Retro Television Reviews: Lookwell 1.1 “The Pilot”

Posted on February 15, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Thursdays, I will be reviewing Lookwell, which aired on NBC in 1991. The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!

Adam West is an actor who solves crimes …. kind of.

Episode 1.1 “Lookwell”

(Dir by E.W. Swackhamer, originally aired on July 28th, 1991)

Ty Lookwell (Adam West) was once the biggest star in Hollywood.

Well, maybe not the biggest star. But, in the 70s, he did have his own cop show. It was called …. Banacek? Mannix? No, that’s not it. Oh …. BRANNIGAN! Ty Lookwell starred on a show called Brannigan and he was even given his own honorary police badge in 1972. It was presented to him at a ceremony in Television City.

However, nearly 20 years later, things have changed. Brannigan is no longer on the air and Ty Lookwell has been reduced to wearing a wig and a leather jacket in an attempt to get a role in a revival of Happy Days. (He not only doesn’t get the role but he doesn’t even get to audition.) When he returns to his home, he is informed that his favorite hairspray has been discontinued (“Those fools!”) and that all the messages on his machine are for his nephew. Kevin Costner calls looking for Lookwell’s nephew. Francis Ford Coppola calls for Lookwell’s nephew and leaves a message in which he promises to call back. No one calls for Ty Lookwell.

Lookwell, however, still has a steady gig teaching an acting class and his students not only look up to him but also help him out whenever he decides that there’s a crime he has to solve. This apparently happens frequently as Lookwell takes his honorary badge very seriously.

“Remember how we talked about how you don’t have to come around here?” Detective Kennery (Ron Frazier) asks Lookwell at one point.

The pilot follows Lookwell as he investigates a series of car thefts. Helping him out is his favorite student, Jason (played by future director Todd Field). Lookwell’s investigative techniques are not particularly complicated. He puts on a disguise and attempts to go undercover. It never quite works, largely because everyone that Lookwell meets is smarter than Lookwell. Lookwell’s attempt to disguise himself as a Grand Prix racer fails because the security guard takes one look at him and sees that he’s obviously not a Grand Prix racer. His attempt to conduct a stakeout on a fancy diner is nearly thwarted by his bizarre decision to disguise himself as a hobo. His attempt to go undercover at a garage is thwarted by the other mechanics misunderstanding his leading questions.

(“Who beat you up, Mr. Lookwell?” his students ask at the start of class.)

As the investigation continues, Jason wonders if they’re just wasting time.

“You do not waste time,” Lookwell corrects him, “Time wastes you.”

Lookwell was written by Conan O’Brian and Robert Smigel, long before either one of them became famous, and the humor is definitely the humor of a generation who grew up watching network television, especially the cop shows of the 70s and the 80s. While the dialogue is clever and definitely funny, it’s really Adam West who makes the pilot work. West delivers all of his line with such conviction and confidence that it doesn’t matter that he only plays a peripheral role in solving the case and, in fact, usually makes things worse for everyone involved. As played by West, Lookwell is so confident in his abilities and so blithely unaware of his limitations that it’s hard not to admire his spirit.

Unfortunately, the spirit was not admired by NBC and Lookwell only aired once. But it has since developed a cult following. Adam West described it as being his favorite of the various shows that he did. I enjoyed the pilot, though I do think the premise was perhaps a bit too thin to support an actual series. (It would have made a great recurring SNL bit, though.) Thanks to YouTube, everyone can now watch what NBC passed up.

Book Review: The War For Late Night by Bill Carter

Posted on January 7, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Remember when Conan O’Brien was the host of The Tonight Show?

It occurred back in 2009, back when the Shattered Lens was just starting out. After hosting the show for 17 years, Jay Leno stepped down as host of The Tonight Show. Though he was never popular with critics and I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who actually made it a point to watch him, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno was the number one in the late night ratings. David Letterman may have had more cultural cachet but Jay Leno was the host that most late night viewers were watching. Other comedians may have mocked Leno for his safe and non-controversial hosting but, obviously, it worked.

