Thanks for the curdled memories. The same night the drifty final episode aired, Jay Leno welcomed most of the Cheers cast on The Tonight Show, which, as a tribute, was being broadcast from an actual Boston bar. The sitcom stars acted shamefully giddy, juvenile and nearly incoherent throughout the ragged interview. The whole night was pretty weak—even by last-call standards. (NBC)
Remember when Chase was a Not Ready for Prime Time player? His talk show wasn't even ready for local cable access. From the painfully embarrassing opening night until the network mercifully pulled the plug six weeks later, this was a fiasco of lame humor, negligible charm and incredibly labored chitchat. (Fox)
Facing intense competition from a glut of established shows, the fledgling newsmagazine just couldn't wait for a hot story. So it made its own. But when Dateline rigged that truck to explode, they blew their credibility to smithereens and totaled most of the NBC News executive ranks in the process. (NBC)
Limpid British beauty Jane Seymour as a softhearted, politically correct surgeon on the American frontier? Yeah, right! And Regis Philbin is Hoss Cartwright. (CBS)
A handful of flyweight sitcom writers did in a few weeks what dozens of heavyweight opponents couldn't do in three decades—make George Foreman look like a stumblebum. (ABC)
This grimy, plotless, repulsively violent western at least cleared up one lingering mystery: why the French are so inordinately fond of Mickey Rourke. The mumbling thespian is funnier than Jerry Lewis. (HBO)
No joke: Last year Marilyn Kentz and Caryl Kristensen were California housewives. Then NBC gave them a sitcom. No jokes. Not since Ted Mack have rank amateurs gotten so much airtime. (NBC)
Alex Haley's family tree had been picked pretty bare before this posthumous project tried to shake out one more miniseries. The results were preposterously meager and strident. (CBS)
Ka-thump! The Eagle has crash-landed. Despite an all-out promotional blitz, this clueless detective series, starring pop singer Glenn Frey, was yanked after one episode—the quickest network hook since Melba Moore's 1986 sitcom, Melba. (CBS)
FURTHER FOLLIES
•BEAVIS AND BUTT-HEAD (MTV)
•DANIELLE STEEL'S MESSAGE FROM NAM (NBC)
•DADDY DEAREST (Fox)
•DUDLEY (CBS)
•SIDNEY SHELDON'S A STRANGER IN THE MIRROR (ABC)
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
