100 Things I Love About TV

It's taken me a while, but I've finally compiled a list a la Siskoid's.



1. Andy Griffith and Don Knotts: Greatest Comedy Team of All Time
2. Falling in love with Elinor Donahue on Father Knows Best (then realizing she’d also dated Andy Taylor).
3. The comfort of watching any family in a ‘60s sitcom (eg Hazel, My Three Sons, etc.)
4. The opening credits to I Dream of Jeannie.
5. Fred Sanford vs. Aunt Esther.
6. Vincent Price’s terrorizing the Brady boys in Hawaii.
7. The “Ring My Bell” skit on The Carol Burnett Show.
8. The Ministry of Silly Walks.
9. The Fonz.
10. Alex P Keaton



11. Bill Cosby’s finally getting the perfect showcase for his comedy in The Cosby Show.
12. Bob Newhart doing anything.
13. Lilith on Cheers.
14. “This is the theme to Garry’s show, the theme to Garry’s show. Garry called me up and asked if I would write his theme song.”
15. David Schwimmer’s complete willingness to make a jackass of himself on Friends. And Ross isn't even my favorite character from that show.
16. “Chicken pot, chicken pot, chicken pot pie!”
17. “No, Matthew. I can definitively state that I am not Doobie Keebler.”
18. Anthony Clark as Boyd Pritchett in Boston Common.
19. Mr. Frickin’ Bean.
20. “Yo-Yo Ma!” “Boutros Boutros-Ghali!”



21. Lt. Jim Dangle.
22. JD and Turk’s bromance.
23. The Legen - wait for it - dary Barney Stinson.
24. Jim’s pranks on Dwight.
25. Knock knock. “Penny.” Knock knock. “Penny.” Knock knock. “Penny.”
26. Watching the credits of The Love Boat to see who the guest-stars were.
27. Noel Crane’s crush on Felicity Porter.
28. Lorelai and Rory Gilmore.
29. That Sandra Oh makes me cry every time her character does.
30. The design of the submarine in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.



31. Ron Ely’s intelligent Tarzan.
32. That the most faithful adaptation of Tarzan ever was a Filmation cartoon.
33. The world-building in Land of the Lost.
34. “Daniel Boone was a man. He was a biiiiig man!”
35. “From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli, there was never a leatherneck braver; a Daring Dragoon is he. He’ll halt the bold advance of Napoleon’s attack! There ain’t a French or pirate rogue who don’t…know Jack!”
36. The inventive abandon of Brisco County, Jr.
37. Learning about history from Young Indiana Jones.
38. Adam West’s deadpan.
39. Luke Skywalker as the Joker.
40. The whole DC Timmiverse.



41. The theme to Legion of Super Heroes.
42. The theme to Teen Titans.
43. The General Lee’s jumping creeks and blowing that horn.
44. Boy George’s guest-starring on The A-Team.
45. Adam Ant’s guest-starring on The Equalizer.
46. Noel Crane’s becoming the badass Cool Breeze on The Unit.
47. Jack Bristow’s brutally relentless protection of his daughter in Alias.
48. The DVD cover for Season One of Nikita.
49. The theme to Mission: Impossible.
50. The theme to Hawaii Five-0.



51. Alfred Hitchcock’s opening and closing comments on Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
52. The theme to Perry Mason.
53. Robert Ironside’s fighting crime from a wheelchair.
54. The Barnaby Jones announcer. “Tonight’s episode: ‘To Catch a Dead Man’!”
55. Feeling smugly alternative because I liked Jaclyn Smith better than Farrah Fawcett.
56. Columbo’s turning around at the door and saying, “Oh, just one more thing…”
57. How Magnum PI was totally an homage to film noir.
58. Lee Horseley as both Archie Goodwin on Nero Wolfe and the titular Matt Houston.
59. The way Avery Brooks pronounced “Spenser” in Spenser: For Hire.
60. Rick and AJ Simon. But mainly Rick.



61. Shawn Spencer’s love of The Mentalist.
62. Patrick Jane’s smirk.
63. Daphne and Fred’s relationship in Scooby Doo: Mystery, Inc.
64. That Friday the 13th: The Series was way better than the movies it got its name from.
65. Mulder and Scully’s calling each other by their last names.
66. John Astin as Gomez Addams.
67. Just knowing that Dark Shadows existed.
68. Getting arsonphobia from an episode of Ghost Story. I eventually grew out of it, but that’s some powerful TV. I was freaked out by campfires and birthday candles for a couple of years.
69. The very idea that Aaron Spelling did a show based on Vampire: The Masquerade.
70. Sun and Jin. Also Sawyer.



71. Elizabeth Montgomery’s twinkle.
72. Everything about Lynda Carter.
73. Xena’s battle cry.
74. “Oh, Mighty Isis!”
75. The animal-appliances in The Flintstones.
76. Teen Pebbles.
77. Sid and Marty Krofft’s costumes.
78. Mr. Hooper’s having to constantly correct Big Bird’s pronunciation of his name.
79. “It’s The Muppet Show, everybody! Yaaaaay!”
80. “Of course you realize: this means war.”



