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Hi, This is Bengalkat, formerly known as 70Jack90! I'm living in Los Angeles for the time being here!

This is also my sandbox page! What I can do what I want to!


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2004 book by David Hofstede celebrating the worst of television. Anything goes: individual plot points or elements, or even entire shows. Updated and revised to 2018.


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    The List 
  1. The Star Wars Holiday Special note 
  2. Dallas' infamous "Bobby in the shower"/All Just a Dream cop-out note 
  3. The Jerry Springer Show turning from a decent talk show into a freak show for violent, sexually deviant human trash note 
  4. Jackie Gleason's flop Game Show You're in the Picture (1961) note 
  5. CNN tries to promote new journalist Paula Zahn as "sexy" note 
  6. The 1950s quiz show scandals note 
  7. The inclusion of Scrappy-Dooinvoked in the Scooby-Doo franchise (1979-88) note 
  8. Geraldo Rivera reports on the discovery of Al Capone's vault and finds nothing. (1986) note 
  9. Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire? note 
  10. The Heidi Bowl note 
  11. The Brady Bunch Hour note 
  12. My Mother the Car note 
  13. Televangelist Oral Roberts announces that God will "call him home" if he doesn't receive $8,000,000 from his flock note 
  14. The Anna Nicole Show note 
  15. The Emmy Awards' flawed voting process note 
  16. Rampant Product Placement, particularly in televised sports note 
  17. William Shatner's notorious take on Elton John's "Rocket Man" at the 1977 Science Fiction Film Awards
  18. Dateline's 1992 report on exploding General Motors trucks note 
  19. TV movies on Amy Fisher note 
  20. Supertrain note 
  21. Life with Lucy note 
  22. The Goddess of Love note 
  23. FOX After Breakfast note 
  24. Lost in Space episode "The Great Vegetable Rebellion" note 
  25. Turn-On note 
  26. The Magic Hour note 
  27. St. Elsewhere's All Just a Vision in an Autistic Kid's Mind ending note 
  28. The $1.98 Beauty Show note 
  29. Cop Rock note 
  30. Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell note 
  31. The epilogue of Michael Jackson's 1991 "Black or White" music video note 
  32. Dynasty re-casting Emma Samms as Fallon (beginning April 1985)
  33. Pink Lady and Jeff note 
  34. Twin Peaks' second season note 
  35. Drudge note 
  36. Moonlighting's poor handling of Dave and Maddie as a couple
  37. Chuck Cunningham's disappearance on Happy Days
  38. Colby losing to Tina on Survivor: Outback (2001) note 
  39. CBS' many failed attempts at morning shows (Morning Show, Calendar, The Morning Program)
  40. The Dana Carvey Show and how ABC screwed it over (1996) note 
  41. Several TV versions of films, including a Casablanca adaptation (1983) with David Soul as Rick Blaine note 
  42. Burger King's "Where's Herb?" commercials note 
  43. Small Wonder note 
  44. The Dukes of Hazzard replacing Bo and Luke with Coy and Vance (1982-83) note 
  45. Fish Police note 
  46. The Reagans note 
  47. Cousin Oliver joins The Brady Bunch for its final six episodes
  48. The XFL note 
  49. The 1960s TV rule against showing navels on women (affecting such shows as Gidget, Gilligan's Island, and I Dream of Jeannie)
  50. Thicke of the Night note 
  51. Shelley Hack taking over for Kate Jackson on Charlie's Angels note 
  52. The 62nd Academy Awards telecast note 
  53. Dan Rather using "Courage" as his signoff on the CBS Evening News note 
  54. The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer note 
  55. NBC's Fall 1983 schedule note 
  56. The Brothers Grunt note 
  57. NBC failing to let David Letterman use the names of his NBC-era segments on CBS' Late Show note 
  58. The New Monkees note 
  59. Dusty's Trail note 
  60. The Wilton North Report note 
  61. Dark Shadows' "Leviathan" storyline note 
  62. WWF Raw's Mark Henry/Mae Young storyline note 
  63. Land of the Lost (1974)'s third season note 
  64. Madonna's "Like a Prayer" music video debut note 
  65. Joanie Loves Chachi note 
  66. Roger Ramjet and Underdog both getting bashed by Moral Guardians due to allegations of drug abuse
  67. Days of Our Lives deals with the Devil note 
  68. Attempts to Americanize Fawlty Towers (Amanda's and Payne)
  69. The erasure of countless TV showsinvoked note 
  70. The Chevy Chase Show note 
  71. Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Spock's Brain" note 
  72. Shows with talking babies (more specifically Happy, Baby Talk, and Baby Bob)
  73. Roseanne Barr butchering the National Anthem at a San Diego Padres game in 1990 note 
  74. Nick at Nite's Network Decay note 
  75. The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island note 
  76. Paul Lynde as a bachelor on The Dating Game note 
  77. Harold Robbins' The Survivors note 
  78. Janet Jackson's Wardrobe Malfunction at Super Bowl XXXVIII in Houston note 
  79. Bewitched recycling scripts after The Other Darrin takes over. note 
  80. The Flying Nun note 
  81. Woops! episode "Say It Ain't So, Santa" note 
  82. Battle of the Network Stars #18 note 
  83. Me and the Chimp note 
  84. ABC's 1974 Wonder Woman TV-movie note 
  85. Connie Francis performing poorly as a celebrity partner on The $10,000 Pyramid note 
  86. Elvis Presley being shot only from the waist up (due to Standards & Practices rules at the time that found Elvis' swiveling hip dances to be too risqué) on The Ed Sullivan Show
  87. Recycled In Space cartoons (Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space, Partridge Family 2200 AD, Yogi's Space Race, and Gilligans Planet)
  88. Laverne & Shirley writing Shirley out of the show
  89. QVC selling the Poopin' Moose note 
  90. Bad Ronald note 
  91. USA Network Up All Night note 
  92. The Aldrich Family's chronic case of The Other Darrin note 
  93. The Dick Van Dyke Show episode "The Bad Old Days" note 
  94. 3's A Crowd note 
  95. The Western saturating television with 30 shows on the schedules of the Big Three in the late 1950s. note 
  96. Quark note 
  97. Farrah Fawcett's awkward interview on The Late Show with David Letterman in 1997 note 
  98. The addition of Dawninvoked on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Connor on Angel note 
  99. AMC "going commercial" note 
  100. Professor Price note 
  101. Saturday Night Live's sixth season (1980-81), produced by Jean Doumanian (and then Dick Ebersol for one episode after Doumanian and 90% of her cast were fired), which helped end Fred Silverman's tumultuous run at NBC.
  102. Boohbah note 
  103. Are You Hot?: The Search for America's Sexiest People note 
  104. The Tortellis note 
  105. Batman often casting Batgirl as the Damsel in Distress
  106. The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast of Peter Marshall note 
  107. Santo Gold infomercials note 
  108. Jabberjaw note 
  109. The Morton Downey Jr. Show note 
  110. Revenge of the Nerds III and IV, and Problem Child III note 
  111. Playing It Straight note 
  112. It's About Time
  113. Rudolph's Shiny New Year note 
  114. MTV's infamous Network Decay (and MTV2 getting the same treatment; the original channel was accused of becoming "Drunk-Naked-Teenagers-Television")
  115. The New Leave It to Beaver
  116. CBS bleeping Janet Jackson saying "Jesus" on The Late Show with David Letterman
  117. USA Today: The Television Show
  118. James Stockdale's 1992 vice presidential debate note 
  119. Frank Zappa hosting Saturday Night Live note 
  120. The Love Boat Follies note 
  121. Playboy's 50th-Anniversary Celebration
  122. Baywatch Nights note 
  123. She's the Sheriff note 
  124. AfterMASH
  125. The Lingerie Bowl note 
  126. Inhumans note 
  127. The Nutshack note 

