Sit-Com Parodies

Not a real Piston-fire or a gentle whirlwind article this month... just a fun shortish one to meet my personal quota of writing I self-assign myself to do.

We are gonna look at sitcom parodies, today, which is a much harder genre to narrow down and discuss than you'd think. Since there's been over ten thousand of them since the 1950s... it's very difficult for it NOT to be a self-parody by the five thousanth one. I mean, even things like Seinfeld, hugely popular ones are in-themselves parodies of sitcoms. I think J. Seinfeld got his start parodying Soap Operas on "Soap" even.

More mundaner ones are even self parodies at this point. I think any sit-coms still on TV at this point are parodies. Ones that are still going are for-sure parodies of themselves. I find it hard to take at face value that the Roseanne show still exists without the titular character and that the titular character was written off with a very mundane drug overdose ... and the family just went on familying like nothing happened minutes after their fictional mother over dosed on drugs. This is a show that's supposed to be seen as a normal family sitcom. It's quite bizarre to really watch this show.

So, to actually start out and say you want to make a show that is a parody of sitcoms is already a difficult task. This is a hard task to declare you are making a parody of sitcoms... for you're saying that you are attempting to parody something that in-and-of-itself is already a parody of its own self. The four we are looking at today declared they were parodies of sitcoms, thus, giving themselves the daunting task of making fun of something that already by default makes fun of its own genre.

 

Our esteemed entries are:

My Mother the Car
Small Wonder
The Brady Bunch Movie
Beef House

I think the Beef entry will be shorter this time... I've written about this show now in more than one article since it came out. It's not a big reveal that I am a fan of this show.

The thing that fascinates me about all entries is that they make it clear that they are parodying a parody which makes all of them almost insanity to some degree yet since the actors act like this is totally normal like any other sitcom... it becomes slightly even more insane.

 

My Mother the Car

My Mother the Car... is a great show. I bet people who watched this in the era it was out would disagree but it is a good show.

My favorite episode of My Mother the Car, is when the Mother (who's a car by the way) is ecstatic to hear that Sonny Tufts has officially made a comeback after being maligned from Hollywood for his drunkard behavior.

Sonny was a man of ill-repute in the years prior to this guest appearance on My Mother the Car. He was doing bad stuff and phoning in his lines in films... especially in Cat-Women From the Moon where there are scenes of Sonny just mumbling and walking off set instead of delivering his lines. You may ask how these scenes were not edited out of Cat-Women From the Moon... I do not really know the answer to that... that's more of a production thing... you can't really blame Sonny for the director leaving those scenes in.

As her son reads her the paper in the garage concerning the films playing at the local drive-in, The Car, is shocked to learn Sonny Tufts is back on the scene.... for My Mother the Car... is totally infatuated with Sonny Tufts. She loves him!

Now, a lot of people, don't realize that prior to being maligned for his drunkard's behavior and previous to being a fellow of grossly ill-repute... Sonny Tufts played dashing war heroes and starry-eyed military men on the Big Screen. In the era where The Car was still alive (and a human instead of a Car)... as a younger woman back then... she was enamored with Sonny like most women were.

....but the road Sonny chose to travel down was not a bright one. His lust for the fairer sex and his out-of-control behavior ... led him to make many bad decisions after bad decisions. His glory days were far behind him and many wondered what had become of the once handsome leading man.

As The Car learns that he will be appearing in a teenage beach rock-and-roll bop-style film as the father figure character... the Car almost bursts a gasket! Her hero has returned! The entire family piles into her (The Car) and drives down to the drive-in to see this teenage bopper picture.

The weather was not on their side that fateful evening as a rain storm broke out and the drive-in had to close... but The Car was resilient... and refused to leave. In the end, The Car, with her son, daughter-in-law, grand-kids, and their dog were the only Car left in the drive-in.

....or were they?

Lo, who could it be at the back of the drive-in? Another car? Surely no one else sat through such a poor film in the bitter cold and rain on this fateful eve? Who could it be?

.....SONNY TUFTS!?!?

