, like he jumped out of bed and started writing. But after he and his team wrote the script, they knew it was not only one hour, but the way that he dreamt the second half, which I'll talk about in a minute, which was like a staging of a play. They knew that that second half had to be shown without commercials, one because there was no way they could cut any more pages and make the story and make this story as impactful. And two, it needed to be one long scene to keep the integrity of the structure and the impact of the staging and content. But you know, like that's going to happen, right? I mean, these, these shows, rely on advertising. Yeah. So anyway, after some finagling Goldberg got Brandon tartakoff on board, he was like the head of NBC who moved things around in the schedule. And the one hour episode aired on March 12 at 9pm and the second half went straight through, I know, no commercials at all. This was a dorm room. Watch all the people in my dorm room watching, yeah for sure, yeah. A quick reminder of some key moments in this episode. The first half sets everything up, and it is filmed exactly like other family ties episode.
Unknown Speaker 39:14
It's Alex, Mallory, Steven and Elise returning from his friend Greg's funeral, and Alex, of course, is bopping around the kitchen, almost manically deflecting the situation with rapid fire jokes as he does. He's saying, I'm a lucky guy. Are you lucky?
Unknown Speaker 39:32
I was supposed to be in that car with Greg, but I wasn't.
Unknown Speaker 39:38
He said, Alex, come with me. Half time my brother move a piano, short time, 15 minutes out of your life? What do I say? No way, Greg, I'm busy now, and why? Because I didn't want to be bothered
Unknown Speaker 39:52
because I'm selfish. Do you believe that selfishness saved my life?
Unknown Speaker 39:59
I knew to come.
Unknown Speaker 40:00
I'm in handy.
Unknown Speaker 40:02
Then Alex starts manifesting Greg everywhere. He keeps showing up, and Alex is reliving, telling him that he wouldn't ride with him, and then in the next beat begging him not to go, and then apologizing for not going. And you can just see this is always when he's alone. By the way, when his family's around, he's just, he's just cracking jokes, cracking jokes. He finally breaks and HE SOBS, why am I alive? Over and over as Elise holds him, I don't want answers, okay, because I can go on with this. Why am I alive? Why am I alive? Why am I
Unknown Speaker 40:38
alive? We're gonna help you,
Unknown Speaker 40:42
huh? Alex, Alex, I'm going to help and then the second act, if you will. Since it's staged like our town, which was very intentional of Gary David Goldberg, as that's how he dreamt it, it takes place in what appears to be a black box theater. It's minimal stage dressing. It's spotlit scenes. Alex is mostly alone, reluctantly and angrily answering the questions from an off camera therapist whose voice is all we hear. And let's not forget, there's no commercial. But just like in our town, Alex goes in and out of various scenes and vignettes of his childhood, at one point he's talking to Elise and as a kindergartner. So it's it's grown up. Michael J Fox, Alex P, Keaton, but the language and the words coming out of his mouth are like, Mommy, he's acting like he's a kindergartner. So funny. He's begging her to stay home from school so he can watch the Nixon hearings. Oh, she's
Unknown Speaker 41:37
Yeah. You forget he was us. Yeah. And then there is seven year old Alex feeling pressured when we see his teacher telling the class, oh, Alex knows the answer. And this one broke my heart, because Alex, channeling his seven year old self, shouts at her, stop. This makes me uncomfortable. Kids are jealous and don't want to play with me, and then he just screams, I'm just a little boy. You don't put that kind of pressure on a little boy. Oh, my God, like it just doesn't make sense. So yeah, and don't forget, we're now getting into Alex's mental health all because the survivor's guilt he was feeling, and then that just leads one thing to another, and it shows us who he is, right, yes and why. And the therapist continues digging deeper into his childhood and his relationships with Mallory and Jennifer. We have little vignettes with them. And then Gary David Goldberg took a really big risk. He says he struggled with two themes after his own parents passed away, fatherhood and God.
Unknown Speaker 42:44
And this was the time when Hollywood and the Moral Majority were at constant odds about values on television, but Gary David Goldberg just went for it. And the therapist asks, Do you believe in God, Alex? And Alex says, that's what this all comes down to, isn't it? That's what I'm trying to figure out here. And so he comes to realize that he does believe in God, and then very quickly realizes that Greg's death needs to be about more. And then he has this lovely monolog about Greg being dead but him still being alive, and that he can take Greg's energy and sense of humor and warmth and make it his own, and he can keep Craig's memory alive that way. And then the episode just ends with Alex sitting down in the chair, looking straight at the camera, and he tells the therapist he's ready to talk. I guess the audience set in silence for a beat before just erupting and giving him a standing ovation. And Gary David Goldberg said it was the greatest night of theater I had ever seen.
