Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Mondays, I will be reviewing Hang Time, which ran on NBC from 1995 to 2000. The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!
Hang Time! I’ll always remember my friends at Hang Time!
Imagine California Dreams if it took place in Indiana and if, instead of music, everyone was obsessed with basketball. That’s Hang Time!
Produced by Peter Engel, Hang Time followed the adventures of the Deering High School basketball team. Somewhat notoriously, the cast regularly changed from season to season, with only two members of the cast sticking with the show for every season. The first season featured:
David Hanson as Chris Atwater, the star of Deering High’s basketball team,
Daniella Deutscher as Julie Connor, the newest member of the team,
Chad Gabriel as Danny Mellon, the quirky member of the team who had a crush on Julie,
Megan Parlen as Mary Beth Pepperton, the materialistic head cheerleader who was dating Chris,
Robert Michael Ryan as Earl Hatfield, the dumb country boy who loved basketball and worked as a mall security guard,
Christian Belanvis as Michael Maxwell, who had a lot of talent and an ego to match,
Hillary Tuck as Samantha Morton, the hyper organized team manager,
and
Reggie Theus as Bill Fuller, a former pro player who returned to his old high school to coach the team.
Season one of Hang Time also had an absolutely horrid theme song, one that was luckily abandoned after the season ended.
Episode 1.1 “The Pilot”
(Directed by Howard Murray, Originally aired on September 9th, 1995)
Oh my God, this was bad….
I mean, pilots are usually bad because the characters aren’t as nuanced as they will later be and the initial storyline usually tries to hard to establish everyone’s role in the show’s hierarchy. Veteran retro television viewers know better than to expect anything good from an episode with the dreaded title of “The Pilot.”
That said, the pilot of Hang Time was really, really bad. The show itself was never exactly good but it did eventually develop an oft-kilter charm. But none of that charm is present in the first episode of the show.
Julie Connor (Daniella Deutscher) transfers to Deering High and tries out for the school’s basketball team. A girl playing basketball!? GASP! Anyway, Julie turns out to be a slightly above average basketball player and wins a place on the team and …. well, that’s about it. It would probably seem like more of an accomplishment if it appeared that there was any real competition when it came to getting on the team. Instead, only a handful of people seem to be interested in playing basketball and at least a few of them seem to be …. well, kind of short.
I understand that Reggie Theus was a former basketball player-turned-actor. Judging from this pilot, as an actor, he was a very good athlete.
Episode 1.2 “Trouble in Paradise”
(Directed by Howard Murray, Originally aired on September 16th, 1995)
“You should be home, baking a Cake!” a drunk basketball fan yells at Julie when she and Chris attend a pro basketball game. Julie challenges the jerk to a game. Chris tries to maintain calm. Unfortunately, it gets both Julie and Chris on TV, which leads to Mary Beth and Danny getting jealous.
Bleh. This was a dumb episode. Mary Beth, who doesn’t care about basketball, was the only character to whom I could relate.
The first two episodes of Hang Time felt like California Dreams, without the music. Hang Time would eventually develop a style of its own, with Megan Parlen especially proving herself to be a capable comedic actress. But that style really isn’t present in much of the first season.
Next week: The Deering Tornadoes finally play a game!
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Sundays, I will be reviewing the made-for-television movies that used to be a primetime mainstay. Today’s film is 1984’s City Killer. It can be viewed on YouTube!
Leo Kalb (Terrence Knox) has come to Chicago. In many ways, Leo would appear to have a lot going for him. He’s intelligent. He’s reasonably good looking. He served honorably in the military. Despite his intelligence, he comes across as being a bit of an innocent in the big city. He’s got a good job, working as an electrician. It might not be glamorous work but there’s always something appealing about a man who knows how to work with his hands.
Unfortunately, all of those appealing qualities are negated by the fact that Leo’s a loon. The main reason he’s come to Chicago is to stalk Andrea McKnight (Heather Locklear). The main reason that Andrea moved to Chicago was to get away from Leo. Like Leo, Andrea has found some success in Chicago but that’s all turned upside down when Leo calls her and says that he wants to get back together. Andrea doesn’t want anything to do with Leo so Leo starts blowing up buildings.
That’s right, he starts blowing up buildings. He also announces that he wants the city of Chicago to pay him an exorbitant amount of money. He wants a helicopter to fly him to the airport. He wants to take an airplane to South America, where his bomb-building skills will presumably be put to good use by the The Shining Path. And he wants Andrea to come with him. As become clear, the money and the plane are really just red herrings. Mostly, he just wants Andrea. The press calls him the Love Bomber.
