The Studio 8H Launching Pad

Saturday Night Live has been and continues to be a launching pad for actors to break into the movies. Chevy Chase and Foul Play. John Belushi and Animal House. Eddie Murphy and 48 Hours. Mike Myers and Wayne’s World. Tina Fey and Mean Girls. But Saturday Night...

NASA, Space, and Popular Culture

NASA’s Golden Age of Projects Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo inspired television programmers and producers to use space as a theme in the 1960s. I Dream of Jeannie starred Larry Hagman as Tony Nelson, an astronaut living in Cocoa Beach, Florida.  Nelson lives in a...

1986

In the 1986 song Modern Woman, Billy Joel asks, “And after 1986, what else could be new?” Nothing, considering the return of two television legends whose personas were extraordinarily familiar. Andy Griffith debuted as Ben Matlock, a defense attorney...

My Favorite Things

Greg Brady getting selected to be the next “Johnny Bravo” because he “fit the suit” on The Brady Bunch. Jimmy McNulty on The Wire. Any Seinfeld episode involving Frank Constanza or David Puddy. Howard Cosell on Monday Night Football. The theme...

Magnum Goes Home

Thomas Magnum, Hawaii’s private investigator extraordinaire, reconnected family ties in the Magnum, p.i. episode “Going Home,” a story with the rarity of taking place outside the 50th state. Returning to his childhood home of Tidewater, Virginia to...