Yes, friends, it was he. It was Sonny Tufts. The kids eyes light up like Christmas morning, their parents are in utter amazement... the dog barks at the handsome man! Alas... the Car... she finally has met him. She's met Sonny Tufts after all these years of wishing to see this larger-than-life fellow in the flesh... there he was... right in front of her headlights. Sonny Tufts his actual self. What an episode.... what a great episode.

Other memorable episodes are the ones that feature Avery Schreiber as a vintage car collector who will stop at nothing to acquire My Mother the Car for his collection and is constantly refused by her son who does not want to sell her for any cost. Avery, thus, begins to resort to outlandish scheme after outlandish scheme to outwit the owner and seize the vehicle for his vast collections. He challenges him to a motor-car race and even goes as far as to fake his own terminal illness to guilt the sale of the vehicle. Does Avery Schreiber have no shame in show? No, he does not.

 

Small Wonder 

Small Wonder is a meticulously strange show. A robotic engineer builds a young robot girl and brings her home to his wife and son to be the newest addition to their family. It's odd... but it's played straight like nothing is amiss... which I've found is the real key for these shows to work.

I find this to be a show no one seems to remember for how good it actually was. It was the My Mother the Car of its era. There's a lot of real small things in this show that keep it from becoming redundant. It lasted for FOUR seasons! I've noticed even some of the most stalwart of 80s kids have never heard of this great show.

It works as a sitcom, a better than average one, even if the robot girl wasn't on it. The Dad, the Mom, the Son, the trio of annoying neighbors... are all good on it... PLUS the daughter is a robot! It has it all.

I'm always taken by how normal the show feels as you watch it. It's almost like a perfectly normal sitcom... even better than many of its era... and oh yeah we almost forgot... the daughter is a robot. I even think the actions of the characters on this show are MORE human and less robotic than most sitcoms of its era. They say things that are more natural to a real life environment even though we're to believe this is a crazy fantasy world with robots.

There's scenes with the "Warren" character, a Charlie Brown kid, who falls in love with the robot that are the most Peanuts-like presentation of the Peanuts in a non-cartoon form. The kids behavior on this show is more kid-like than other shows. They act like how silly dumb kids act unlike on other shows where you see kids reading Harvard Comedy School Writers lines as if they'd actually ever say or act like that in real life. Kids in real life are actually mean like Lucy in the Peanuts.

The Robot character tends to repeat the things she's just heard, like a person with echolalia... but that's actually what kids that age do in real life at that stage. They repeat whatever they hear. The robot is actually more of a kid-like kid than kids on other shows... which is strange... in that its trying to be an off-the-wall crazy show. I find the behavior of the kids on Full House to be much more bizarre than the behavior of the Robot on Small Wonder. Kids in real life are fish-out-of-water characters who do not understand the world around them and tend to just repeat things and execute half-understood behaviors of things they've seen. I find the kids on Small Wonder, both the human ones and the robot one, to be very realistically kid-like.

There was a cool game from Japan that never made it to the USA called "Wonder Project J" ... which naming this game with "Wonder" in the title makes me wonder if it was influenced by Small Wonder... maybe that show was big in Japan, who knows.

I played a translated version of this game in the early 2000s and still remember this game well. You build this robot son and just interact with him... you don't outright control the robot... you just watch him interact with his environment and give him cues, suggestions, reprimands, and rewards for his behavior. The first time I played this I didn't get all the story chapters correct ... and if you don't... your robot son dies at the end in a heroic fashion.... and even though he's a robot... and even though it's just a video game and he's not even a real robot... that game is sooo sad.

Kids in real life are sort of these unprogrammed robots who's behavior and speech are dictated by their surroundings. Both in Small Wonder and in Wonder Project J... I felt the characters to be very believable as humans... even though they were supposed to be robots.

Other than the monotone voice and machine-like behavior... I think the Robot on Small Wonder is a very believable kid. She says half-understood regurgitated sentence fragments she'd heard her brother, neighbor, or parents say. She learns bad behavior from her bratty next-door neighbor. She interacts rudely with icky boys who like her. It's surprisingly more natural behavior you'd see from a child being displayed here.

