 This is the SF Productions Podcast Network. That wonderful TV here, 1990, strikes back! From the Pop Culture Bunker, I'm Indy. And I'm Mark. You can check out our audio podcast, How I Got My Wave 3 Comics on iTunes, or on our website, SFPodcastNetwork.com. Now, we're talking in our last episode about the TV Guide Fall Preview Issues, the several issues of 1990, and we're right in the middle of all that action, so let's get back to that. Moving on to Wednesday, Lenny, CBS. Now, this was an era when any stand-up comedian could go to Hollywood and get a sitcom. Lenny Clark plays, well, Lenny, a guy in Boston who works for the local electric company, and as a doorman. He has a wife, Lee Garlington, and three kids. The show is scheduled against the Wonder Years and Unsolved Mysteries, so it died quickly after 16 episodes, one of which never aired. The Finnelli Boys on NBC. Mama Finnelli, Dick Van Dykes, and Morgan Gilbert is about to retire to Miami when her sons mess things up. Ronnie, Andy Hirsch, just dropped out of school. Frankie, law and order SVU's Chris Maloney, just broke his engagement. Dom, Joe, Pento Leono is a hustler. Oh, and the funeral home that she's planning to hand off to Anthony, Ned Eisenberg, is in debt. So Mama needs to stay and take care of the boys. As you might suspect, the show was rife with Italian-American stereotypes, which didn't help. It lasted barely a season. Married people, ABC. In a format networks go back to over and over, this sitcom follows three couples at various points in matrimony. Alan and Cindy, Chris Young and Megan Gallivan, are newlyweds with Alan Stillen College. Russell and Elizabeth, Jay Thomas and Bess Armstrong are working professionals with a new son. Nick and Olivia, Ray Arana and Barbara Montgomery are an older couple that own the apartment building where they all live. Despite good reviews, the show never did well, and pre-emptions due to the first golf war did it in after 18 episodes. And we finally made it to Cop Rock on ABC. Hitmaker Steven Bochko thought he could branch out into a new genre, a musical police drama. Basically, Hill Street Blues like storylines punctuated or interrupted with big musical numbers. A police line-up would turn into a boy band. The morning briefing would become a rock ballad. A jury transforms into a gospel choir. You get the idea. Like a Broadway musical, the cast went back to what they were doing after each number, like it never happened. Now according to a Bochko interview, the genesis of Cop Rock was a plan to make Hill Street Blues a musical which never happened. Hill Street Vett and Bochko's wife at the time, Barbara Bosson played the mayor, while James McDaniel played an officer and would go on to Bochko's NYPD Bloop. An unknown Cheryl Crowe was a backup singer slash undercover cop. The experiment did not work. TV Guide listed it in the 50 Worst Series of All Time in 2002. The show itself was gone in 11 episodes. WIOU on CBS. TV loves to talk about itself, so it incomes this drama about a local TV station in such a terrible financial and rating situation that it was nicknamed WIOU. John Shea plays the incoming new director, determined to move the station up the dial. Dick Van Patten plays the weatherman, Phil Morris, a reporter, and Mariette Hartley, the exec producers, with a large cast behind them. It didn't work and was gone in 13 with one more episode unerred. Let's go on to Thursday night. The Flash. CBS. Finally a show we actually watched. Well, I watched Law & Order. Yeah. Torn from the pages of DC Comics, police scientist Barry Allen, John Wesley Shipp, is zapped with electrified chemicals, and Zoom, he has super speed. This version merges different comic continuities as he's helped out by scientist slash love interest Tina McGee, Amanda Pays, to figure out his new abilities. There's also Barry's buddy and co-worker Julio Alex Desert, a TV news reporter, Richard Belzer, who does tabloid stories about the new hero, plus two police officers, Vito M. Di Ambrosio and Biff Menard, mostly used for comic relief. We get most of Flash's Rogue's gallery featured throughout the series, particularly Mark Hamill as the trickster. The show was green-lit after the huge success of the Michael Keaton Batman film, and the TV show shares much of its sensibility with modern running into Art Deco and Danny Elfman writing both of the theme songs. The show was incredibly expensive, the four Flash suits alone cost $100,000, and the ratings couldn't justify it disappearing after one season. However, it came back as part of the CW air-overs with Ship first appearing as the Grant Gustin Berry Allen's father and then the Golden Age Flash, Jay Geerick. His character just sacrificed himself in the Crisis on Infinite Earth's crossover event, Spoiler, including a clip from the original series with Ship and Pays. Hamill even returned as trickster at one point. Babes on Fox. Three sisters share a small New York City apartment and have the kinds of shenanigans you would expect from TV sitcom. So what makes this all different? They're all plus size. Today, a show like this would celebrate them. But in 1990, this was the source of much of the humor. Susan Peretz, Wendy Jusperber, and Leslie Boone played the sisters. Despite having the Simpsons as the lead-in, the show was gone in one season. Gabriel's Fire in ABC. James Earl Jones comes to series TV as an ex Chicago cop embittered after spending 20 years in prison for allegedly shooting his partner. He decides to become an embittered PI. Despite winning three Emmys, one for Jones, another for supporting actress Madge Sinclair, and a third for guest star David Opatishu, as well as great reviews, the show was gone in a season. Even Daughters, CBS, not to be confused with a long-running Aussie soap, or a 1974 CBS drama, this dramedy is about an extended Portland, Oregon family. A huge cast is led by Lucy Arnez, who is Lucille Ball's daughter. Grandpa is played by