Boog Powell’s MVP Season

A native of Key West—the place where Pan Am began, the U.S.S. Maine sailed from on its last journey before exploding in Havana Harbor, and Ernest Hemingway maintained a legendary home—John Wesley Powell, also known as Boog, spent most of his 17-season career in an...

Sam Malone’s Lucky Bottle Cap

A guy walks into a bar. It’s an introduction to the classic setup and punch line joke format.  It’s also the way that many episodes of Cheers began. An NBC situation comedy set in an eponymous Boston bar modeled after the Bull & Finch Pub, Cheers took...

Bay City Blues

Five years before Ron Shelton turned his script for Bull Durham into his directorial dbut, NBC aired Bay City Blues, which introduced millions of people to the pleasures, idiosyncrasies, and slightly desperate aura surrounding the minor leagues.  NBC’s prime...

A Stalag 13 Christmas

Christmas television specials dominate prime time during between Thanksgiving and December 25th.  The Hollywood Palace was no exception in 1965. With the holiday season as a backdrop for one particular episode in December, host Bing Crosby mentions that this time of...

The Doctors Are In

When City Hospital premiered in 1952, it set off the medical genre for prime time television.  Naturally, shows about medical implications offer drama that, in the right hands, captivate audiences. St. Elsewhere followed the model of Hill Street Blues by using story...