Lt. Eckford (Gerald McRaney) is assigned to try to negotiate with Leo and also to keep an eye on Andrea. Needless to say, Andrea takes one look at Lt. Eckford’s powerful mustache and she starts to fall in love with him. Eckford, meanwhile, starts to fall Andrea, even though he’s a bit older than her and there’s a paternal element to the way that he talks to her that just makes the whole thing feel kind of icky. (That said, if a mad bomber is blowing up the city just because you won’t date him, it’s perhaps understandable that you would fall for the first person who could not only provide protection but who also didn’t try to make you feel guilty about what was going on.) Leo senses that Andrea and Eckford are falling in love and he becomes determined to blow up even more stuff.
City Killer is a bit of ridiculous film. The main problem is that the viewer is asked to believe that, even though Leo is the most wanted man in Chicago and is dominating all the headlines, he could still safely wander around the city and wire building to explode without anyone noticing. The film presents itself as being a police procedural but one gets the feeling that police must be incredibly incompetent for Leo to successfully blow up so many buildings. That said, Gerald McRaney is a properly sturdy hero and Terrence Knox is convincingly unhinged as Leo, begging Andrea to love him even while threatening to blow up the very building on which she’s standing. Heather Locklear doesn’t got to do much, other than answer the phone and look upset whenever a building explodes, but she does it well. As a veteran TV actress, she knew how to embrace the melodrama and, when you’re appearing in a film like City Killer, that’s the best thing you can do.
Yay! Avril’s back! The song is called Bois Lie and it’s about how boys lie. But Machine Gun Kelly says that girls lie too. One good thing about being a star is that you can still get away with singing songs like this even when you’re nearly 40.
As for this video, it was shot during Machine Gun Kelly’s Mainstream Sellout Tour. This is one of those “look how much fun we have on tour” videos. To be honest, both the song and the video have kind of a Degrassi feel to it. So, if you ever wondered what it was like when Ashley and Craig went on tour together, this video is probably a good indication. Of course, I imagine Ashley and Craig would end the performance by having a massive fight onstage and breaking up every night.
I spent most of this week watching old TNBC shows from the 90s. That was my choice and stand by it.
Allo Allo (PBS, Sunday Night)
Michelle needed to send microfilm to London and the cafe needed to prepare for a parade. Meanwhile, with the outcome of the war now becoming obvious, the Germans made plans to assassinate Hitler and escape from France.
PBS is currently showing the final episodes of Allo Allo. There’s only two episodes left and, to be honest, it’s kind of obvious that the show itself was more than ready to be wrapped up by the time it started its 9th series. Watching this week’s episode, it was hard to shake the feeling that everyone appeared to have just been going through the motions. (I recently read that Gorden Kaye, who played Rene, was recovering from a serious car accident, which perhaps explains why he seems a bit more subdued than usual.) Still, Officer Crabtree’s “Good moaning” will always make me laugh, as will Michelle’s “I shall say this only once.”
The Bachelorette (ABC, Monday Night)
The men tell all!
They didn’t tell enough as far as I’m concerned. They should have just sent all the other men home and interviewed Meatball for two hours.
Big Brother (CBS and Paramount+, Everyday)
I’ve been writing about Big Brother at the Big Brother Blog! This week, Kyle was voted out after having his game exposed by Michael and Brittany. Because Kyle’s plan was to target all of the black players because he was convinced they were going to form their own Cookout-style alliance, Kyle was worried that he would be booed when he left the house. I’m not sure if the audience booed him or not. It actually sounded like production abruptly turned off the audience microphones as soon as Kyle stepped through the front door. Julie Chen Moonves got to pretend that she was a serious journalist during her seven-minute exit interview with Kyle. Then Julie cheerfully announced that Zingbot would be on Sunday’s show.
Uncle Jesse decided to skip the Tanner Family Reunion because he needed to work on a song. Michelle got mad and, as usual, everyone had to rearrange their lives to placate that demented little troll doll. “Uncle Jesse’s not nice nice anymore!” Michelle said. No, Uncle Jesse has a job because he’s a freaking adult. Considering that Jesse has spent the majority of the show either mooching off Danny or Becky, everyone should have been encouraging him to actually do some work on his own for once.
This was followed by a terrifying episode in which Joey auditioned for a children’s show with the help of a big chipmunk doll.
