The Most Awesome Thing I Saw on TV This Week - by Kim

[Natasha (candygirl)]

16.4:

And now it's time for the Most Awesome Thing I Saw on TV This Week. The most awesome thing I saw on TV this week, honestly, were the reruns of the first season of The Amazing Race on the Game Show Network. I have tried to rewatch a lot of shows now that cable and DVDs make that a lot more possible, and very few hold up. The Mole? Didn't really hold up. Angel? I got bored very quickly. But so far (five episodes in), even though I know the eventual result, TAR holds up really well. So far, the highlights have been Phil looking twelve years old, forgetting why I hated the Guidos, forgetting that some of the teams ever existed, remembering why I hated the Guidos, the first appearance of the correct phraseology for the Roadblocks and the Detours, the difficulty of the clues, Kevin and Drew, and looking forward to the rest of the seasons, which I haven't seen since they originally aired. And it's on every night! Which is awesome.

[Natasha (candygirl)]

Maggie Seaver Knows Best!

And now it's time for the Most Awesome Thing I Saw On TV Last Week. The most awesome thing I saw on TV last week was a television movie called Mother Knows Best. It starred Maggie Seaver from Growing Pains as the mother of Emily Valentine from 90210. And Maggie was all rich and snooty and stuff and was always bugging Emily to find a good man and get married. And Emily worked as a nurse so Maggie was always telling her to marry a doctor, although it does seem kind of weird that the family was so rich and lived in a mansion and then Emily worked as a hospital nurse. It just doesn't seem like a profession that someone from a wealthy family would have, but maybe she had a calling or something.

So anyway, Maggie totally responds to a personal ad in the paper and sets Emily up on a date with Jake from Melrose Place, and of course Emily is all annoyed at first but she ends up falling in love with Jake, who is a mechanic who owns his own shop. And Maggie is all pissed off because she doesn't want her daughter dating some dude who works with his hands, even though Maggie set it up in the first place.

So Maggie does various things to try to get Emily to break it off with Jake, but they don't work, and Emily and Jake end up getting married and having a baby and cutting all ties with Maggie, who gets really nutty and decides to hire a hit man to kill Jake. And the whole time all this is going on, there's this really bloopy music in the background, like it's a slapstick comedy or something, and I think they were going for a To Die For vibe, but it just didn't work out.

So the hit man Maggie hires turns out to be a cop, but they need to pretend Jake was killed so that Maggie will pay the money and they can arrest her, so Emily has to call Jake's mom and say that Jake is dead to keep the charade going, which seemed kind of mean and unnecessary. But then Maggie gets arrested and Jake and Emily live happily ever after and it was all based on a true story, and it was awesome.

[Natasha (candygirl)]

Another Little House!

And now it's time for the Most Awesome Thing I Saw on TV Last Week. The most awesome thing I saw on TV last week was one of the later episodes of Little House, after Laura got married but before James (Jason Bateman! My crush begins!) and Cassandra showed up.

So anyway, Laura was teaching the students about something stupid, and none of them knew the answers, and she was, like, the worst teacher ever with her leading questions and inappropriate anger, and of course Harriet Olson picked that moment to show up because some guy from the state board was coming, and his visit would determine whether the school got additional funding.

So Harriet called a meeting of the school board (Pa, of course, Doc Baker, the Olsons, and two randoms) and argued that they needed to upgrade the curriculum and include French and art appreciation and Pa was like, "Why do farmers need art appreciation?" which, way to encourage education just for bettering yourself, Pa, and Laura said she couldn't really teach those subjects because apparently she was incapable of having the Pony Express or whatever deliver a book on those subjects, reading it herself, and then teaching the students, so of course Harriet stepped up and said she'd do it and then Laura got pissy and quit on the spot, and I really thought this was going to be the episode that Laura revealed she was pregnant because she was being such a bitch. And then I remembered that Laura's pregnancy was revealed in the same episode where Ma thought she was pregnant, but it was really "the change," thus leading to (on my initial viewing at like eight years old) an awkward conversation between me and my mother about the facts of life, and particularly, menopause.