I heard they cancelled that show Caillou, which parents hated, recently. I think that show would have worked if they made that bald boy a robot. Then again... from start to finish that show is not good. Even the theme song to Caillou is not any good. I take it back... even if they made Caillou a robot child... it still would be bad.

Alright so, Small Wonder and Wonder Project J are both things I recommend.

The Brady Bunch Movie

This isn't really a TV Show... this is actually a movie. I like this movie, too.

The fun thing about this compared to the other old TV Shows turned into movies is they totally made this into an outright Brady Bunch parody instead of a reboot. It is the Brady Bunch in the current era (that it was made)... literally. The Bunch didn't age or change from the 70s... but the world around them did. The Brady's were in the year 1995 but were this bizarre time-capsuled copy of themselves... preserved like jam for decades... never changing with the times.

It's a great idea!

My favorite character in this movie was the middle-kid of the female trio set of kids... Jan. Every line, every mannerism, and every movement of this actress was funny. I think this movie is a great starting point for females who want to do comedy ... they should watch Jan in the Brady Bunch Movie.

I'm looking at the actress's IMDB page and am surprised she wasn't more famous after this. Jan Brady in The Brady Bunch Movie is a fantastic comedic performance. Utterly fantastic.

I don't remember if its in this one or the Very Brady Sequel where she absolutely LOSES her MIND over her jealousy for Marsha, has a nervous breakdown, runs away from home... and meets the original Alice (Ann B. Davis) from the original show. That's so good that part.

I love her paranoid-ass face when her full distain for Marsha finally boils over in her messed-up brain and she starts hallucinating, talking to herself, and basically snapping. This was Oscar caliber acting here.

How she walks at one point in this film is amazing. It's like a scene where she gets glasses or something and it's one of the best comedy walks of all time... Monty Python (and the Ministry of Silly Walks) would be proud.

 

If the Oscars were ever given to Truly good performances in films ... this would have gotten something. Every Jan scene is great.

I would love to have been in the writers room, people pitchin' ideas for this, and someone goes "let's make Jan Brady a paranoid schizo!" ... and then the rest of the room going... "great idea!" .. I would have loved to have been there for such an historic moment in film history.

I'm a huge Jan-Head and I love this movie. What other ones were good? I remember The Beverly Hillbillies was okay... the movie of it... but Jim Varney is in that as Jed... and believe-you-me... there is very little that Jim Varney ever touched that did not turn to gold... so it's not a big surprise to anyone that Beverly Hillbillies was good... because Jim Varney is always good. It was a BIG surprise, however, how absolutely good the Brady Bunch movie was. While we're on the topic let's work in the Brady Bunch Variety Hour too for this entry. Why not? You know? On second thought, nevermind, it's not that good.


Alright let's move on...

 

Beef House

As stated, I've already written multiple times, I think, on this show. It is the My Mother the Car and the Small Wonder of its Era... 100%.

I hope someone realizes its great and throws mucho deniro at this thing and make more of them. It is already probably ahead of Car and Wonder already and there's only like six short episodes. Then again maybe it's not the best all time as of yet.

That Sonny Tufts episode on My Mother the Car is outright wonderful. From second One to second Last it is a masterpiece. A true Master's Piece in every sense of the term. That was one of the last episodes too so it had time to work into itself and really start to brew, you know?

I'm not sure Beef House has made its full Masterpiece episode yet... it needs more shows. It does. I know they will make a Masterpiece. If it doesn't get more shows... I think either Prunes or Crab Dip is their Masterpiece episode so far.

Because Brady Bunch Movie is a movie and not a TV Show, I think it should be omitted from the final tally of rankings.

So as of right now I'd say because there's only six Beef House shows it is pound-for-pound the best show but the longevity isn't yet there. Small Wonder had the most episodes of any of the entries but I'm not sure it's necessarily a longevity thing this contest.

Why even make a rankings? I love them all. They are all winners!

