You take the good, you take the bad, you take ‘em both and there you have the Facts of Life. This was a staple growing up. It was a foreign idea to me, the story of a bunch of girls in an all-girls school with uniforms and house mothers. Very strange to this public school kid.

The premise actually changed after the first year of the show. The producers decided to focus on four of the boarding school girls rather than a plethora, hoping to cash in on that 80s staple of afterschool special-type episodes. Tough girl on scholarship, Jo, was introduced, got the girls in trouble which resulted in the school punishing them by making them bunk together as well as help Mrs. Garrett in the cafeteria.

By doing that though, we lost Molly Ringwald as a character. I heard she did all right for herself after that

Facts of Life ran for nine seasons and saw our core four girls: Blair the blue-blooded snobby socialite, Tootie, the one with the weird name, Natalie, the effervescent, bubbly chubby girl, and Jo, the tough chick from the Bronx face a lot of issues such as pregnancy, hurricanes, reading disorders, alcoholism, censorship, and even teenage prostitution!

They all eventually graduated from Eastland Academy and went on to continue living with Mrs> garrett in her gourmet shop in the Peekskills until Mrs. G got hitched, and Frau Blucher - I mean Chloris Leachman joined the cast.

I feel like I grew up with this show. Natalie was always my favourite character, but I like Jo and her no-nonsense, hard knock approach to life, and how she often took Blair down a peg or two. Tootie was fun, and always getting into scrapes. The show was your typical sitcom with silly situations that would never happen IRL but FoL made them all seem believable. Or maybe I’m just looking back with my rosey glasses and the show was really dreck. But dreck doesn’t usually make it nine seasons (not a word from you Survivor haters out there.)

Bit O’Trivia: Kim Fields was only nine years old when she started playing Tootie, who was supposed to be twelve. In an effort to make her appear taller (and older) her character was always in roller skates for the first year of the show. - from the IMDb

Remember this show? A lot of my misspent youth was taken up plopped in front of MTV in the 80s. I was watching when the Buggles hit the airwaves and proclaimed video had killed the radio star. I was there when Simon LeBon and Co. recruited hordes of teenage girly fans into the cult of the Duran. And I was there when Ken Ober and Colin Quinn embarrassed a lot of college contestants on MTV’s first non-musical program.

Some might say that Remote Control set a precedent for the suckage that MTV has become today. And by “some” I mean me. Sure the first few seasons of “Real World” were shiny and cool, but if you compare MTV today to what it started out as, there is a world of suck.

BUT, this is about Remote Control, and MTV suckage aside, Remote Control was a great concept - it still was music-oriented mostly, and a lot of fun to boot. Wikipedia has the best summary of the show’s premise:

The show’s premise was that Ober desperately wanted to be a game show host and set up his basement (at 72 Whooping Cough Lane) as a television studio. The opening theme song sketched the scenario out: “Kenny wasn’t like the other kids (Remote Control) / TV mattered, nothing else did (Remote Control) / Girls said yes, but he said no (Remote Control) / Now he’s got his own game show (Remote Control!)” Shows were sometimes interrupted by the disembodied voice of “Ken’s mother,” and the studio was indeed set up to resemble a basement, complete with a washer and dryer, cheesy bric-a-brac, and a giant PEZ dispenser that resembled Bob Eubanks.

The basement was a mainstay of the show throughout its run; however its cheesy decor was “rearranged” slightly every season. The contestants sat in leather recliners with seat belts (their purpose explained below), complete with retro kidney-shaped tables and scoreboards, facing host Ober and his retro-styled Zenith television. Behind Ober were autographed pictures of his idols, game show hosts such as Bob Barker, Monty Hall, and Tom Kennedy. Musician Steve Treccase set up his keyboard behind a cluttered bar, at which Quinn and the hostess usually sat for the duration of the show. More clutter could be found around and behind the audience, very frequently including props used in previous seasons. Finally, the contestants’ chairs were placed in front of breakaway walls, through which they were pulled if they were eliminated.

