TV shows I loved as a kid but that kind of suck to watch now: the Greatest American Hero
So I am not really feeling the dating advice tonight and don’t want to force it. I considered going to see a movie and writing a review of it, but there seems to be a dearth of movies worth even worth considering unless I happened to catch a bad case of Bieber Fever, the only fever known to medical science to be caused by brain damage instead of the other way around. Instead I am going to explore an interesting phenomenon in my life: TV shows I loved as a kid that when I go back and watch now are really kind of painful to watch. (Knight Rider t-shirt courtesy of the TV t shirts category)
This is a weird thing to me, as it only seems to apply to TV shows. Movies that I watched as a kid I can go back and watch again and love and appreciate all over again. A few months ago I watch Goonies again and came away with a great feeling and a desire to listen to Cyndi Lauper. Last month I saw Time Bandits and loved it. Yet somehow whenever I go back and watch an old TV show it really looks painfully bad.
I think this may actually be a criticism of modern movies rather than a simple bitch about old TV shows. The fact is I think television has evolved into a much more polished and well written product, while movies, for all the technological advancement, have not really advanced much in terms of stories and cliches. Since TV shows have to have an extended lifespan and pull in advertising dollars there is a serious motivation to have at least the basic premise functional. Also, they seem to react better to current trends in pop culture. Movies only have to survive long enough to make it to international distribution, so it doesn’t really matter how much they suck (cough cough Season of the Witch cough cough). Therefore, the motivation to evolve just isn’t there (thank you Darwin).
Anyway, this concept was driven home about two years ago. As a kid growing up in the sucktastic 80’s I ran into this show, the Greatest American Hero. It was about a high school teacher named Ralph Hinkley who is given a suit by aliens that gives him super powers. The problem is he manages to lose the instruction manual (and really, which of us hasn’t done this) and has to figure it out through painful trail and error. He is supposed to help humans with it. The suit makes him bulletproof (sort of. He is never sure if it covers his entire body or just the part covered by the suit, so there are many humorous scenes where someone is shooting at him and he is covering his face with his arms like a girl getting spit wads shot at her), can fly, gives him super strength, and all sort of other powers that crop up as he screws around with the suit, kind of like having you car clock wrong six months every year until you figure out the RPS button will allow you to change the clock (not that I am speaking from personal experience, but really, I am).
He is teamed up with an FBI agent named Bill Maxwell (played by the great Robert Culp) and his super hot lawyer girlfriend Pam Davidson. On paper this sounds brilliant. Super hero? Super powers? FBI agent? Aliens? Hot lawyer girlfriend? Sounds like a recipe for the greatest American tv show.
So I loved it as a kid and two years ago was looking around Best Buy and saw a beautiful tin box collectors set that had all episodes, tons of extra features, and a heat transfer logo to make your own costume for the unlikely price of like $29.99. I bought it and hustled home to throw it on my TV.
That’s where the disappointment set it. The opening scene, which was Bill Maxwell’s friend being gunned down by terrorists that I remembered as really cool, was horrible done. All the dialogue sucked. The story sucked. The hair was all that really bad super trendy big 80’s hair that turns my stomach. I’m not going to be one of those tools who bitches about special effects done 30 years ago, but I can watch the original Star Wars from 1977 and still see some decent and believable special effects, so from that perspective the special effects sucked. Pam Davidson, who I remember as being really hot in the show, now looks like a middle aged housewife (with really big hair) when seen through my adult eyes. Everyone was wearing bad 80’s clothing. I can’t put my finger on it, but there was something in either the editing or camera work that is really jarring and disjointed. Overall very disappointing.
I put the boxed set back on my shelf after three lousy episodes. I guess this should be counted as a lesson learned, but I am reasonably sure that if I were to come across the same boxed set deal for Airwolf, Rip Tide, Magnum PI, the A Team, Knight Rider, Mork and Mindy, the Dukes of Hazard, TJ Hooker, Max Headroom, WKRP in Cincinnati, Miami Vice, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Married with Children, Night Court, Murphy Brown, Baywatch, or MacGuyver I would probably buy it with similar results. Oh, well. At least it would give me something to blog about.
Anyway, enough of this. Next post will be more interpreting online dating images. As for yesterday’s who-would-win question, Batman versus Darth Vader, the obvious answer is Vader as he could probably just force choke Batman to death. However, I have a lot of faith in Batman’s ability to overcome amazing odds. I believe given enough time to plan and prepare he would find a way to overcome the Dark Sith Lord, especially know that I know what an emo wienie he is under all that armor.
For today, I ask another mismatch that I think could go a different way if you think about it. Who would win, a single Star Trek Red Shirt armed with phaser against Tweekie with Dr. Theopolis?