George Wallace, who was Commando Cody in the 40's movie serial. The show was actually pushed back to mid-season in January 1991 and then was gone by March. This is Beverly Hills 90210 on Fox. It's listed as simply 90210 in TV Guide with class of Beverly Hills as a former name. This is, of course, the prototype for the teen soap. In its 10-year run, a huge cast would pass through, including the core group, Jason Priestley, Shannon Doherty, Jenny Garth, Ian Zierling, Gabriel Carteris, Brian Austin Green, Tori Spelling, and Luke Perry. Some would go on to long careers, but Zierling and Zierling would go on to the Sharknado franchise. Carteris became the president of the Screen Actors Guild and Perry passed away last year. Spelling was also the daughter of the show's producer, Aaron Spelling. The show also created an entire franchise, including Melrose Place, Models Inc., Reboots of 90210, and Melrose, plus a bizarre mockumentary reality show drama with much of the original cast playing themselves. The show did very poorly in its first season, and then Fox re-randed in the summer with heavy promotion, which got the ball rolling. 90210 was never highly rated in general, never getting above the 40s in the ratings, but was often number one in the desirable 18-34 demo. Ironically, the show was nominated for a single Emmy for Milton Burl as guest star. I did watch 90210, often on. On Friday, we had Evening Shave from CBS. Burt Reynolds, who had failed in a TV comeback in detective series BL Stryker the previous year, after being the biggest movie star of the 70s, hit it big with this sitcom, co-starring Mary Lou Henner. He plays an ex-NFL star who moves to a small, southern town to coach high school, ball, along with his wife, played by Henner, and three, later, four kids. Hal Holberg plays Henner's father and Nan newspaper owner, Elizabeth Ashley, her aunt, Charles Durning, their old friend, and Durning's wife, with Asi Davis as the narrator and owner of the local barbecue joint, plus Michael Jeter as the coach's un-athletic assistant. Future stars Hilary Swank, Leah Remini, and Lisa Kudrow recurred on the show. The show did very well in its four seasons, running in the top 30 after the first one and won two Emmys, one for Reynolds, one for Jeter. However, skyrocketing costs, mostly due to the all-star cast, and CBS. Edward Wardward, just coming off his lead role on The Equalizer, plays an ex-Scotland Yard researcher and current mystery novelist who's not having much luck with his new work. In comes Jessica Lundy, whose character is a journalist asking him for help on an actual murder case. He's her favorite author. They wind up as partners and amateur sleuths. If you see elements of murder, she wrote, that's because he came from the same producer, William Link. That's magic, because it was gone in ten episodes, one of which never aired. DEA on FOX What seemed like a good idea, true stories of the Drug Enforcement Administration turned into dramatizations with actors playing the cops and robbers never really worked. So the network retooled it, showing more of the officers' personal lives, which I assume were fiction and cutting down on the violence. All told, it ran for ten episodes. A show with the same name following actual DAA officers in 2008 on Spike. Going places on ABC. So, how about a sitcom from the Miller-Milkis TGIF stable about comedy writers working on a candid camera-esque show? This work of naval gazing has a decent cast, Alan Rock, Heather Locklear, Hailey Todd, Holland Taylor, Stacey Keenan, and Philip Charles Mackenzie. The original concept flop, so it was rejiggered with candid camera gone, replaced with a talk show where they are writers. It still didn't work, and the show was gone in a season. So let's recap. In 1990, out of an incredible 34 new series, there were nine hits, which we define as lasting more than one season. True Colors, Parker Lewis Can't Lose, America's Funniest People, Get a Life, Fresh Prince of Bel Air, The Trials of Rosie O'Neill, Law & Order, Beverly Hills 90210, and Evening Shade, with 25 misses for a 26% success rate. Now, we have mentioned that this was only part of the issue Fall Preview at TV Guide. The other issues? Biggest showdowns and hottest nights featuring Bill Cosby versus Bart Simpson on the cover. The Simpsons was the first show to actually compete with the now disgraced comedian. Despite the subtitle, neither topic was covered inside. It just listed changes occurring in existing shows. Hotest new faces of fall, which at least was truth in advertising. Some of those faces included the obvious, Will Smith, and a future legend, Robin Roberts who had just gotten an ESPN gig. Bonus points, if you could recognize in a lineup some of the others. Kate McNeil on WIOU, Layla Robbins from Gabriel's Fire, Jenny Gago from DEA, Victoria Cordieri, CBS News, and Marcus Redmond, Doogie Hauser. And then we have What's Best and What's Waiting in the Wings. The critic's choice just seemed to be a melange of TV shows new and existing with no actual consensus. What was Waiting in the Wings to replace the mini-bombs? Anything but love, Northern Exposure, Wise Guys, Sisters, Amen, Blossom, and a show about nothing that got a four-week tryout the previous summer. Newman! Newman! What happened to think that you have to give a little bit more percentage weight balance to shows that have lasted so long? Yes, like Law & Order and The Flash coming back and 90210 that really had a significant impact on future television. I suppose you're right. So I think we could say that it really probably was more of a 50% success rate. I wouldn't go that far, but maybe more than 26. Okay. So we may argue about what's a successful TV show, but we like to read comics together and you can check out our audio podcast How I Got My Wife to Read Comics on iTunes or on our website sfpodcastnetwork.com From the Pop Culture Bunker, I'm Mindy and I'm Mark. Thanks for watching.