Your vivid memories of bad TV

mimitchi33

Lovely, in my most wonderful way!
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  • Nina Needs to Go: All it was was this little girl who had to pee the whole time and never learned her lesson.
  • Coconut Fred's Fruit Salad Island: I had no idea what I was watching when I saw an episode of this. It was very, very bizarre.
 

twilicorn

HER AIM IS GETTING BETTER
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SO MUCH PAIN
In fifth grade we were doing some curriculum thing about Van Gogh so we watched a movie about him called "Starry Night". Rather than a documentary, it was this weird tv movie that started with him somehow coming back from the dead and getting hit by a parade float. In the hospital he finds out to his astonishment that his paintings became famous. Then he gets into a relationship with this girl and there's like these subplots or something. I barely remember any of it - except for the ending where Van Gogh and the girl are playing around at the beach and he gives this speech about "I can't be in love with you anymore" or something. Then he literally runs off into the waves (presumably to drown) while the girl is calling out to him. The movie ends with her on the roof of her apartment building sadly hugging the hat he left behind. This isn't necessarily "bad TV", but it's pretty depressing for fifth grade, amirite?
 

twilicorn

HER AIM IS GETTING BETTER
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I've seen Pink Lady and Jeff. It is the ANTITHESIS of entertainment.

Pink Lady were a pop duo from Japan who NBC head Fred Silverman brought over to perform in an American variety show. (And by perform, I mean poorly sing American pop songs phonetically--I should mention that they didn't speak English at the time.) The "Jeff" refers to Jeff Altman, the unfunny comedian they brought in to teach the girls about American culture...or more specifically engage them in a bunch of bland sketches and corny musical numbers and then get tricked into entering a hot tub fully clothed at the end of each episode.

Also, Jim Varney of the Ernest movies appeared on it.

There was one recurring sketch where Jeff played this annoying art dealer who was acting like a used car salesman, there were tabloid- and radio-themed segments with corny blackout gags, and your usual brand of 1970's* racial insensitivity. ("Their honorable ancestors had boogie fever!") The only bright spots in this six-episode train wreck were a guest appearance by THE Jerry Lewis and the one or two occasions where they actually let Pink Lady sing one of their own songs - otherwise, DREADFUL.

*The show premiered in 1980, BTW.
Platypus Comix has talked a bit about Pink Lady's TV show previously - specifically, in a rundown of some TV Guide ads from the period.
In the listings, however, it's just called "Pink Lady," and there was a reason for this. "And Jeff" was never officially part of the main title; NBC just promoted it in such a way that we'd be led to believe it was. The Japanese music producer who loaned out Pink Lady demanded that this be Pink Lady's show. They were to be the focus, the main hosts, and "Jeff" was supposed to be in the background. He threatened to sue over Jeff's name being in all the promotions. Of course, NBC had no intention of giving the entire show to two people who no one in this country had heard of. The simplest solution would have been to, maybe, NOT USE people no one had heard of. I guess this didn't occur to them then.
I also love the Agony Booth's review of each episode.
 

Kitschensyngk

The kids are all wrong
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At one point long after Full House was cancelled, in the early years of the FCC's mandatory "three hours of educational content" rule, the Olsen twins, if you can believe it, had their own Saturday morning cartoon show in which they played secret agents.

I only saw one episode of this show. The villain of this particular episode was a super-conceited DJ who plotted to take over the world with his music. His plan involved crashing a world summit by interrupting the ceremony where they play every member nation's national anthem (for some reason I've long forgotten) by having them play his own music instead. The obvious moral of the story was about individuality and celebrating people's differences, made even more anvilicious by the fact that every other line of dialogue the villain had was how everybody should only like the kind of things that he liked.
 

TheMisterFree

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Messages
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Great Meadows, NJ
At one point long after Full House was cancelled, in the early years of the FCC's mandatory "three hours of educational content" rule, the Olsen twins, if you can believe it, had their own Saturday morning cartoon show in which they played secret agents.

I only saw one episode of this show. The villain of this particular episode was a super-conceited DJ who plotted to take over the world with his music. His plan involved crashing a world summit by interrupting the ceremony where they play every member nation's national anthem (for some reason I've long forgotten) by having them play his own music instead. The obvious moral of the story was about individuality and celebrating people's differences, made even more anvilicious by the fact that every other line of dialogue the villain had was how everybody should only like the kind of things that he liked.
I think I remember seeing that. It was aired on ABC's One Saturday Morning for whatever insane reason, despite the fact that Disney had sold DiC off a year or two prior.
 