81. The sound the Six Million Dollar Man made when he used his powers.
82. The heartbreak of Jamie Sommers’ amnesia.
83. David Banner walking down the road to that piano tune at the end of every episode of The Incredible Hulk.
84. Being introduced to “Land of a Thousand Dances” by Misfits of Science.
85. George Reeves’ Clark Kent. An unconvincing disguise, but a hero in his own right.
86. Teri Hatcher’s Lois Lane.
87. Smallville’s using Remy Zero’s “Save Me” as it’s theme song.
88. Roswell’s using Dido’s “Here With Me” as it’s theme song.
89. Seeing Mystery Science Theatre live at Minneapolis’ Uptown Theater in 1992.
90. The vehicles of Ark II (including the jet pack).



91. “Five hundred years into the future she will enter a world where machines rule the earth. Mankind has been driven underground.”
92. Tom Baker’s running around the universe offering everyone Jelly Babies.
93. The Clone Wars’ heroic rescue of the entire Star Wars franchise.
94. Hawk from Buck Rogers.
95. Original Cylons
96. Kirk’s libido.
97. Picard’s voice.
98. Worf’s scowl.
99. The concept of Star Trek: Enterprise.
100. “Our love for him now ain’t hard to explain. The Hero of Canton, the man they call Jayne.”

Guest Post: GW Thomas on Buck Rogers: The First Space Hero

I've never had a guest post before, but GW Thomas runs the very excellent Adventure! blog and not only are our blog's names similar, but our interests are so close that I was thrilled when he agreed to write a series of articles about classic Space Pulp heroes for me. And even more thrilled when he decided to cover them in chronological order, because my particular brand of OCD is all about chronological order. Thanks again, GW, and I can't wait to read the rest of the series.



People often forget where things begin. Take Buck Rogers for instance. If you asked anyone about Buck you’d probably hear about the new comic book or the old TV show with Gil Gerard or if you were lucky the old newspaper comic strip. But these and other incarnations of Buck were not the first. Buck Rogers began in the Pulps and is really the first true Space Hero. He was the first and because of that, for many years Science Fiction was known as “That Buck Rogers stuff.” (Said with a sneer usually.)

Buck started out in the world as Anthony Rogers. He was featured in two connected stories, “Armageddon 2419” (Amazing Stories, August 1928) and its sequel “Airlords of Han” (Amazing Stories, March 1929) by Philip Francis Nowlan. The magazine these stories ran in was the first all-Science Fiction Pulp, created by Hugo Gernsback in 1926. It shouldn’t really be surprising that the first Space Hero appeared in the first Space magazine. Gernsback was a crusader for Science, believing technology would change the world into a paradise. His background was radio and electronics and his magazines appealed to these kinds of readers, with lots of gadgets and pseudo-scientific speeches about them.



The plot of “Armageddon 2419” concerns the evil Han (yes, this was the era of Yellow Peril and racism is found in these stories) who take over the World. Anthony Rogers is a man from our time who is put to sleep by a mysterious gas in a mine and wakes to find his beloved America under the Han’s cruel thumbs. He joins a group of resistance fighters, who armed with their flying belts, take on the Han and begin to win back their homeland. Wilma Deering is one of these plucky rebels and the two eventually fall in love. In the sequel the rebels win the world back from their oppressors and all is well. Sounds clunky and just a little silly, doesn’t it? But Nowlan’s style was straight forward and the action scenes with flying men fighting the nasty Han ships are exciting and colorful. We all like to cheer for the underdogs.



At this point, Anthony Rogers is not yet Buck. On January 7, 1929, the National Newspaper Syndicate began a comic based on Nowlan’s story and Anthony became Buck, named after the 1920’s cowboy actor, Buck Jones. The strip was written by Nowlan and drawn by Dick Calkins. Beginning as an adaptation of the stories, the comic changed into tales of space and other fantastic adventures. It was in the comics that characters such as Black Barney, Killer Kane and Dr. Huer were added. The sign that Buck was influential far beyond those two original stories was that he was imitated. Flash Gordon began as a comic strip on January 7, 1934. Ironically, the man who played Flash in 1936, Buster Crabbe, would don the silver underwear to play Buck in 1939.



“That Buck Rogers Stuff” was here to stay. Radio, television, comic books, movie serials. All popular signs that Buck Rogers had gone from fighting the Han to becoming an SF icon, a fate some SF writers lamented. Adventure Science Fiction had begun and the pages of the Pulps, from Amazing Stories to Astounding Science Fiction to Thrilling Wonder Stories, would feature brash heroes who fight against fantastic enemies and win. Space adventurers would appeal to fans for generations to come. George Lucas, when he created his Star Wars franchise in the 1970s was thinking back to those Buster Crabbe serials and longing for the color and excitement they had. And all thanks to “That Buck Rogers stuff” and the first hero of space.