When Leno first left The Tonight Show, no one was surprised by Leno’s retirement because he had announced it five years earlier. In 2004, NBC renewed Leno’s contract as host with the condition that Leno would step down in 2009 and that Conan O’Brien would become the new host of the Tonight Show. The fear was that, otherwise, Conan would switch to another network and compete directly against Leno. At the time, Leno privately complained that he felt he was being fired but, publicly, he announced that he was happy to hand the show over to Conan in 2009. In words that would come back to haunt him, Leno announced, “It’s yours, buddy!”

In 2009, Conan took over last night while Jay Leno got his own primetime talk show, which aired every weeknight. It was an odd arrangement, one that was undertaken to keep Leno from going to another network. (NBC was apparently very paranoid about its talent hopping to to other networks.) Not only did NBC have to rearrange its schedule to make room for 5 days of Leno but many observers suspected that the whole thing was essentially some Machiavellian network scheme to eventually once again make Leno host of The Tonight Show while destroying Conan’s viability as a potential competitor. Regardless of why NBC did what they did, it didn’t work out. Leno’s primetime ratings quickly tanked. So did that ratings for The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien. O’Brien’s supporters said that Conan’s bad ratings were due to Jay being a bad lead-in. Jay’s supporters said that Conan just wasn’t ready for the 11:30 slot and that Conan’s ratings had been going down for a while. And while most television critics sided with Conan, NBC obviously sided with Jay, who had always been viewed as being a good and loyal company man.

NBC’s solution to the problem made about as much sense as any of their other actions. It was announced that Jay would have a new late night show, a thirty-minute variety show that would air before The Tonight Show. The Tonight Show would be bumped back by half-an-hour. O’Brien objected to getting stuck with a later start time but it turned out that his contract gave NBC the right to move the show back by 30 minutes. O’Brien resigned, writing an open letter to “the people of Earth,” in which he said that he would not take part in the “destruction” of The Tonight Show. Depending on which side you were on, Conan was either being heroic or overdramatic.

How big was this story? It was so big that even I knew about it, despite the fact that I didn’t watch any of the late night shows. It was one of the first big cultural conflicts that I can remember blowing up on Twitter. Twitter was almost 100% pro-Conan. Meanwhile, Leno’s supporters tended to be older, they tended to not have much use for social media, and they tended to be a bit more pragmatic. Jerry Seinfeld sided with Jay, saying that the only problem was that Conan wasn’t getting the ratings. Jimmy Kimmel very publicly sided with Conan. David Letterman let everyone know that they were now seeing the Jay Leno that he had always known.

It was a mess and no one came out of it untouched. Leno returned to hosting The Tonight Show but his reputation with now irreversibly tarnished. Conan moved to TBS and, while the critics respected him and his fans continued to love him, he never quite regained the cultural prominence that he had before The Tonight Show debacle. Most of all, NBC came out of it looking worse than ever. The entire reason for Jay’s early retirement announcement was to avoid conflict and controversy. Needless to say, that didn’t work out.

Looking over it all, one can’t help but wonder how a group of industry professionals, people with television experience who were paid to know what they were doing, could have so dramatically screwed everything up.

Bill Carter’s The War For Late Night is probably the best place to look for the answer. Published in 2010, mere months after Leno replaced Conan as the host of The Tonight Show, The War For Late Night provides an insider’s look at what went down in the corporate offices of NBC as well as what was happening in both the O’Brien and the Leno camps. Carter also examines what was going on with the other late night hosts while O’Brien and Leno was battling for the future of Late Night. The book deals with the unsuccessful attempt to blackmail Letterman (remember that?) and also provides an interesting reminder of how likable Jimmy Kimmel was before he got all self-important.