Unknown Speaker 43:44
So yeah, so he did turn it into theater. It could have gone so very wrong. It could have could have ridiculously
Unknown Speaker 43:55
campy, almost Yeah, and stilted and awkward or campy, yeah, all of that, and yet it he hit it out of the park. And maybe it's because it came from a dream, and he did hit it out of the park. Of the 90 million households with TVs, 36 million tuned into that episode, and the impact of it is hugely important. Let's not forget, in the late 80s, the nation was going through a mental health crisis, really, at that time. And the idea of someone like Alex P Keaton, so confident, so smart alecky, so I have the answer to everything. The idea of someone like that seeking therapy, it made a huge impact on people,
Unknown Speaker 44:42
destigmatizing, getting help through therapy. Later, teachers and doctors actually wrote into Paramount requesting tapes of that episode to show their students. And Michael J Fox credits this episode for him, seeking help after his Parkinson's.
Unknown Speaker 45:00
Diagnosis in his 2003 memoir. Lucky me. He says this, that episode won me an Emmy but now immersed in this daunting, real version of my alter ego's anguish, and reaching out, just as he had for professional help, the only reward I sought was relief. In many ways, I could relate to Alex's confusion like him, I never thought I'd have anything to do with psychologists or psychotherapy. I was always a figured out myself kind of person, and it was painfully clear to me that this time, I didn't have a clue about where to start. Wow. So like that episode, he had no idea at the time that that was going to go on to influence him,
Unknown Speaker 45:41
and then the episode went on to win Outstanding Writing and a Comedy Series for that episode. At the 39th annual Emmys Michael J Fox won the award for Outstanding Lead Actor and a Comedy Series for that episode. And in 1997 TV guide named this episode on their list of 100 greatest episodes of television, and it's because he dug, he dug in and he took a risk. I'm just and it's the writing, the way they Yeah, I think that had so much to do with it. It's really, I think, just the creative and unique way that Gary David Goldberg chose to present this. Because let's think about it. Someone dying, survival, survivor's guilt. That's not, you know, Edith opening the door and a man trying to rape her. That's not Dudley and Arnold, you know, at age seven, eight years old, you know, getting drugged so a man can sexually abuse him. It's, it's way more of a common type of,
Unknown Speaker 46:40
you know, tragedy people go through, but quite insidious. Look at but he took it and he he brought in so many other aspects of this, like with the mental help and the therapy and everything. So yeah, and it was very organic. It's not like before the season started and before his parents had passed away, that they said, We're gonna have an episode this season about survivor's guilt or grief, which I think a lot of these other very special episodes would have been planned ahead, and you had the topic before you even had A story, and this was so organic.
Unknown Speaker 47:21
I mean, seriously, where would we be without TV?
Unknown Speaker 47:25
It's like it really is a force for good. In many instances. All this time, all the experts were telling us it would rot our brains. But really it was a vehicle for life lessons that no one wanted to talk about, all of these things that nobody wanted to talk about, but we desperately needed information about. So thanks to Leif Garrett and Christy McNichol, I was never gonna take responsibility for anybody's blue balls. That was not my problem to solve.
Unknown Speaker 47:51
Kristin, you would have never taken responsibility for anyone's life, Garrett or not, I'm just, you know, like, not my problem, my problem, dude, that's right, and thanks to Valerie Bertinelli and Alex P Keaton, someone was saying the quiet part out loud and feeding our curiosity in a way our grown ups wouldn't or couldn't, and I don't mind if they were silly or overacted or poorly handled, at least, someone was saying something, And that's better than pretending that something doesn't exist. So again, I ask of modern day TV, what have you done for me lately? Right? You are so, right? I mean, honestly, I think, I think it could heal a lot of stuff right now, a lot of things for us all to gather around. You know, quality TV for everybody, for everybody watch together, not alone in our rooms. I think it's time TV ponied up and started saving the world again. Thank you for listening today, and we'll see you next time.
Unknown Speaker 48:57
And a huge thank you to all of our incredible patrons. Your support means the world to us and directly fills up the tanks we need to keep on trucking. Because of your generosity, we're able to keep bringing you new episodes. Invest in equipment and the subscriptions we need to produce the podcast and keep bringing you quality content. Today, we're giving a special thank you to patrons. Melanie. Oh, Melanie, I hope it's not the
Unknown Speaker 49:28
Melanie. She got help after watching that episode of family ties.
Unknown Speaker 49:34
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Unknown Speaker 50:00
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