Hang Time (YouTube)
I have been watching episode of this show and scheduling reviews. Look for my review of the first two episodes on Monday! The main thing that I’ve learned from watching Hang Time is that I don’t know a thing about basketball.
Inspector Lewis (YouTube)
On Wednesday, I watched another episode of Inspector Lewis. Lewis and Hathaway were investigating a series of murders surrounding a fake medium. Hathaway spent most of the show wearing a neck brace and contemplating the mysteries of existence. Lewis, as usual, was much more pragmantic in his approach.
The Office (Weekday Evening, FaveTV)
I watched two episodes on Wednesday. First, I watched the second part of the episode in which Pam and Jim got married in Niagara. This was followed by the notoriously silly episode in which Michael became convinced that a pushy insurance agent was a member of the Mafia.
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Saturdays, I will be reviewing California Dreams, which ran on NBC from 1992 to 1996. The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!
In 1992, with Saved By The Bell coming to a close, Peter Engel attempted to duplicate that show’s magic with California Dreams! The story of a bunch of teens who start their own band, California Dreams was basically Saved By The Bell if every episode had centered around the Zack Attack.
The first season of California Dreams centered around Matt Garrison (Brent Gore) and his younger sister, Jenny (Heidi Noelle Lenhart). Matt played guitar and was the band’s lead singer. Jenny played keyboards and sang. Tiffani (Kelly Packard) was the surfer who played bass. Tony (William James Jones) played drums. Sly Winkle (Michael Cade) managed the band. Mr. Garrison (Michael Cutt) and Mrs. Garrison (Gail Ramey) supported Matt’s ambitions. The youngest Garrison child was Dennis (Ryan O’Neill). The Garrisons were a pretty boring family and they would be phased out after this season.
Now, sing it….
Episode 1.1 “Battle of the Bands”
(Directed by Don Barnhart, originally aired on September 12th, 1992)
The story of California’s blandest garage band got its start with a simple episode about a Battle of the Bands. As the episode begins, California Dreams has already been formed and apparently already has fans. We’re starting in medias res and there’s certainly nothing wrong with that. In fact …. wait a minute! Where’s Jake!? Where’s Sam!? Where’s Mark Winkle? WHERE’S LORENA!?
(Lorena is the character to whom I always relate.)
Sorry, none of those characters are present in season one. Of the classic California Dreams line-up, only Sly, Tony, and Tiffani were present at the start and, during the first season, all three of them were overshadowed by the Garrisons. Though it’s easy to forget, the band was originally formed by Matt Garrison and his younger sister, Jenny. Matt Garrison is quick to tell everyone that he’s rock and roll. In this episode, he talks about how much he loves obscure bands like The Beatles and U2. I wonder if he’s ever heard of the Beach Boys. Needless to say, without Jake and Lorena, the first season of CaliforniaDreams is pretty bland.
Anyway, in this episode, the California Dreams enter a Battle of the Bands contest but they find themselves competing against their hated rivals, Bradley and the Billionaires. We don’t get to hear Bradley’s music but the band looks pretty sharp in their old club jackets. GO BRADLEY! When the Battle of the Bands ends in a tie, this means that California Dreams and the Billionaires will be competing in a run-off for …. well, I’m not sure what the prize is. Probably an Applebee’s gift card or something.
(Actually, I just rewatched the episode. The prize was $500, the majority of which would probably be spent at Applebee’s.)
Sly decides that Matt should date one of the judges, Angela. Matt doesn’t think that he and Angela have anything in common but then Angela reveals that she also likes the Beatles. ANOTHER BEATLES FAN IN CALIFORNIA!? WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THAT COMING!? Can Matt tell her the truth about why he asked her out and still win the contest? Who cares? Bradley is clearly a better musician. That said, the Dreams win the contest because the show is named after them. Angela forgives Matt after he gives her tickets to a big concert. “Beethoven!” Angela says, looking at the tickets. Sweetie, he’s not actually going to be there.
Meanwhile, Tony decides to get an earring but freaks out when he sees the needle. Wimp.
Episode 1.2 “Beat Of His Own Drum”
(Directed by Don Barnhart, originally aired on September 19th, 1992)
Tony has finally written a song that he’s proud of but it turns out that his father doesn’t care about the band. So, Tony tries to win his father’s love by dropping out of the band and playing football. Eventually, Tony fakes an injury to get out of playing football and rejoins the band.
Meanwhile, Matt’s creepy little brother develops a crush on Tiffani. It’s extremely awkward and uncomfortable to watch.
It all works out in the end. Tony’s dad begrudgingly comes to a California Dreams performance and sees Tony perform his song. While Tony sings, we get to see a music video that I guess is supposed to be taking place in Tony’s head. Tony sings and dances with an umbrella while Matt hops around in a green suit and Jenny poses with two ventriloquist dummies. It’s the type of thing that makes O-Town look edgy. But no matter! Tony wins his father’s support. Yay!
Elvis the movie has much in common with Elvis the entertainer.
Both the movie and the entertainer (who is played, in the film, by Austin Butler) start strong, fall apart at the end, and leave you with a tear in one of your eyes once it’s all over.
Both the movie and the entertainer are big and unapologetically excessive yet also undeniably earnest as well. Considering the amount of music that appears in the film (from both Elvis Presley and others), it’s significant that the final song played is In The Ghetto, which features Elvis at both his most naïve, his most sincere, and at what some of his critics would call his most offensive.
Both the movie and the entertainer are occasionally shallow but both of them want to be about more than just screaming fans, libidinal desires, and radio-friendly songs. While Elvis (played by Austin Butler) watches the funeral of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the assassination of Bobby Kennedy and wonders how he should respond, the movie tries to make sense of and find a deeper meaning in the world’s fascination with kitschy Americana. The movie suggests that Elvis spent much of the 60s on the outside looking in and the same could be said of Australian director Baz Luhrmann and his attempts to observe and capture the contradictions inherent in American culture. Luhrmann’s kinetic style, which is one of those things that viewers will either love or hate, serves not just to capture the frantic energy of the late 50s and the 60s but it also allows him to remain detached from the world that he’s recreating. It’s his way of reminding us that, though the story may be about a real person and a real moment in time, it’s still just a movie and, even during the film’s most intimate moments, the audience is still on the outside looking in. We are the outsiders peeping in on the insiders, watching through a locked window that allows us to observe but not to interact. This is history as a fever dream.
Finally, both Elvis the movie and Elvis the entertainer face the same dilemma. What to do about Colonel Tom Parker? Tom Parker was the former sideshow carny-turned-promoter who took credit for discovering Elvis and who managed his career. Of course, he wasn’t really a colonel. His name wasn’t Tom Parker. And despite his claims to the contrary, he wasn’t born in West Virginia. No one, not even the film’s version of Elvis, seemed to be sure who Col. Parker really was. Parker is typically cast as the villain in the story of Elvis’s self-destruction. He made a lot of money off of Elvis but he also put Elvis is bad movies and trapped him in a Las Vegas residency. He made sure that Elvis got the pills that he needed to keep performing.
In the film, Parker narrates the story from his deathbed and angrily denounces anyone who would say that he was responsible for Elvis’s death. When he talks about the gamble he took on Elvis, Parker’s seen staggering through a casino while still wearing a hospital gown. Parker is played by Tom Hanks, who wears a prosthetic nose and speaks in an almost unintelligible accent. My first reaction to Hanks’s performance was to think, “Could they not have gotten Christoph Waltz for this role?” There’s nothing subtle about Hanks’s performance but then again, there’s never been anything subtle about Luhrmann as a filmmaker. As the film progressed, I started to better appreciate what Luhrmann was doing with the character and I think I even came to understand his motives for casting Hanks. If Austin Butler’s Elvis is meant to represent the optimism and the hope of America then it makes sense that he would be shadowed by the dark side of kitsch and there’s nothing more kitschy then casting an actor like Tom Hanks as the Devil. As an actor, Hanks is often casts in roles where he epitomizes old-fashioned integrity. By casting him as Col. Parker, Luhrmann challenges our expectations of who Tom Hanks can be in much the same way that Elvis challenged expectations of how music could be performed. This is a film that is fully aware of the irony of Elvis coming to symbolize America while his career was being managed and his image carefully constructed by a man who entered the country illegally and who couldn’t reveal his real name or his real biography. If Tom Hanks sometimes seems lost in the role of Col. Parker, it helps to remind us that Parker himself was often lost in America. If Tom Hanks is usually cast as the epitome of American exceptionalism, his casting here reminds us that Col. Parker was a man who achieved the American dream and who came to represent the American nightmare.
In the end, it’s Austin Butler’s performance as Elvis that keeps the movie from spinning out of control. Even while surrounded by Luhrmann’s stylistic touches and Tom Hanks’s bizarre performance, Austin Butler keeps the film grounded in reality by turning Elvis into a human being, a talented singer who loves his success but who also fears that he’ll never truly be worthy of it. Butler gives a performance that is full of sexual swagger but which also finds room for the small moments in which Elvis reverts back to being a lost child who feels like he needs someone to look after him. Interestingly enough, there aren’t many scenes in the film in which Elvis and Col. Parker show much affection toward each other. Instead, each feels like he needs the other to survive and, to a certain extent, they each resent the other because of that dependence. Austin Butler’s Elvis is the king when he’s on stage but, when he’s off-stage, he’s just another outsider looking in. Elvis becomes a symbol of America but the American establishment is only willing to fully accept him after he’s gone. If nothing else, this role should make a star out of Austin Butler. Before he played Elvis, Butler was best known for playing murderer Tex Watson is another fever dream of history, Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. In Elvis, the title character retreats into his hotel room after reading about the murders that Tex Watson, under the direction of Charles Manson, took part in. As both a film and a character, Elvis understands that society is just as quick to destroy its celebrities as it is to idolize them.
Elvis is a flawed film, make no mistake. How the viewer reacts to it will largely depend on how much tolerance that viewer has for Luhrmann’s flamboyant style. At 2 hours and 38 minutes, it feels a bit overlong and, despite all of Luhrmann’s stylistic flourishes, the final fourth of the film is a conventional “rock star in decline” story. (In one way or another, these flaws are present in almost all of Luhrmann’s films, allowing one to wonder when a flaw ceases to become a flaw and instead becomes a directorial trademark.) Elvis is undeniably a Baz Luhrmann film but, fortunately, it’s also an Austin Butler film. It’s a big, sprawling, overwhelming, sometimes annoying and often very moving piece of cultural history. It’s a work of pure, unapologetic showmanship. Elvis probably would have lost interest after the first hour but Col. Parker would have loved it.
In this 1971 Sid Davis-produced educational film, young teens learn that going to jail isn’t as much fun as they might think. After exploring all of the crimes that are on the rise (vandalism, shop lifting, etc.), the film follows Jerry as he gets arrested, gets booked, and gets shown to a cell. As is typical with Sid Davis’s films, there’s a narrator present to let Jerry know that he’s ruined his life.
I’ve never been arrested but I know a few people who have been and, just from what they’ve told me, it appears that Jerry was lucky enough to go to one of the nicer jails. As for the rest of the film, it’s a history nerd’s dream. Just look at those clothes! Just look at the hair! Just look at 1971!
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a new feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Fridays, I will be reviewing One World, which ran on NBC from 1998 to 2001. The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!
The Cast of One World
City Guys wasn’t the only “edgy” show that Peter Engel produced for TNBC. There was also …. ONE WORLD!
One World told the story of a Miami-based multicultural foster family. Dave Blake (Michael Toland) was former baseball player turned high school coach. His wife, Karen (Elizabeth Morehead), was an art teacher. They owned a nice big house and they adopted troubled teens as a hobby.
Among the members of their family:
Ben Blake (Bryan Kirkwood) was a recovering alcoholic who played in a band and dated a lot of girls.
Jane (Arroyn Lloyd) was the latest addition to the family. She wore a leather jacket, liked zombie movies, and had an extensive criminal record.
Neal Smith (Harvey Silver) was the former gang member turned honors student.
Marci Blake (Alicia Reyes) was obsessed with making money.
Sui Blake (Michelle Krusiec) was obsessed with boys and fashion.
Cray Blake (Brandon Baker) was the youngest of the family.
Together, they were living in One World!
Episode 1.1 “Hurricane Jane”
(Directed by Chuck Vinson, originally aired on September 12th, 1998)
The very first episode of One World opens with Sui bragging to her stepparents that she set a new record while running. “Were the cops chasing you again?” Stepdad asks, while the audience laughs. Hence, from the very first joke, it’s established that the Blakes aren’t very good foster parents. Indeed, it’s interesting how many future episodes will revolve around the Blake children getting arrested for doing something and then freaking out about the inevitable visit from a social worker. As Mrs. Blake puts it in this episode, “We didn’t want normal kids. We wanted the worst kids we could find!”
(That said, none of the kids really seem to be that bad, despite all of their talk about how they were once homeless criminals. This is a Peter Engel production, after all.)
New arrival Jane joins the household and immediately pegs them as being “The Brady Bunch. Jane announces that she’s not staying and tells her stepsiblings to drop dead. “Once you get to know me, you won’t want me around!” Jane declares, “No one ever has and no one ever will!” Jane is even more upset to learn that The Warehouse (“the most happening under-21 club in Miami,” as her stepbrother, Ben, puts it) doesn’t serve alcohol. Fortunately, a hurricane blows into town and Jane is forced to stick around and bond with her new family. In other words, the hurricane was God’s way of forcing Jane to stay with her new family and pursue her obvious crush on Ben.
The hurricane also allows Marci a chance to make some money off of other people’s suffering. She hoards supplies so that she can sell them after the disaster. That’s actually not a bad business plan but you really do have to wonder if the Blakes realize that they’re raising a family of sociopaths. That said, Marci does have a sudden change of hearts and ends up giving away everything that she’s hoarded.
As far as first episodes are concerned, this one wasn’t so bad. I liked Jane’s bad attitude and her anger, which brought a different energy to this episode from what you would typically expect from a Peter Engel production. And I related to Sui and her appreciation of the better things in life. That said, I don’t know if I would have willingly gone out in a hurricane to look for anyone who wasn’t a cat.
Episode 1.2 “What’s In A Name?”
(Directed by Chuck Vinson, originally aired on September 19th, 1998)
“The next kid we get is going to be kosher!” Dave Blake announces when he discovers that all of the bacon has been eaten before he gets a chance to have anyone.
Wow, Dave, way to only think about yourself!
In the second episode of One World, the Blakes formally adopt Neal but Neal has to decide whether to to change his last name from Smith to Blake. Neal decides that he’s happy to be a part of the Blake family but he still wants to hold onto his past by retaining his “Smith” name. This episode would have perhaps been more effective if Neal didn’t have the most common last name in the world.
In the show’s B-plot, Sui was dating a player on Dave’s baseball team. At first, Dave didn’t want Sui dating one of his players but then the player had a good game. “Now, I’m trying to figure out how you can date all of my players!” Dave says. Uhmm, okay, Dave. That’s not a creepy thing for a foster parent to say at all.
Will the Blakes be able to create he perfect family? Will Jane ever feel at home with the Brady Bunch? We shall find out next week …. maybe.
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a new feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Thursdays, I will be reviewing City Guys, which ran on NBC from 1997 to 2001. The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!
The Cast of City Guys
The year was 1997 and everyone loved TNBC. Well, not everyone. Actually, I imagine that most people over the age of 30 had no idea what TNBC was. But, if you were a kid in the 90s and the early aughts, you knew that Sunday morning was when NBC aired shows like Saved By The Bell,California Dreams, and Hang Time. Produced by Peter S. Engel, these shows all took place in an idealized teen world where everyone was pretty, the schools were always clean, and every problem could be resolved in 30 minutes.
But, in the early 90s, TNBC was struggling a bit. Saved By The Bell: The New Class was not as popular as the original Saved By The Bell and California Dreams had just ended. For his next show, Peter Engel decided to do something a bit edgier than the sitcoms for which he was best known. He came up with City Guys, a show set not in California or Hang Time‘s Indiana. Instead, City Guys would be set in New York and it would feature a multi-racial cast. It would feature two best friends, one black and one white. It would be relevant and edgy while still recycling the same plots that had already been done to death on Saved By The Bell and California Dreams!
It would be City Guys, a celebration of city people!
So, how edgy was City Guys?
Just check out the theme song!
They’re smart and streetwise! They’re the neat guys! They’re the City Guys! Roll with them!
Neat guys?
I can only imagine what that nickname did for their street cred.
Anyway, I admit that I coming across City Guys on Tubi made me feel just a little nostalgic for the days when I would randomly come across episodes of City Guys and Saved By The Bell playing in syndication so I decided to rewatch the show, which was perhaps a mistake because, so far, City Guys has not been as good as I remembered. In fact, it’s been pretty bad.
Just consider the first two episodes:
1.1 “New Kids”
(Directed by Frank Bonner, aired on September 6th, 1997)
It’s the first day of school at Bayside …. oh, sorry. My mistake. We’re not at Bayside and we’re not in Los Angeles. Instead, we are at Manhattan High and we are totally in New York. Don’t let the fact that the show was obviously filmed on the same sound stage as Saved By The Bell and California Dreams fool you. We are totally in the city!