Tropes in this book:

  • All Just a Dream: Entries 27 (St. Elsewhere) and 2 (Dallas) are derided as misuses of this trope.
  • Award Snub:invoked Entry 15 discusses how the Emmys are horribly broken.
  • Book Ends: Entries 100 (the Professor Price game from The Price Is Right) and 1 (The Star Wars Holiday Special) were both aired on CBS, bookending the list. Both entries also happened within 12 months of each other toward the end of the 70's.
  • Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Entry 37 is about the Trope Namer.
  • Cousin Oliver: Entry 47 is on the Trope Namer himself, while Entry 98 discusses the trope in the Buffyverse. It's noted that Oliver himself isn't actually ungodly annoying like his reputation would suggest, but rather that the writers themselves seemed to have complete apathy to him, with the few episodes after his arrival giving him nothing to do and shoving in the audience's faces how pointless he was.
  • Creator Provincialism: Because the book focuses on American television, it does leave out some of the most infamous television events in other parts of the world, including the British Heil Honey I'm Home! (a sitcom about Adolf Hitler that only lasted one episode), Australia's Naughtiest Home Videos (a take on the America's Funniest Home Videos formula that aired on Nine Network and primarily featured animals having sex and was pulled off the network in the middle of its only airing, leading to the people who made/helmed the show being very acrimoniously fired right away and trespassed from the network), and the Pokémon episode "Electric Soldier Porygon" (which was never exported beyond the show's native Japan and was outright banned by the Japanese government because it caused an epidemic of seizures during its only airing and led to new Japanese television practices that are still in effect to this day).
  • Executive Meddling:invoked Referenced in entry 23, on FOX After Breakfast - "A gaggle of new producers micromanaged every aspect of the show, certain they knew what worked on the network better than the original cast and creative team."
  • Jumping the Shark:invoked Twin Peaks' second season is cited as an example in entry 34. Interestingly, the trope-naming Happy Days episode doesn't make the list. note 
  • Missing Episode:invoked The focus of entry 69.
  • Network Decay: Examples are cited for AMC (see the YMMV tab) and Nick at Nite.
  • The Other Darrin:invoked Entries 92, 51, and 32 are about this on The Aldrich Family, Charlie's Angels, and Dynasty respectively.
  • Product Placement: Entry 16 laments the increased appearance of it in society as a whole.
  • "Rashomon"-Style: Entry 19 cites ABC, CBS, and NBC's rushing to create a TV movie on Amy Fisher as a Real Life example of this. Hofstede finds NBC's take (Amy Fisher: My Story, based on her autobiography) sympathetic to Fisher and well-acted but boring; CBS' (Casualties of Love) more sympathetic to the Buttafuocos; and ABC's The Amy Fisher Story as the most even-handed but also most lurid. However, he shames all three networks for their shamelessness in all rushing to try and beat each other in tackling the subject.
  • Recycled Script:invoked Entry 79 calls out Bewitched on this.
  • The Scrappy:invoked Entry 7 is on the Trope Namer. Dawn and Connor from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel also get a spot, noting that they were both able to be rescued to some extent but the damage was already done.
  • Self-Deprecation: The foreword was written by Tom Bergeron, who openly expresses his Old Shame (FOX After Breakfast).
  • Shipping Bed Death:invoked Entry 36 highlights the notorious example on Moonlighting.
  • Wanton Cruelty to the Common Comma: Hofstede has a tendency to use "it's" where he should be using "its".


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