148 Bonnie Meadow Road

Humor, it is often said, serves us best when it is grounded in reality.  The Dick Van Dyke Show espoused this theorem. Carl Reiner, formerly a writer and performer on Your Show of Shows and Caesar’s Hour, starring television comedy pioneer Sid Caesar, created a...

The Yellow Brick Road Goes Through Minneapolis

Take a sweet, innocent, and wide-eyed young woman from the Midwest and put her in an encounter with three men.  One is fairly wooden, showing emotions rarely.  One does not have much in the way of intelligence, common sense, or decorum.  One growls a lot, but is...

“thirtysomething”

Yuppies existed on prime time television before we had a word to describe them.  Yuppie, of course, is a slang word for young, upwardly mobile professional. Dr. Bob Hartley was a Chicago yuppie on The Bob Newhart Show. Rob Petrie was a television comedy writer yuppie...

Arrividerci, Tony Soprano

Earlier this week, the world lost an icon of television.  And New Jersey lost one of its own. James Gandolfini died from a heart attack during a trip to Italy.  His portrayal of Tony Soprano, indelible in our memories, changed television. After The Sopranos debuted in...