The questions were sometimes acted out as skits, often with recurring characters such as The Laughing Guy who would laugh the theme to TV shows and the contestants would have guess it, and Stud Boy (played by Adam Sandler no less) who would describe women he had, uh, “conquered” and the contestants would have to work out who he, uh, did.

Jeopardy, it ain’t.

But it was fast-paced, funny, loud, a little silly - ok a LOT silly - and the perfect gameshow for 80s kids. I believe all three seasons for it are out on DVD now, which would make an excellent present for your hipster parents who remember this crazy show

This show’s run ended before I was born, but for some reason, I have memories of watching it when I was little. Did they do reruns in the days before Nick at Night? No matter, I do remember liking the bumbling Maxwell Smart and his cool shoe phone.

The other day my daughter and I went to see Indiana Jones and the Stupid Alien Thing and one of the previews was for a movie version of Get Smart starring Steve Carell. I’ve never been sure of the wisdom of making movie versions of old 60s TV shows, but I will pretty much see anything Steve Carell is in

The show, for the uninitiated, featured Agent 86 (Smart) who worked for CONTROL whose job it was to periodically foil the plans of KAOS whenever they attempted to take over the world. Because the show was a comedy, inevitably Smart would get in trouble and his infinitely more capable partner (or assistant, since these were the 60s and the women weren’t quite all liberated and equal yet), Agent 99 (played by Barbara Feldon) would have to bail him out.

I wonder if Get Smart and his gadgets were a sort of parody to the smooth and suave James Bond. I’m almost sure it was.

Anyway, this was a gem of a show, with wonderful dialogs and jokes. Here’s hoping the movie will be a gem as well. But it might miss Gem status “by *that* much.” (Oh come on, I had to work the tagline in somehow :))

Bit o’trivia: Agent 99 was originally supposed to be named Agent 69; NBC censors nixed the name after deeming it to be too “sexually suggestive”. Also, in the 1930’s, a group of women pilots formed an organization called the “99’s”. They called it that because at the first meeting, 99 women showed up, one of them was Amelia Earhart. - From the IMDb.

Much has been said about this iconic show from the 80s. I’m not going to rehash any of it except to share that some of my best family memories are of all of us - mom, dad, baby sister and myself made it a point to gather in the family room on Thursday nights to hang out with the Cosby’s. There was the obligatory giant bowl of popcorn we shared and a bottle of Pepsi each (yes I said ‘bottle.’ And ‘Pepsi’ although now I’m mostly a Coke fan) and we were set.

I think that scene up there is my all-time fave Oh yeah, and I would have killed for Denise’s wardrobe.

Bit O’ Trivia: The character of Sondra, the Huxtables’ eldest daughter, was added almost as an afterthought. They decided there should be another child that represented the results of a good upbringing, hence a daughter in college. When casting the role, it came down to two actresses: 26-year-old Sabrina Le Beauf and 21-year-old Whitney Houston. LeBeauf’s theater experience won her the role. - IMDb

Ohhh man did I ever love this miniseries that first aired in 1983. It’s your typical ‘Aliens come to earth under that guise of friendship but really have quite insidious plans to steal our water and eat humans for dinner’ plot, but, cheesy 80s special effects aside (which actually weren’t that bad considering it was for television), it was pretty well done. Now the show is considered a cult classic which I think is just peachy.

The show followed a ragtag bunch of rebels as they came together, united and eventually defeated the Visitors. The parallels between their struggle and the WWII Jewish struggle against the Nazi’s was pretty blatant but not over the top (in fact, according to the IMDb, the series was intended as a literal telling of the Nazi takeover of German and the resistance movement against it. However, due to the popularity of Star Wars, network execs had the producers change it to a science fiction mini-series.) You had your heroes and your traitors, your allies and your enemies all fighting toward ultimate survival.

