To be precise, we’re saluting an unsung old sitcom that, as you’ll see, had a lot more going on than it’s usually given credit for.
To be more precise, this little life lesson comes from the old Redd Foxx series SANFORD AND SON…which turns out to be much, much funnier, truer, and more dangerous and disruptive than we remembered:
My mother has said every single one of these things to me. But she’s never called me a “creative” writer.
My father, OTOH, has said none of the above to me. Yet he always tells me, “You’re very creative with the truth.”
Anybody wonder about my motivation for doing what I do?
The headline of this post is our typically sensitive TVWriter™ way of reporting the death of very funny writer Bob Brunner, the dood who gave Fonzie his name and even came up with the idea for the HAPPY DAYS scene where a water-skiing Fonzie does in fact “jump the shark.”
Bob died of a heart attack October 28th at the age of 78. A long-time buddy of HAPPY DAYS honcho Garry Marshall, he wrote LAVERNE & SHIRLEY and BLANSKY’S BEAUTIES as well as HAPPY DAYS.
…No matter how dead he is.
Which is my sweet, munchy, little way of saying that the very nice people at Shout! Factory have sent us a review copy of The Ernie Kovacs Collection: Volume 2, and I’m very glad I managed to, um, talk LB into giving it to me to review.
Kovacs was one of television’s founding fathers of comedy, goosing TV with his weirdness in the ’50s. To say he was offbeat is to barely scratch the surface. A true original, Ernie Kovacs was Bizarro without the white face, and you can spot his influence in the Monty Phython gang, the Muppets, and just about everything on Adult Swim.
Remember the early days of HOUSE, when Jesse Spencer was cute? And almost cool? Well, that’s all over now, baby.
And so is CHICAGO FIRE, at least in the munchman abode. Even My Girlfriend has had enough.
Or to put it another way: