TV ’78: Thanks For The Mammaries

It's gonna be be ham ham on the lens, beef on the box and much rubbing of bitter puppets out in Viewerland this fall, and we've got nobody to thank but ourselves. Those days when hormone prodding provoked instant cancellation have been banished to the tube-relic box along with Camp Runamuck and the bottom half of Elvis. Now any producer with half the IQ of a farm is busy wiring Nielsen sneakers to discover what corftbination of chest skin and licking sounds will best forestall a network-paid vacation to Zunaland.

Of course, not all the new shows are about sex. Freddie Silverman of NBC, the man credited with inventing the "who cares" school of programming while at ABC, will tell you that W.E.B. is a cutting insight into network politics, even though half the dialogue is drowned out by blood gorging into the membranes of female lead Pamela Bellwood. ABC likes to think of Vega$ as an old-fashioned detective drama, but fails to mention that most of the clues are to be found in some showgirl's feather duster, while the V.P. in charge of lies over at CBS claims that American Girls is a "biting indictment" of modern journalism. Apparently, both girl reporters read the chapter in Total Woman aboutteeth. And Flying High is just another updating of the Dumbo story, with breasts substituting for ears.

The only thing funnier than sex (besides penguins) is what passes for comedy these days. The shows themselves aren't all that hot, but to think that the network Laff Police would expect people to lose their leatherette over this year's junk—now that's funny.

There's a theory popular among tube fools that the generation of writers currently cranking out sitcoms doesn't really know what makes people laugh because they've never written for a live audience. They think that whatever tickles a laugh-blowing machine's pickle is actual humor, much like today's musicians, who think that whatever sounds neat on big speakers is rock'n'roll.

This would explain the puzzled

feeling one gets from most of the current "comedies." You know you're supposed to laugh, but watching Norman Fell roll his eyes isn't really all that funny. Now, if he were to shove a stuffed owl up Suzanne Somers' joy trail. .. ah, dream on.

The '78 model sitcoms are generally useless although there may be a couple that can turn it around. Taxi, which was being hyped as this year's biggest shit before it was even shown, has old spitmark-face Andy Kaufman and a bunch of frozen Mousketeers driving cabs off bridges and other fun stuff, but threatens to grow overt poignancy tendrils. Mork & Mindy is another possible winner if you don't mind single-gimmick shows & la / Dream Of Jeannie. Mork, who's the Ralph Malph of the planet Ork and has a voice like the soundtrack to a childbirth film run backwards, comes to Earth and moves in with Mindy, a thoroughly sickening Coloradoid with a solar-powered mind. Robin Williams' Mork is a pretty funny guy though, whether he's reverting to hatchling state or just practicing auto-face-sitting. When Mindy tells him that it's not nice to sit on his own face, he replies simply, "Then why did God put it there?" Answer that, mountain-queer!

Apairoflong~hotsthat could work out are Apple Pie, a Norman Lear weirdo where Rue McClanahan (Maude's Vivien) constructs a family out of the hoof-cuts and donkey wax in an old can of FDA-rejected welfare chow, and WKRPIn Cincinnati, an MTM computer turd about a radio. station with x number of drugola snorting yak jockies and a weather girl who carries two baskets of Crisco under her t-shirt. The dialogue here is strictly concrete-fed, however, as is the case with remaining stinkers like The Waverly Wonders (Joe Namath teaches his jock cup to rollover), In The Beginning (last round-up for McLean Stevenson before he's enlisted as a buzzer on Family Feud) and Who's Watching The Kids?Forget the kids, who's watching the programmers?

When the heehees t~rn to hoohoos, it's time to check out the new drama drones, where we find the season's runaway winner in all divisions: Battlestar Galactica. Although comparing this show to the great Star Wars is like comparing the pet rock to the Slinky, Galactica makes the rest of the held look like so much eyewash for birds. While marred by the belief -jarring contrast between petrodollarfinanced special effects and 89ff Formica sets, this space honker is true fun & games. The good guys, who wear battle helmets that make them look like Chinese firemen, are chased around a Keystone universe by The Cylons, a race of thoroughly uncooperative robots who've just bombed the humans' home planet into stfmuch baby cereal. The survivors split in a hasty armada of nuclear coffee pots, tin cans and curling pucks that's guarded by the Battlestar, one of those vertigo-inspiring structural masterpieces that looks like a speedfreak architect's draft of Brian Eno's imagination. Though it's hard to picture Lome Greene bossing the remnants of humanity instead of feeding Hoss bones to cross-eyed dogs, this show is a bonafied contender.

Back on Earth, it's time to whip them hogs again. W.E.B., ostensibly an "inside look" at network nitwork, is really an inside look into Pam Bellwood. And take it from me—her eggs are runnel Vega$ and Eddie Capra are cop shows where all the perpetrators are Comely Models looking for new camera angles, ana Kaz is their lawyer, an expert at getting victims to confess. All that remains after those cluckbusters is Paper Chase -, some college dribble with all the promise of a dead doe chained to a Jeep bumper, and Sword Of hahahahah. I'm sorry. Sword Of JUSTICEIThe title alone gets me every time.

That leaves us with reality (the readership cringes), never a big item amongst hardened screen slaves. NBC is threatening us with something called Lifeline, a series of graphic stories about real-life doctors amputating necks and sizing-up condominiums, and ABC has People, a video rag hosted by hohohohoho (there I go again!) Phyllis George, which is supposed to be about real people doing real-but-cute things, an idea straight out of Games For Kids On Long Car Trips.

Variety is kind of like reality in that it shows up,on video tape. Too bad for the V-hours of Mary Tyler Moore and Dick Clark, who now have something in common besides their cosmetic surgeon. Dick's picks will cause dead fish to hit the nation's screens in record numbers (I recommend keeping a bucketful by your TV chair) and the only possible highlight of Mary's revue-styled show is that she might get gang-pollenated.

If you find the new season about as appealing as the viscera table at your local slaughterhouse, don't despair. The nets have already lined up some killer shows for January's second season, including Defeat At Sea, Celebrity Infant Torture, Frontier Canoe (Dennis Weaver chases scalpcounterfeiters around mid-1700's Louisiana Territory) and of course, The Cartoon News, with anchorman Scooby-Doo. And if all else fails, drive out to sugar-beet land sometime and tune in Robot Hull and the Mad Peck's upcoming CB soap opera, All My Rubber Ducks. You go under a viaduct and all the main characters get amnesia.