I think, possibly, though my memory isn’t the best, that “V” might have been my first real experience with Sci-fi that stuck with me. Yes I’d seen “E.T.” and “Star Wars” but while I love and appreciate those shows now, I don’t think they made the impression on me that “V” did.

I was riveted the moment Mike, the hotshot cameraman,  stopped in the middle of a fierce gunfight to look up in shock at a gigantic spaceship hovering above the earth. Then, through a montage of news reports, we discover that Mike’s ship is only one of a fleet moving over every major city on earth.

The main heroes of the piece are Mike and Julie. Julie is a brilliant biochemistry student and Mike is the afore-mentioned hotshot cameraman for the major networks. Julie finds herself the improbable leader of a group of rebels after her colleagues begin to mysteriously disappear after the Visitors arrive. Mike is a bit of a rogue who works alone but eventually he ends up helping Julie and her group by planning strategic assaults against the Visitors. With the help of a band of sympathizers among the aliens, they of course, eventually defeat them.

There’s way more to it than that, but in a nutshell

The miniseries led to a short-lived regular series which is also worth checking out, but I like the miniseries the best. Both are available on DVD fairly cheap so if you like a good sci-fi story, I highly recommend checking “V” out.

Bit O’ Trivia: The music that plays when the ship is first seen has as a major motif consisting of three short notes followed by one long note. This is the letter V in Morse code. It is also patterned after Ludwig van Beethoven’s fifth symphony

In my continuing effort to post regularly here, I’m going to steal an idea from a couple friends and make certain days of the week sort of theme-y. Henceforth, today shall be known around here as Wayback Wednesday wherein the TV Chick (the party of the first part) shall reminisce about shows gone by.

Theorizing that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Dr. Sam Beckett stepped into the Quantum Leap accelerator and vanished …. He woke to find himself trapped in the past, facing mirror images that were not his own and driven by an unknown force to change history for the better. His only guide on this journey is Al, an observer from his own time, who appears in the form of a hologram that only Sam can see and hear. And so Dr. Beckett finds himself leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong and hoping each time that his next leap will be the leap home.

This week’s focus will be “Quantum Leap.” If you don’t know anything about this show, I’d suggest proceeding to your nearest video store and renting it. Or better yet, buy it because if you like sci-fi mixed with a deep well of intriguing and different stories in every episode, then you’ll love QL.

It was a brilliant gimmick for a show - an accidental time-traveler leaps into different characters and must save someone in that character’s life before he can move on, and each time he leaps, he continually hopes the next one will get him back home to the woman he loves.

I think this provided a fantastic opportunity for the writers and actors - especially Sam (Scott Bakula) to show off their acting/writing chops. Bakula has to portray both Sam Beckett AND a different character he leaps into each episode. The writers have an almost never-ending fountain of story ideas they can write for Sam. It was such a unique show filled with colourful characters like Sam’s perpetually horny hologram guide Al. Just thinking about the wealth of ideas available to the show makes me giddy.

“Quantum Leap” is ranked #15 in TV Guide’s list of the “25 Top Cult Shows Ever!” and with good reason. It was compelling, it had anguish and drama, but also light moments, fun characters, mystery, and intrigue. The show lasted for five seasons and the grand finale is one of the best endings I’ve ever seen.

My favourite episode of “Quantum Leap” was what my sister and I call the ‘Evil Al’ episode. It was a Halloween episodes called “The Boogieman” in which “Sam leaps into horror novelist Joshua Rey and fails to prevent several suspicious deaths caused by the Devil himself, who resents Sam “putting right what I made wrong.” (Wikipedia) Along the way Sam runs into future horror novelist, Stephen King. This episode scared the snot out of my little sister when it aired. Brilliant

Finally, I think I’ll end these little trips down memory lane with a bit of trivia:

“Scott Bakula ad libbed the line “Oh boy!” at the end of an episode. The producer liked it so much that it became the signature final line of each episode, as Sam finds himself in a new body.” - (IMDb)