What Is Funny?

Why does this man owe Ezra Pound an apology?

This weekend while doing a bit of light reading, I discovered a SHOCKING revelation about a beloved TV show and it’s main character’s catch phrase (see fact 4).  This led me to wonder what other strange pieces of TV trivia are out there that I’m unaware of.  Such as the following:

-

1. While many think that the Munsters was the first TV show to portray a husband and wife in the same bed (in 1964), a little online research will reveal that in fact the first husband and wife to share a bed were Mary Kay and Johnny in a TV series that debuted back in 1947!  There is very little we know about the show other then it’s premise: Johnny is a space alien sent to earth to impregnate a woman (Mary Kay) in an effort to corrupt the purity of the white human race. Luckily, Mary Kay is a prude who keeps faking a headaches and ends up saving the human species.  The show was wildly unpopular.
2. The original TGIF lineup on ABC was Full House, Perfect Strangers, Mr. Belvedere, Just the Ten of Us. Of these shows, only Just the Ten of Us had a reoccurring guest role featuring a star of another ABC show, playing a fundamentalist Christian who passed out anti-evolution propaganda on college campuses with often hilarious results.
3. The Monkeys was not the first TV-show featuring a fake, lip-syncing band. That honor goes to The Fabulous Elvis Presley Review, debuting in 1962 and featuring Elvis Presley as a kung-fu instructor with a heart of gold.  What’s that? You didn’t know Elvis lip-synced all his songs?  Surely you aren’t that naïve…
4. The character JJ of Good Times had a catch phase, “Dynomite!” Or, sometimes, “Dy-dy-dy-dynomite!”  But did you know this catch phrase was PLAGIARIZED from the epic modernist poem The Cantos by Ezra Pound? It’s true. It’s easy to miss, but buried in Canto 154, there it is.  A little further reading shows that the show 227 is basically entirely ripped from Pound’s earlier work, Hugh Selwyn Mauberley.
5. While many people remember the TV show CHiPs for it’s portrayal of California highway patrolmen, few remember that in the pilot episode, the show was really about the main characters Ponch and Jon’s desperate attempt to find their kidnapped adopted son.   This theme is not carried out in future episodes, but they remain the first openly homosexual couple on TV.
6. Many remember that the TV show Gossip Girls is based on the experience of real-life high school girls in Manhattan, but few know that the actual “Gossip Girls,” were also members of a secret society dedicated to putting America back on the gold standard.  This was dropped from the TV show for the reason that the CW HATES GOLD.
7. Most of the Real Housewives of Orange County (or NY, Atlanta, etc.), are not real housewives at all, but rather CGI animated simulations.  While they aren’t particularly realistic looking, they do a better job of remembering their lines than most “reality” TV stars.

Tags: Chips, good times, gossip girls, real housewives

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 30th, 2010 at 9:33 am and is filed under Low Art. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.