Ken riffs on the holiday season and gives an insider look on the making of Thanksgiving and Christmas-themed TV episodes. The tropes and the traps revealed.
Listen to other podcasts similar to this on iTunes!
Ken riffs on the holiday season and gives an insider look on the making of Thanksgiving and Christmas-themed TV episodes. The tropes and the traps revealed.
Listen to other podcasts similar to this on iTunes!
6 comments :
Hey! I had turkey on Wednesday night. Figured I might just sleep all of turkey day away so had it early.
Thanks. Listening to this, I was reminded of the Dick Van Dyke Show Christmas episode. Seems Carl Reiner was opposed to doing one until someone pointed out it could be rerun in every subsequent season. Which it was.
I don't care for the Macy's parade because its so commercial-they have balloons and floats for advertising mascots (oh look, its the AFLAC duck!). The Rose Parade is much better. No surprise that its been cancelled- I wonder what they'll show on TV.
I'd seen the Thanksgiving Parade on TV for years from California, and had to experience it just once in person. I's not fun. The street is packed, it's really cold, and unless you rent a step-ladder you can't see anything except for the balloons. I put my 5-year-old son on my shoulders so he could see it, and gave him the camcorder so we could watch it later. Unfortunately, the camcorder was too heavy for him to hold up, so the recording is mainly of people's heads, and a bit of the street.
I think your party was a much better way to see things.
My favorite Xmas Shows (and they're the kind of shows you hate!):
Soap operas!
- Some time in the late '90s ('96, I think, could be off a year), All My Children had an old guy named 'Red Kilgren' come to town, played by the great Clifton James.
Old Red was a bit down in the dumps over the lack of holiday spirit he was finding, and like that there.
He found a kindred spirit in Myrtle Fargate (Eileen Herlie), who became his plus-one for the last two months of that year.
Old Red dropped a hint or two about who he really was: his clothes ran to red and green, he'd make observations about " ...making a list and checking it twice ...", he'd be occasionally pestered by a little guy named 'Noel' who wore a flap cap over his ears (who else but John Fiedler?) - subtle things like that.
AMC did the reveal around Thanksgiving, Old Red got his Xmas mojo back, and on Christmas Eve he came back to Pine Valley with beard and costume in full array - the Full Santy - and dispensed Holiday Justice to one and all.
I liked it, anyway ...
- I also got a kick out of the last two weeks of The Edge Of Night, which were the last two weeks of 1984.
Christmas in Monticello, and about a dozen storylines had to be wrapped up in two weeks worth of half-hour episodes.
So there were weddings, departures from town, returns of long-lost family members, budding romances between unlikely characters, carols under the tree ...
... and a lonely lady cop, who's by herself in a cafe, when she sees a villainous lady she'd let get away not long before ...
Lady Cop gives chase, and is led to a cul-de-sac called Wonderland Lane ...
... where she encounters a Megavillain from a year previous, who dispatches the Villain Lady ...
So Lady Cop beats it, and finds two uniform cops to bring them to Wonderland Lane - except Wonderland Lane isn't there anymore: it's disappeared, leaving no trace of the Megavillain, the Villain Lady/Victim, or the crime ...
This was the final episode of Edge Of Night to air on ABC, December 29, 1984; the producers were hoping for a syndication or cable pickup, but that didn't happen.
If you are so inclined, Ken, you can find this EON episode on YouTube, at the date indicated; you might get a kick out of who was reprising his role as the Megavillain (someone you know personally, as I recall).
Now that was Christmas Television!
You're tale about not wanting to freeze your ass off standing outside for the Macy's parade made me think of growing up in the Tampa Bay area in the 1960s and my mom always dragging us down to the Festival of States parade in Saint Petersburg [combined years ago into the kickoff of the Grand Prix and put out to pasture for good in 2014]. Mainly started decades before to try and keep tourists and other visitors around beyond springtime. I always noticed people dropping like flies and asked my mom "Why are these people are falling asleep during the parade?" As I got older found out that they were from the northern states and were passing out because they couldn't handle the heat. I was thinking it doesn't feel that hot to me. After moving north I was on the opposite end of the stick where after a couple of snowfalls it was "OK, this shit can end any day now!" and all of us southerners sat around a roaring fireplace trying to keep warm.
I watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade by rerunning BROADWAY DANNY ROSE (actually one of my favorite of Woody Allen's movies).
Ken, I wonder if you have any comments on SAG-AFTRA's plan to cut back its health care plan for thousands of its members, including seniors like Ed Asner, Morgan Freeman, and so on. I'd certainly be interested to know more of the background: https://variety.com/2020/film/news/mark-hamill-whoopi-goldberg-sag-aftra-health-plan-1234843874/
wg
Post a Comment