Though Carter appears to be Team Coco, the book itself is relatively even-handed. Leno is not portrayed a monster and Conan is not transformed into a saint. (Indeed, the books makes clear that the real villains were the NBC executives, who first screwed Leno by forcing him out when he was at the top of the ratings and then screwed Conan by refusing to give his version of The Tonight Show time to grow.) Instead, the book suggests that the main reason for the conflict between the two hosts was that Leno and Conan had two very differing ways of looking at their job as host of The Tonight Show. Jay viewed it as a job. Conan viewed it as almost a holy calling. In the end, Jay was incapable of understanding why Conan was so upset about what was happening while Conan couldn’t understand how anyone couldn’t be upset. After reading Carter’s book, it seems like a foregone conclusion that NBC would side with Jay. Management always prefers an employee who doesn’t make waves compared to one who does.

Towards the end of the book, when David Letterman tries to arrange for Conan to appear in a Super Bowl commercial with him and Jay, Conan snaps that Letterman doesn’t understand how upset Conan still is over what happened. Conan says that he will never be ready to laugh about it and, having read The War For Late Night, you don’t doubt it. The book succeeds at both explaining what happened and also revealing the human beings behind the conflict. In the end, even if you understand Jay’s position, your heart breaks for Conan.

Conan’s Free Bird Farewell

Posted on January 23, 2010 by Arleigh

The end of an era just occurred at 12:35am on January 23, 2010. An era of Conan O’Brien on NBC late-night. First 16 years hosting The Late Night Show after the departure of David Letterman for his own late-night talk show on CBS. 2009 marked Conan’s inheriting the coveted Tonight Show from a “retiring” Jay Leno. This next stage of Conan’s career was suppose to last a long time, but instead a major blunder of immense proportions by NBC head honcho Jeff Zucker has ended Conan’s tenure as the Tonight Show host after only 7 months.

Much has been said, argued and screamed about the circumstances which has led to Conan O’Brien’s leaving the Tonight Show. People can find most of those easily on the net. This shall be my brief farewell and see you soon to someone who has made late night fun to watch. Wherever he lands (FOX, Comedy Central, internet show, etc.) here’s to hoping he does so to continue what he did best those 17 years as an NBC late-night talk show host: be funny, irreverent and, most importantly, down-to-earth.

7 months to wait til we find out where Conan shall land.

Conan O’Brien Memo to NBC: WTF?!

Posted on January 12, 2010 by Arleigh

It looks like Conan O’Brien doesn’t want to make it easy for NBC’s plan to try and salvage it’s late-night line-up. With the Jay Leno Show now being removed from it’s primetime 10pm time slot NBC trying to compound it’s multimillion-dollar mistake with a plan to move it to 11:35pm with Conan’s The Tonight Show pushed back an extra half hour to12:05am. Jimmy Fallon’s show gets pushed back the same amount of time. This is like someone living in an apartment complex where their room is on fire and instead of calling the fire department they decide the solution it to move to the room next door.

I don’t seem to be the only who thinks this way as Conan O’Brien has decided this is a plan that’s retarded on so many levels no matter how one looked at it. He’s pretty much giving the plan two thumbs down. Will he resign and bolt from The Tonight Show in protest to how he has been treated? As the article below states he has 60 million reasons to stay one and force NBC’s hand. NBC should either just scap any plan to prop up Jay Leno on any show and support O’Brien’s show 100 percent while at the same time uncuffing him to actually do things his way. Or they could remove O’Brien from his hosting duties, put Leno back in there and give O’Brien the penalty fee and wave bye-bye to him as he bolts with those many reasons mentioned above to another network.

I think it’s unfair that O’Brien has been treated the way he has been. He’s not getting the chance to prove he can do The Tonight Show. Leno wasn’t such a big hit when he first took over as host from Johnny Carson, but in time he got into his groove and succeeded. I’m really hoping O’Brien sticks to his guns no matter what happens. If he gets let go then I am sure he’ll get calls from many networks thinking of doing it’s own late-night talk show and giving him free reign. I say HBO should pick him up and just let him go crazy on his own late-night show. O’Brien may not get the same sort of contract from HBO he got from NBC, but by then he’d have gotten a 60million severance check from the Dodo Network so money won’t be an issue. Who knows, I may even get HBO again if that happened.

Source: http://www.deadline.com/hollywood/conan-obrien-resigning-tonight-show/