When I put together the list of the top 10 TV couples for my Valentine’s Day post, I had to leave someone out. And one of the last couples to be cut was Darrin and Samantha Stephens from Bewitched. Samantha was so in love, after all, that she didn’t even notice when Darrin was abducted by aliens and replaced by an entirely different person!
But anyway, I feel bad about leaving them out, so today’s Minisode Monday feature is Bewitched. This one features Dick York (the first Darren), as he tries to deal with the latest witchcraft-caused disaster to befall his family. Hilarity ensues, as always.
One of the most hilarious complaints of entertainment moguls is that the Internet makes it possible for anyone — no matter how talentless — to clutter up our lives with bad art.
And maybe they’re right. If only we could go back to that Pristine Time of Yore, when benevolent gatekeepers stood guard over our attention to make sure we only saw quality entertainment programming. Programming like the 1994 hit Muddling Through.
“Pistol-packin’ Connie Drego had just been paroled from prison, where she had served three years for shooting her cheating husband, Sonny, in the butt, in this raucous comedy. She had returned home to go back to work at Drego’s Oasis, the family’s truck-stop diner/motel in rural Michigan.” –The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows
Ha ha! You’re laughing already, aren’t you? And perhaps you’re wondering what makes this show Minisode Monday-worthy.
Two words: Jennifer Aniston. Before she was a waitress at Central Perk, Jennifer Aniston was a waitress at Drego’s Oasis: the daughter of an ex-con, and the young wife of the ignorant cop who had put her mother away. It’s worth watching to see just how good Aniston is — that even in this mess of a show, she managed to convey that something that made her a star.
Minisodes are a great way to make kids more pop literate, in the time it would take them to find a clean pair of socks on their bedroom floor. The Minisode Network takes classic TV shows and distills them down to about 5 minutes. And that’s not as easy as it sounds, because the opening credits of some shows were like 3 1/2 minutes long.
For my first Minisode Monday, I’m offering an episode of Green Acres. If your children know only one ditzy Hungarian blonde, it should be Eva Gabor. Zsa Zsa got the men, but Eva got the comedic chops.
Incidentally, the little boy in the alien outfit is Buddy Foster, who you may recognize from such other roles as Mike Jones (The Andy Griffith Show), Wolf Boy (The Six Million Dollar Man), and Boy in Car (Foxes). Oh, and he’s also the brother of Jodie Foster, someone your kids might actually recognize.