The first episode of City Guys does what a typical first episode does. It introduces our main characters and portrays them as stereotypically as possible. Alberto (Dion Basco) is quickly established as being this show’s annoying sidekick when he rides up to the school on his bicycle and announces that his name is now “Al Rocket!” Dawn Tartikoff (Caitlin Mowery) is established as being the show’s annoying overachiever when she shows up in her first scene carrying a sign about saving the environment. Tina (Gina McClain) is the pretty model who looks down on everyone else and whose character is destined to be dropped from the show after this episode.
And then there’s Jamal (Wesley Jonathan) and Chris (Scott Whyte). Jamal is black and lower middle-class. Chris is white and rich. That’s pretty much all the characterization that the first episode bothers to give them. They’re both transfer students at Manny High. Jamal was kicked out of his last school for fighting but he explains that he was more of a “punching bag” than a fighter. Chris was kicked out of several schools and apparently “flooded the soccer field.” How exactly did he do that? That’s never explained but everyone still seems to be really impressed when they hear about it.
At first, Chris and Jamal don’t get along. Jamal thinks that Chris is a spoiled rich kid. Chris calls Jamal “homey the clown.” The studio audiences loves it, even while future viewers cringe. Jamal bets Chris $20 that he can’t get a date with Tina. The wise and no-nonsense principal, Ms. Noble (Marcella Lowery), decides that the best way to get these two to shape up is to force them to paint the new school mural.
Unfortunately, there’s a bit of a graffiti already on the wall. El-Train (Steven Daniel) has tagged the wall and he threatens to kill anyone who paints over it. In future episodes, El-Train would become a kind-hearted sidekick to the main characters and would serve largely as comic relief. In this episode, he’s the school bully who everyone fears. Jamal tries to avoid angering El-Train by painting around the tag. But then Jamal sabotages Chris’s attempt to date Tina so Chris paints over El-Train’s name because …. I guess Chris is trying to get Jamal killed? That seems like an overreaction.
Fortunately, Chris learns the errors of his ways and, when Jamal and El-Train have their inevitable fight on the roof of the school, Chris confesses that he was the one who did painted over El-Train’s name. Then Ms. Noble shows up and sends everyone back to class, except for El-Train who gets suspended and whose name is revealed to actually be Lionel. Chris and Jamal make fun of El-Train’s real name, no longer concerned about dying because Ms. Noble apparently has the power to magically quash all beefs.
Still, Ms. Noble isn’t going to just shrug off Chris’s attempt to get Jamal killed. She orders the two of them to work as co-editors of the “video yearbook.” Because, seriously, why shouldn’t the yearbook be used as a behavior modification experiment?
The end credits roll. I’m sure these neat guys will have all sorts of adventures over the next four years of high school!
1.2 “For The Love Of Mother”
(Directed by Frank Bonner, aired on September 13, 1997)
Immediately after the opening credits of the second episode of City Guys, it becomes clear that things have certainly changed from last week.
Chris and Jamal have gone from being weary acquaintances to best friends!
Ms. Noble now knows all of the students and speaks to them as if she’s known them for years!
Tina has vanished and been replaced, as Dawn’s best friend, by Cassidy (Marissa Dyan). Cassidy is just as blonde and pretty as Tina but the actress is a bit less abrasive!
El-Train is nowhere to be seen!
For that matter, neither is the video yearbook that Chris and Jamal are supposed to be working on. Instead, this episode centers around Jamal’s sudden proficiency as a keyboardist and Chris’s desire to have a closer relationship with his mom (played by a very chic Susan Anton). When Mrs. Anderson visits the school, she hears Jamal playing the keyboards that he’s just purchased from Al. Mrs. Anderson takes Jamal under her wing and even arranges for him to play at a fundraiser that she’s hosting for the school’s music department. Chris gets jealous because his mom promised to take him to an Eric Clapton concert on the same night of the fundraiser….
Wait …. Eric Clapton? In the year 1997, were teenagers really going crazy over Eric Clapton tickets? Maybe one can excuse Chris for being into Clapton because he’s supposed to be a rich outsider. But all of the other students at Manhattan High are just as excited as he is about the chance to see Eric Clapton perform live. (What 15 year-old in 1997 wouldn’t be excited about hearing Wonderful Tonight live!?) NBC certainly had its finger on the pulse of youth culture! Of course, the main reason why the students are so excited about Eric Clapton is because the middle-aged people who wrote and produced this show would have been excited about Eric Clapton. It’s an example of how City Guys, a show about young people growing up on the hard streets of New York City, was created by people who were neither young nor New Yorkers.
