Harry Johnson | Through the Shattered Lens

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 King of the Building, which aired on CBS in 1987. The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!

This week, Richard Lewis is a doorman.

Episode 1.1 “Pilot”

(Dir by James Komack, originally aired on July 31st, 1987)

Joey (Richard Lewis) is the …. KING OF THE BUILDING!

Well, no. Actually, he’s just a doorman for a Park Avenue apartment building. The owner of the building, Mr. Jamison (Simon Jones), is the real king of the building but the elderly residents all prefer to deal with Joey. That’s because Mr. Jamison is greedy and venal and always looking for an excuse to kick people out of their apartments. His latest target is Mrs. Gladstone (Billie Bird), who has dementia and thinks that Joey is her son, Elliot.

(Mrs. Gladstone has a sitcom form of dementia, where all of her mistakes are quirky and she never loses her temper or gets paranoid or disappears for hours on end.)

When Mr. Jamison brings in a social worker (Lora Staley) to try to get Mrs. Gladatone ruled incompetent, Joey and the other workers at the building conspire to make it appear as if all of Mrs. Gladstone’s confusion is due to Mr. Jamison keeping her apartment in disrepair. The social worker declares that Mrs, Gladstone will be fine as long as Joey is working at the building.

(Personally, I would think this would lead to Mr. Jamison just firing Joey so he could then get rid of Mrs. Gladstone but that doesn’t seem to occur to him. Of course, Joey also mentions that he’s a member of a union so maybe Joey has his job for life. I hope it pays well.)

This was a pilot for a series that presumably would have followed Joey as he protected the elderly residents from Jamison. It only aired once and it didn’t lead to a series. Watching the pilot, it’s easy to see why. Richard Lewis, who passed away two days ago, was a comedian who was acclaimed and famous for his ability to comedically explore what it meant to be truly neurotic. There’s not really anything neurotic or obsessive or even particularly interesting about Joey. He gets nervous and he complains a lot but, in the end, he’s just a blue collar doorman who doesn’t like his boss. Lewis is likable but miscast in the role. Watching him, one gets the feeling that Lewis was holding back all of his natural instincts to play the rather subdued and sensible Joey.

Despite the failed pilot, Richard Lewis would continue to appear in television and moves for the rest of his life and he became a bit of a cultural institution. On Curb Your Enthusiasm, he often played the voice of reason to Larry David and proved that one could play sensible without losing his edge. And, of course, a generation will always remember him as King John.

Rest in peace, Richard Lewis.

Welcome to Late Night 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 Highway to Heaven, which aired on NBC from 1984 to 1989. The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi and several other services!

This week, Jonathan and Mark go country!

Episode 1.5 “Song of the Wild West”

(Dir by Victor French, originally aired on October 17th, 1984)

This week’s episode of Highway to Heaven has a country music theme as Mark’s car ends up breaking down outside of a country-western bar.

I have to admit that I had mixed feelings about this theme. Quite frankly, country music is not my type of music. As I’ve explained in the past, my musical tastes run the gamut from EDM to more EDM. Country music has just never really done much for me, though I’ve done a line dance or two.

That said, I grew up all over the Southwest. I live in Texas. I’m a city girl but I knw what it’s like to walk through the high grass on a humid day. I know what it’s like to be woken up at sunrise by the sound of a rooster. I’ve ridden horses. I once milked a cow but I really didn’t enjoy it at all. I know the country and I like the people who live out in the country and, though I’m meant to live in a city, I still feel a bit of nostalgia whenever I see a farmhouse or a muddy pickup truck. This episode did have a legitimate country feel, which I appreciated.

Jonathan actually had a handful of missions in this episode. First off, he had to help Trudy Swenson (Joan Kjar) win the bar back from Nick Claybourne (Clifton James), the blowhard who won the bar in a rigged poker game from Trudy’s husband. Secondly, he had to help gas station owner Tim Higgins (Jerry Hardin) come to terms with the musical ambitions of his teenage daughter, Sara (Michele Greene). And finally, he had to help Sara reunite with her mother, an alcoholic country music star named Pasty Maynard (Ronee Blakely). And he had to do all this while also working as a bartender at the bar. Not only did Jonathan have to solve everyone’s emotional problems but he had to convince the local drunk to drink a cup of coffee as opposed to ordering another shot.

Mark doesn’t do much this week and I assume that’s because Victor French also directed the episode. As a result, everything pretty much falls on Jonathan and it almost feels as if he’s been given too much to do. Throughout the episode, he’s rushing back and forth between Tim, Trudy, and Patsy. Add to that the fact that the action stops for a minutes at a time so that Patsy and Sara can perform and you end up with an episode that feels a bit overstuffed.

This episode didn’t really work for me. I could appreciate the fact that the episode did a good job capturing the country milieu but country music just doesn’t do much for me. And this episode had a lot of country music.