Bonus Entry

In the old old old internet of the late 90s... I remember a Geocities site called "Football Dad"... I can't seem to find it on Internet Archive or anything.

It was a website about an old show... where the father of the family dies... but comes back as a football. It was such a dumb site... and it wasn't popular or anything... I don't know why I found it so funny... or even remember it. It was a good idea for a show though. This show never actually existed, of course, but if you read the "guestbook" of the site (which was an archaic version of a comments section)... you had people remembering it like it was yesterday and others who never heard of it but wanted to find it.

Football Dad. I'd watch it if it ever became a real show. It would have to be casted properly though.

Googling "Football Dad" the only thing that mentions it was this very website in 2011.

Did I dream this or something? Does anyone else recall Football Dad?


EDIT:
I have found an archive of Football Dad!:
(https://web.archive.org/web/20031219083459/http://meltingpot.fortunecity.com/gilford/796/FD/index.html)

Troubling Times: Content Awards

We're still in troubling times, gang. I haven't wrote in here in a while now.... I am quite proud of my Turkey short story and that's probably why I haven't wrote in this in a bit... because I don't want to "turn the page" on Turkey yet and bury it down in this blog too soon. It entertained me to write it, as I'd hoped, and I hope it entertained others who read it. It is a fitting short story for the times, I think. Themes of the story are relevant to this moment in our current ever-on-going human history.

But, it's time to "turn the page" and continue writing about other moments of our times and other diversions of the age. One main theme of this blog, over the decade, has been "turn to page" as a sort of coping method in life... just keep stepping, keep going forward. My story "The Journey" uses that as one of its main themes, as well.

Let's turn the page on Turkey, and explore other interesting things, shall we?

There's things people have been making in these lonesome times that have made me laugh (or feel other emotions) and I think I would like to commend these people in this month's article. There's no real rhyme or reason to today's format. I just want to talk about some things over the the last two months that I found to be interesting or uplifting entertainment during these difficult times.

In the case that the content is a fiction show... I won't write spoilers for the show... for I suggest you watch the show in question.


The Entries are the Following:

-Neil Sedaka's Daily Concertos from his Living Room to All of Us.

-Tim and Eric's New Smash Hit Sit-Com: Beef House

-Dinosaur Dracula's Epic Anthropological Opening of a Can of Spider Man Pasta (c. 1995)

-Wrestling! 



Neil Sedaka's Daily Concertos from his Living Room to All of Us

(Neil's Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/NeilSedakaMusic/videos)

I can't say Neil Sedaka was a big name for a person from my era... he's quite before my time. I heard about him from the Gilbert Colossal Podcast, which as a historical resource is always great. He was interviewed by Gilbert and Frank on that podcast and played some of his music on the show.

It has become part of my daily routine to listen to Neil Sedaka's "mini-concerts" each week day since around late April. He is a truly great singer and piano player. He is a National Treasure's National Treasure!

It's such a great variety of music and it is so honest and nice. There's love songs, upbeat numbers, Alice in Wonderland, and Super Bird. I'm just gonna say this... Super Bird from 1972 is a SUPERB song.

He does Super Bird in this One....

I don't really know what it is about this man sitting in his living room, in a different color t-shirt each day, but it's so simple and good...

"When I told the people that I could really fly,

They said that little boys ain't supposed to lie.
Poor little super bird sitting on the ground,
No zoom, zoom, zoom, when anyone's around.

Fly, fly, fly super bird, super bird.
While you're young super bird, super bird.
There's time enough to wreck your dreams.

Have your fun, super bird."

-Superbird

There's times during these troubling times that I wish I could just zoom n' fly around like a young Super Bird...  but there's no Santa Clause or Green Cheese on this moon, man. There just isn't. This song is very fitting for our times. I know how that young Super Bird feels in this song... that Super Bird is all of us!

Neil Sedaka deserves a Content Award for his daily concerts. They are so simple, honest, and good. They have become part of my daily routine during these troublin' times.