This episode of City Guys also features a Japanese cook, who, of course, has a temper, bows whenever anyone insults him, and who speaks heavily accented English. He’s portrayed as being such a stereotype that I’m surprised they didn’t have someone hit a gong every time he entered a room. City Guys was a show about how whites and blacks should get along but apparently, the message of respect and defying stereotypes didn’t extend to Asians.
Anyway, it all works out in the end. Jamal impresses all the old white people with his music. Chris gets over being jealous. Mrs. Anderson …. well, she remains the same.
So, that’s it for the first two episodes of City Guys. Will the show get better or was I led astray by nostalgia? Check here next Thursday for my thoughts on episodes three and four!
The 1970ish film Toomorrow tells the story of a group of students who are determined to make their way through art school despite not having much money. They do what they can to cut down on costs. For instance, they all live in one big, communal house. And even though they think that the protestors in the streets are totally groovy and happening in a far out way, they decline to really get involved with any of it because bail’s expensive.
(At least, that’s what I assume is going on in the protest scenes. This isn’t exactly the most coherent film ever made.)
The students also pay for college by forming their own band! Calling themselves Toomorrow, they make use of a new instrument called the Tonaliser! The Tonaliser sends out sonic vibrations that put everyone into a good, dancing mood! The Tonaliser is so powerful that the vibrations are even felt in outer space.
It turns out that there’s a group of aliens who have all the technology in the world but who have never figured out how to create music. They really want to learn, though. Music is the one thing that their society needs. The aliens, represented by Johnny Williams (played by the great character actor Roy Dotrice, who looks embarrassed to be in this film), abduct Toomorrow so that Toomorrow can teach them how to appreciate music. Toomorrow has no problem with doing that but they’re going to need help to focus or …. something. I don’t know. This movie is impossible to follow. All I know is that an alien woman goes down to Earth to keep Toomorrow focused and there’s a scene where she’s taken to an adult Swedish movie so that she can learn about human anatomy. Or something.
Yes, it’s Toomorrow! A film about hippies that was meant to appeal to hippies but which was definitely made by people who were not hippies themselves. The film does it best to show off its counter-culture bona fides, what with the commune and the art school and the protests and the band’s lead singer waking up with a different woman every morning and a barely there subplot about a professor having an affair with the member of the band. But none of it feels very authentic, largely because all of the hippies are very clean-cut and none of the protestors are really protesting anything specific as much as they’re just walking around with signs. All of the “shocking” counter-culture behavior takes place off-screen. Randy Newman once described Horse With No Name as being “song about a kid who thinks he’s taken acid” and Toomorrow is a film that was obviously made by that kid’s grandparents. As for Toomorrow the band, their music is nothing special. In fact, there’s really not a single memorable song to be found in Toomorrow the film. The aliens could have just waited a few years and abducted the house band from the Brady Bunch Variety Hour.
You may have noticed that I mentioned that the film was a “1970ish” film. That’s because Toomorrow didn’t receive an actual theatrical release. It was produced by Harry Saltzman (who also co-produced the first 9 James Bond films) and Don Kirshner, the music promoter who was responsible for The Monkees. It was directed by veteran British director Val Guest. When Saltzman and Kirshner failed to pay Guest and the rest of the crew for their work on the film, Guest sued and, as a result, Toomorrow spent decades held up in litigation. It was only released on video because everyone who was suing eventually died with the case unresolved.
If Toomorrow is known for anything, it’s for being the film debut of a young Olivia Newton-John. Olivia played a member of Toomorrow but she doesn’t get to do much, beyond smiling cheerfully while either performing and passing out tea at the commune. Olivia reportedly had such a terrible time on the set of Toomorrow that she swore she would never make another film and nearly turned down Grease as a result. That said, Olivia is probably the best thing about Toomorrow. She’s the only member of the band with any screen presence and probably the only one of them who could have talked the aliens into not blowing up the Earth.
Toomorrow can be viewed on YouTube. It’s interesting as an example of how much the old film establishment struggled to figure out how to appeal to younger filmgoers in the late 60s and early 70s. Every moment in the film has been calculated to appeal to “the kids” but it’s precisely because it’s so calculated that the film ultimately fails. There would be no tomorrow for Toomorrow.
Through the Shattered Lens 