Zeether

HASSHA!!
Joined
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Messages
727
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Florida
I've seen Pink Lady and Jeff. It is the ANTITHESIS of entertainment.

Pink Lady were a pop duo from Japan who NBC head Fred Silverman brought over to perform in an American variety show. (And by perform, I mean poorly sing American pop songs phonetically--I should mention that they didn't speak English at the time.) The "Jeff" refers to Jeff Altman, the unfunny comedian they brought in to teach the girls about American culture...or more specifically engage them in a bunch of bland sketches and corny musical numbers and then get tricked into entering a hot tub fully clothed at the end of each episode.

Also, Jim Varney of the Ernest movies appeared on it.

There was one recurring sketch where Jeff played this annoying art dealer who was acting like a used car salesman, there were tabloid- and radio-themed segments with corny blackout gags, and your usual brand of 1970's* racial insensitivity. ("Their honorable ancestors had boogie fever!") The only bright spots in this six-episode train wreck were a guest appearance by THE Jerry Lewis and the one or two occasions where they actually let Pink Lady sing one of their own songs - otherwise, DREADFUL.

*The show premiered in 1980, BTW.
Pink Lady and Jeff is horrifying just to read about. It and Supertrain were the biggest NBC flops from what I recall, and the latter nearly bankrupted the network.

I remember seeing the last episode of Seinfeld when I was younger. Didn't think much of it, but then I found out that it's pretty much the worst episode of the show. A podcast host put it best: "Seinfeld is a show about nothing, and in this episode something happened."
 

TheMisterFree

Member
Joined
Aug 21, 2010
Messages
159
Location
Great Meadows, NJ
Pink Lady and Jeff is horrifying just to read about. It and Supertrain were the biggest NBC flops from what I recall, and the latter nearly bankrupted the network.
Yeah, and what's ironic is that that shortly after Supertrain was canned, the new NBC game show Chain Reaction (with Bill Cullen) reused a cue from Supertrain as their theme- and then Silverman canned it six months later (along with High Rollers and The Hollywood Squares, which he'd been trying to cancel for a while up to that point- he just hated game shows in general) for David Letterman's infamous daytime talk show.
 

Red Arrow

ça va nog wel
Joined
Oct 22, 2012
Messages
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Belgium
Anything on MTV. Especially Geordie Shore and Jersey Shore. Do I even need to explain why? :sweat:

As for cartoons: VIRUS ATTACK
You can watch all episodes for free on YouTube. Legally. That's how bad it is :')

(It aired on Cartoon Network Italy)
 

Dsneybuf

Well-Known Member
Joined
Sep 22, 2011
Messages
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So, do you find Daria overrated, or did you not see it? If the former, then I'd think you would need to explain why.
 

Kitschensyngk

The kids are all wrong
Joined
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Messages
41,080
Location
Kansas
Pink Lady and Jeff is horrifying just to read about. It and Supertrain were the biggest NBC flops from what I recall, and the latter nearly bankrupted the network.

I've never seen Supertrain, but I have heard about it. It was basically NBC's attempt to cash in on The Love Boat's popularity with a gigantic nuclear-powered luxury bullet train. They made themselves a super-expensive model train for the show that crashed during shooting and had to be rebuilt. And the low ratings certainly didn't help.

1980 was not a good year for NBC. On top of Pink Lady and the fallout from Supertrain, they also had the broadcast rights to that year's Summer Olympics in Moscow, which the U.S. had just decided to boycott.
 
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Zeether

HASSHA!!
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Messages
727
Location
Florida
Yup, the model train cost thousands to build and they had to spend another grand on making a new one.

I have to wonder if those models are in storage now or NBC scrapped them due to old shame.
 

twilicorn

HER AIM IS GETTING BETTER
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SO MUCH PAIN
1983 wasn't so hot for NBC either. All of their new shows introduced in the fall (like Mr. Smith and Jennifer Slept Here) failed to last a full season (with the possible exception of We Got It Made, which was rebooted for NBC's "Prime Time Begins At 7:30" syndication package, then flopped again).
 

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