So Harriet took over the school and made the kids dress in uniforms, and Albert outsmarted her by putting coal dust on his ankles to simulate black stockings, like, wouldn't the fact that his leg hair was totally poking out be her first clue? Meanwhile, Laura was using her newfound free time to cook elaborate meals for Almanzo, who kind of hated them, but tried to be nice, but Bitch On Wheels Laura must have been taking lessons from Old School Nellie because she got pissy and flounced out, and Almanzo had a hilarious callback joke to the cinnamon chicken incident. And then Albert found out that some other kids were planning to screw up Harriet's big day in front of the guy from the state, so he ratted them out to Laura and she went into the school and took over to help Harriet out, and they got their funding, and no one cared about French anymore, or art, because they were just poor farmers who were never going to leave the town limits, or have to talk to anyone from Canada or whatever, and it was awesome.

[Natasha (candygirl)]

Kim skipped TMATISOTTW for two weeks out of respect for the death of Danny's mom, and last week's installment was only funny if you've been watching the Austin season, but now it's back!

Are we on the Cops?

And now it's time for the Most Awesome Thing I Saw on TV Last Week. You know how sometimes you're just flipping through the channels, and you find one of those home video shows, and you know it's going to be really dumb and/or anticlimactic, but you watch it anyway, because there's nothing else on? So that's sort of how I came to watch Maximum Exposure last week. Apparently, each episode has a theme, and the theme of this episode was drunk people. Given the show I recap, I figured there wouldn't be anything on there I haven't seen, and I was mostly right, but there were a few clips that were awesome.

In the first, a really drunk guy gets pursued by a police car � while driving a lawnmower. And he fell off the lawnmower in super-slow motion, and the cops chasing him were just giggling their asses off. So that was awesome. And the second clip was a drunk guy who had been pulled over and he was wearing cutoff jean shorts and no shirt with work boots, just to give you the visual, and the cop must have asked him to perform some part of the sobriety test, and drunk guy picked up a GIANT orange traffic cone, and held it up like a megaphone and just yelled at the cop, "NOOOO!" Come on. Picture a guy using a giant traffic cone as a megaphone. It's funny. But it gets better.

The next guy in a similar situation took a giant traffic cone and put it on his head. So it came down to, like, his elbows. And then he started doing the field sobriety test as though he totally didn't have a cone on his head. So he was touching his nose and walking a straight line. With a giant cone on his head. So he was really just touching the cone where his nose would be. And he concluded his performance by doing a little dance, and I wish I could demonstrate the dance for you, but just imagine someone who can't lift his arms up much due to having a giant traffic cone on his head shaking his arms about and kind of doing the Twist. Because it was awesome.

[Natasha (candygirl)]

16.12

And now it's time for the Most Awesome Thing I Saw on TV Last Week. The most awesome thing I saw on TV last week was an early episode of Little House where a new boy named Johnny Johnson moved to Walnut Grove. He was ugly and had a head like Frankenstein, so I immediately assumed that he was a nephew or illegitimate son of Doc Baker, but he wasn't. He also wore the tightest overalls this side of Studio 54 or some roller boogie movie.

Anyway, even though he was super-old, Laura fell in love with him and started plotting to get him to fall in love with her, and for a second I thought it was going to be the episode where Laura puts apples down the front of her dresses to simulate big boobs and then goes up to write on the board and one of the apples falls out, which was awesome, but it wasn't that episode. Instead, Laura just stared at Johnny Johnson like a creepy stalker, but Johnny had the hots for Mary, which makes sense, because Mary was a hottie back in the day, even if she was kind of a prude and no fun besides.

So Laura asked Ma how she snared Pa, and Ma spun some bullshit about kindred spirits, and so Laura asked Johnny on a picnic, and he agreed to go, but then spent the whole time pumping Laura for information about Mary. So Laura got pissed at Mary, because it was somehow Mary's fault that Johnny didn't want to date someone like seven years younger than he was who hadn't hit puberty yet.

So Johnny carves Mary's initials into the Sweetheart Tree, and Laura gets pissed at Mary yet again, and Mary gets pissed at Johnny because she doesn't even like him, and Pa gets pissed at Johnny for daring to be sweet on one of his girls, and Ma gets pissed at Pa for being such a buffoon, and Carrie pisses herself, because she's kind of slow, and in the end Pa has a gentle talk with Laura down by the creek and spins another bullshit story about how Ma was an awkward little girl who blossomed into a beautiful woman and he fell in love with her when what he should have said was that Laura shouldn't waste her time with boys who just aren't into her, but then we would have never had the Manly saga, so I guess it all worked out in the end. And it was awesome.

