Syndicated: You Can't Take It With You

Even though it's only about 20 years old, this is easily one of the most forgotten television shows I've ever encountered. Even the IMDB page has it all wrong and seems to get it confused with the play of the same name, of which this series was an updating. It's like everybody's memory was wiped clean.

The series revolved around the character of Martin (played by Harry Morgan, a man who must love to work) who lived with his daughter and her husand (Richard Sanders from WKRP) Paul, who designed toys and according to Martin " played with them too".

Martin was this free spirit who painted and never paid his taxes, he narrated the show's opening highlighting how eclectic each family member was, he himself marched to the beat of a different drummer.

My local UHF station played this show at five on Sunday and I remember being somewhat confused why it existed. It was clearly based on something but I'd never heard of the play or the film, I doubt most people had. Much of the show took place on the living room set and the writing was dated and weak. There weren't many laughs to be had.

Despite having the presence of Morgan and Sanders, YCTIWY faded after one unmemorable season and apparently, all evidence of it was destroyed.

Cop Week: She's The Sheriff

1987 saw the rise of first run syndicated sitcoms to our households and one of the most talked about was "She's The Sherriff" the big TV comeback of Suzanne Somers. This show actually generated a lot of attention, as many network afiliates were putting "Sheriff" on prior to their prime time programming.

The series revolves around Hildy (played by Somers) whose husband dies in the line of duty, so she takes his badge and becomes Sheriff. Plotting against her is Deputy Max Rubin (played by the easy to dislike George Wyner) who feels he deserved the job. Veteran actor Lou Richards was also in the mix as a dumb guy deputy.

The results were rather weak, like a lot of first run syndicated shows, "Sheriff" didn't have the polish and much of the humour seemed forced. Somers proved she could play something other than a dumb blonde but that wasn't holding anybody's attention. "She's the Sheriff" was cancelled after 44 episodes, lasting much longer than a lot of syndicated sitcoms..

Syndicated: The Munsters Today

In the 80s John Schuck bounced around guesting on a lot of popular shows and movies, also playing Murray the cop for a brief time on "The New Odd Couple". The he did this, a syndicated remake of the 60s classic series "The Munsters" (duh).

This continuation of the original series has one of the most douche chilling startings I've ever seen, where the cast warbled along to the theme song "we're the munsters tooooday!" Ech.

I'll admit that if you have to find a replacement for Fred Gwynne, Schuck is the best "fake Herman" but Howard Morton (the gentle voiced Officer Ralph Simpson from "Gimmee a Break") is no Al Lewis and their chemistry isn't there. Lee Meriwether is another decent choice to play Lily but the series itself just suffers from that "Syndicated Sitcom" smell, where you know it would be torn to pieces in prime time. Essentially it was a D Student.

Well, when you're up against "Bowling for Dollars" and followed by "Small Wonder" on some awful Rochester TV station at 3pm on Sunday, you can indeed go very far. This D Student ran for three seasons and actually made more episodes than the (Superior) original.

This concludes John Schuck week, I hope you enjoyed as I'm quite sure we shant see it's like again in our lifetime.

Syndicated: Out of the World

Out of this World was the story of Evie, who on her 16th Birthday is told that her father is an alien, no, not like the gardener (an actual joke from the pilot) but a space alien. The onset of puberty brings along special powers for Evie like the ability to stop time.

If you haven't seen this show, I'll spoil it for you, it's not very good. I'll also confess that I've seen every episode! You see, OOTW (as we fans refer to it as) ran at 12:30 when I was in college. Which was right after "Leave it to Beaver" and either it was my love for series co-star Doug McClure or my hatred for Political Science (Oh how I failed that year) but somehow I sat through all 96 episodes. Maybe at the start of every show I got fooled into thinking it was Buck Rogers, seeing as the stock footage is all taken from there.

Burt Reynolds (yes that Burt Reynolds) did the voice of Evie's deadbeat space dad, which came out of a fancy lava lamp thingee. Evie and her mom (played by "Angie" Donna Pescow) were also beleagured by a crew of whacky neighbours and relatives such as their fat, food crazed Uncle Beano and "comedian" Buzz Bellmondo, who was truly the "Ray Jay Johnson" of the 1980s.

I wish I could back in time and beat the living hell of my college self...

Syndicated: Small Wonder

If you ever want to end an argument that society as a whole may be getting dumber, just blurt out the sentence "Small Wonder ran for four seasons!". That's it, game over, nobody can come back from that.

What is Small Wonder you ask? You're a lucky person if you don't know. It's a curious throwback to the 1960's and the concept of "My Living Doll" where an inventor builds a robot and then sort of adopts it. In this case, Ted Lawson builds an android that looks like a little girl in order to sell it as a servant (That's not all creepy) and then decides to keep it as the daughter he never had.

The Lawson family always run the risk of being caught mostly because VICI talks and acts just like a robot. The big danger is Ted's next door neighbor and boss, Brandon Brindle, their daughter Harriet is truly the most frightening child ever seen on TV.

The whole show is just surreal, you'd swear it was created recently to be a back story on "Arrested Development" or something but you can't make this shit up. It used to play on Saturday mornings in my area, which probably was wise considering children are the only people that could possibly be placated by this.

The show never explained why the VICI bot was getting taller but then again Star Trek never explained why data suddenly had a gut either....