-Tim and Eric's New Smash Hit Sit-Com: Beef House

Beef House was released earlier than planned because a ground-swell of fan-demand literally demanded that the Beef be released!

This, as mentioned in the intro, will be a spoiler free mention of the Beef House, for it is still very new... and I suggest people watch it. Be forewarned though, it is a parody of sit-coms... and more so than any other sit-com parody in history. The themes and "b-plots" it explores can venture into areas of absurdity and all-out grossness... so if you don't want diarrhea-related sub-plots in your family-friendly sit-coms then the Beefness of this Beef probably won't suit your palette.

To keep this spoiler free, I was thinking of doing a Beef Season One MVP, and measure all the merit won inside the Beef House by each of the Beef Boys as individuals... and award one of them with an MVP award (a la Sports)... or in this case a MVBB (most valuable Beef Boy)... but then I realized that was the wrong thing to do.

It's as Tennessee Winston Luke Fortenberry III, so gently put it, that the Beef Boys are "all for one... and one for all!"... so for me to measure the merit of each individual Beef Boy and award only ONE of them with the MVBB would go against everything the Beef Boys stand for. The Beef Boys are in that Beef House (with Detective Megan Dungerson) together and their credo is to support one another and watch out for each other.

Awarding a merit award to only one of the Beef Boys was the wrong route to take whilst I was thinking about this section... this MVBB... most valuable Beef Boy.... must go to ALL of the Beef Boys AND Detective Megan Dungerson!

I hope this has multiple seasons as Season One was only six episodes. I think this six-pack of Beef was just to test the beefy waters to see if this experiment will catch on and if there will be a public outcry for the Beef.... so if you want more six-packs of the Beef, I suggest you all watch the Beef House!

I can see why they would only make a short order of Beef to test the Beef Waters before going for a full order of Beef... this show is a weird concept. If you're a fan of sitcom parodies... some previous examples are Seinfeld, Curb, Always Sunny, Married w/ Children, etc..... this sitcom parody has more out-of-control elements that you don't see on those parodies... Beef House has some light swearing (especially from Ron Austar) and a heapin' helpin' of Rangus.

So, another Content Award in these troublin' times must be adorned to everyone involved in this show for making a great show!



-Dinosaur Dracula's Epic Anthropological Opening of a Can of Spider Man Pasta (c. 1995)

I'm not sure how many anthropological minded readers we have here today, who enjoy viewing artifacts and relics of past times to fully understand the march of humankind on a chronological level.... but this next entry is from the world of Anthropology.

Writer Dinosaur Dracula, took to twitter on April 16th of the year 2020 to ask the public at large if it was interested in seeing what the pasta inside of a can of Chef Boyardee Spiderman Pasta from 1995 looked like. He requested 1995 retweets for him to open it (the can was from 1995 so the retweet request amount is logical).

See: https://twitter.com/DinosaurDracula/status/1250817249092472832

The retweet requests were achieved in mere hours after the tweet went out. It is possible that due to the troublin' times we are in and the myriad of people at home contributed to the this achievement gaining momentum so fast... but deep down I don't believe that... I know, deep down, many people have an anthropological nerve in themselves and don't even know it. The deep need of humanity to see the effects of time on Spider Man pasta led this to going viral.

I regard this as one of the most striking presentations of anthropological value of recent times. It is a sight to behold, in the passage of time sense, the effect time had on something as simple and relatable to as Amazing Spider Man Chef Boyardee Pasta from 1995.

The press had a field day with this! If you search for "Man Opens 25 Year Old Can of Spider Man Pasta" on a search engine... you'll see that many MAJOR news outlets reported on this event from all around the world!

So, if you were living under a rock or something (and honestly if you were living under a rock in these troublin' times that's totally okay and commendable of you, actually)... here is the twitter thread where he opens this can of 1995 Spider Man Pasta:

The Opening of the Can: https://twitter.com/DinosaurDracula/status/1250901290944692229

So, let's issue the third Content Award to the Opening of the Can... which captivated the entire world for an entire week.... and I am not exaggerating... it DID captivate the entire world.




Wrestling!