Sadly, Kim is now retiring from The Real World, which will now be recapped by Stee.

[kappster]

And now it's time for the Most Awesome Thing I Saw on TV Last Week. The most awesome thing I saw on TV last week was an early episode of Little House where a new boy named Johnny Johnson moved to Walnut Grove. He was ugly and had a head like Frankenstein, so I immediately assumed that he was a nephew or illegitimate son of Doc Baker, but he wasn't. He also wore the tightest overalls this side of Studio 54 or some roller boogie movie.

Oh this is just too damn funny. I haven't watched little house in about 15 years and I very distinctly remember this kid. He was butt ugly and I remember wondering how the hell he ever got on TV in the first place and he did have an uncanny resemblance to Doc Baker. Kim needs to write a book. I love her sense of humor.

[Natasha (candygirl)]

Another MSCL shoutout in this week's Veronica Mars recap:

Veronica asks Wallace for the names of the kids who will benefit from the unfair suspensions, and writes them on the whiteboard. One of them is Shelly Pomroy, who's apparently the Tino of this show, and another is the aforementioned Steve Wacker.

[emmie]

here's a great MSCL mention from tv Guru Goddess Kristin at Eonline:

I have a fear of commitment. And, no, it doesn't involve John Stamos. (Although I did just meet up with him, but we will get to that in glorious detail in a bit.)

I'm talking about my greatest love: TV. And chances are you know why, because you've been there, too. Whether it was My So-Called Life, Freaks and Geeks, Felicity, Angel or Dead Like Me (the list goes on and on), at some point, we've all been burned so badly we thought we'd never love again.

[Natasha (candygirl)]

I wasn't sure whether to post this in this thread or the 90210 thread, but TWoP is doing assorted stand-alone recaps as a thank-you to the members who raised $30,000 for hurricane relief. Among the recaps are the 90210 pilot and one of the awesomest episodes of Melrose Place. They are both pretty long so I thought I should post links instead of copying and pasting it all here. Hee-larious!

[schris]

I've read both of those recaps and they are awesome! It made me wish that they would recap more of those shows from the 90s.

[Natasha (candygirl)]

Not from TWoP, but I thought this was a good thread to post in - pajiba's review of The Legend of Zorro has a MSCL reference:

[Zorro]'s 10-year-old son, whose insults and one-liners are so scripted they make “The Cosby Show” look like “My So-Called Life”

[Natasha (candygirl)]

A MSCL reference in last week's Veronica Mars recap:

Veronica gloats to Madison that, with six grand, they're going to Magic Mountain: "You know there's a ride called the Viper, right? Isn't that, like, your mothership?" I find that line very Sharon Cherski for some reason.

[Natasha (candygirl)]

I have sorely missed TMATISOTTW since Kim stopped doing the Real World recaps, but thanks to the aforementioned hurricane relief fundraiser we now get a full recap of the Little House on the Prairie episode that was previously used as a TMATISOTTW segment!

As with the 90210 & Melrose recaps, this one is pretty long so I will just post the link: A Matter of Faith

[Natasha (candygirl)]

Not quite a MSCL shout-out, but worthy of mention from this week's AI recaplet:

Taylor jettisons the gimmicky yet serene "We Are the Champions" for "Crazy Little Thing Called Love," which no one has been able to sing on this show without looking like a total asshole. Check it! The streak is alive! It's like there's a rhinoceros loose in the studio. Nobody is safe, not the judges, not the band, not the audience, and certainly not the mic stand, which takes a Jared-Leto-in-Fight Club beating. I don't even know if there was singing involved, because Taylor scares the hell out of me.

[Natasha (candygirl)]

From the penultimate Veronica Mars S2 episode:

He's standing at his locker, as he so often does, as Veronica asks him whether he's been to any good murder trials lately. For the grand guignol that is their relationship, it's not a bad line. Logan compliments her "gripping" testimony. Veronica wants to ask him something. Knowing he's got the stage all to himself, Logan does the Catalano-lean against the locker door, and quips that it's so rare that Veronica comes at him with a random weird-ass question.