I know it has become a joke that "Wrestling" was deemed an "Essential Service" in "Florida" ... and, to an extent, I have to agree that it is a little strange that Wrestling was deemed as such. Personally, I can't say it is an "essential service" during these troublin' times and agree with most of the people poking fun at this.

I noticed Andy Richter had a funny bit on this on the "Conan at Home" show... and other people have made fun of this... with good reason.

That being said, I think it has been done professionally, with limited access to the stage, as only performers and crew are allowed on set and no fans are in the building. It is being filmed for TV rather than a live audience.... which is a benefit in Wrestling as it still manages to work as a TV Show instead of a live event if the case need be. I can't say the same for other events. The Korean baseball they are showing on TV is okay but is being played in empty stadiums... and if you watch Korean baseball with fans its a much different event than without.

Personally, I don't think Sports will work in empty stadiums, it is too Ghost-Towny, I feel (maybe it's just me, though). Yet, I do think Wrestling has managed to find a way to work without a live studio audience. The locales they are putting the matches in, I think, is successfully making the event seem less strange that there's no live audience. The "Boneyard", The Fiend's Parallel Universe, The Young Buck's Pool-side Estate Match... and recently Kenny Omega and Matt Hardy taking on Chris Jericho and Sammy Guevara in a Jacksonville Jaguars empty stadium all-around-the-premises match. 

This may even work for Sports... I mean let's say, you play Football or Baseball without fans... but you play the game at a very very scenic locale... like uuhhhh... the Grand Canyon or something. Maybe seeing Baseball on the Grand Canyon would be a cool gimmick in the "Empty Stadium Era" as opposed to a ghost town stadium. Replace the fans with scenic scenery. I'm not sure... I'm just putting it out there. I could see it working, briefly for a while. I can picture baseball at the Grand Canyon and other scenic vistas, can you? Hittin' homeruns into the beautiful gorge instead of the stands. You know?

It is working for Wrestling, to an extent. I notice a lot of the greener wrestlers are still doing crowd work for a non-existent crowd which really looks odd to an audience viewing at home. All in all, the "empty arena" era of Wrestling is different but it's something.

I want to specifically commend K. Omega, M. Hardy, C. Jericho, S. Guevara, the Inner Circle, referee B. Remsburg, and everyone like the camera crew for the main event on AEW's Dynamite the other day.... it was definitely the most interesting thing that has happened in the Wide World of Sport in MONTHS!

Kenny Omega back flipped off of a hydraulic construction lift, Matt Hardy was placed unwillingly into a freezer only to emerge from his icy tomb as the Essence of the One only Known as Damascus to seek revenge on his enemies, people hit each other with baseball bats and traffic cones.... and then Sammy Guevera was hit by a golf cart (or military-grade golf cart from the looks of it)... all on LIVE TV!

Now that's something else, right there. I really really really wish to commend all involved in the main event of AEW Dynamite for that... which I must say... in this Sportsless entertainment world right now ... it was the most exciting thing I've seen in months!

Video Excerpt of the Event in Question!

  

Conclusion

Okay so, that's four things I thought were really great lately. There's been others but I think those four are the most fourest that other people would enjoy as well.

Personally, a big one for me, has been TSN airing old Montreal Expos games on TV instead of new baseball games... but Expos nostalgia is very deeply personal to me ... I'm not sure anyone else would be super interested in it. They showed Tim Raines and the Expos beating the New York Mets in 1987 the other day... and I was literally captivated by every SECOND of it.

Another thing lately has been the Rise of Leslie Jordan ... who has become a social media icon of late. It's nice to see him taking his prominent place in the pop world as he deserves it.

I hope you enjoyed my article, ladies and gentleman, please stay safe in these troublin' times... and please check out some of the things mentioned in this article. There's something for everyone here. All these artists, I think, are being very experimental in a time in the world where entertainment is important yet difficult. I think all the four entries in this article share that trait of being "experimental" in a difficult time and I think all their efforts should be noticed ... and that's why I wanted to give all four entries some sort of Award for making great things in the world.