 by Lyle Masaki
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Eight TV shows I wouldn't have suffered through were it not for my gay icons
Last week, our sister site gave offered a list of the actors they'd watch in (almost) anything, which ties nicely into something I've been thinking about: mediocre-to-bad shows I wouldn't have watched if not for one of my gay icons.
Mary Tyler Moore and Madeline Kahn
It sounded promising before it debuted: a fast-paced newspaper drama with Mary Tyler Moore as a tough editor-in-chief and Madeline Kahn as the gossip columnist. (And apparently 80s studmuffin Gregory Harrison was also a part of the cast, according to that picture.) That bit of casting was so genius the rest of the show had to be amazing, right? Eh, unfortunately not. New York News' stories were entirely forgettable and while Mary brought what she could, the show never made her character as tough as she could have been. Kahn, meanwhile, occasionally got a good storyline as a woman with a very misplaced set of priorities, but most episodes focused on the younger characters who weren't my reason for tuning in.
Margaret Cho
- Back in my college days, Margaret Cho was the one comedian who we could never get enough of seeing and the idea of her having her own sitcom was too exciting. Unfortunately, the show failed to live up to her talent ... even then I caught every episode I could, I figured with a talent like Cho chances were good that once All American Girl was canceled, we wouldn't see her on TV again for a long time.
Lynda Carter
I know the long lasting franchise has its fanbase but its tendency to stick to formula can really drive me crazy. But I made an exception when the mothership and Special Victims' Unit held a cross-over that included a guest-appearance by Lynda Carter (whom we don't get to see on television often enough). Unfortunately, the first part turned out to be one of the ickiest hours of television I've seen in ages. In one of those way-too-complicated-to-take-seriously schemes, Carter played a con artist pretending to be estranged from her daughter (Estella Warren), herself a con artist who would date high profile men, slip them a date rape drug and... uhm, harvest material to sell in a high-end sperm bank. Bobby Flay had a cameo role as one of Warren's victims, but we never see the SVU detectives telling him he might have been victimized, as if that didn't matter. Carter was fabulous, with the kind of strong presence that made her perfect as Wonder Woman, but the rest of the story left me wanting to stay away from SVU.
Madeline Kahn
Yes, Madeline Kahn gets two entries on this list; she was one woman I was willing to watch read the phone book and the then-fledging Fox network certainly got my attention when they added her to the cast of Mister President as George C. Scott's ----. While Kahn delivered on the laughs, Mister President was a quietly serious dramedy before her arrival and the addition of her broad comedy made the show a confused mess. Fox would have been better off canceling Mister President and giving Kahn her own vehicle. It's not like Oh, Madeline! was that bad.
Betty White
Okay, so this is where my loyalty to certain performers goes a little too far ... but an enduring of love of Betty White and Amy Hill (you know, Grandma on All American Girl) got me to watch this rater sedate sitcom where Marie Osmond played a divorcee who ... oh, I don't remember what she did, I tuned out the scenes without White or Hill
Mariel Hemmingway (and The Fantastiks)
As a kid, those hyped sweeps big event mini-series were forbidden fruit for me: my parents refused to watch most of them as trash and the ones they would watch went over my young brain at the time. (Yes, that does mean Lace is high on my DVD wish list.) When the controversial Amerika came around, I was finally old enough to make my own TV choices. With the epic mini-series billed as a dying format, I made sure to catch this soap opera about life in a Soviet-occupied USA. By including an underground performance of The Fantastiks in the opening scenes, my young gay self was hooked ... especially as Mariel Hemmingway continued to perform in musical numbers as part of a singing and dancing resistance fighter. Taking another look at clips of the series, it probably had quite the "so bad it's good" appeal to it.
Alison La Placa, Phillip Charles MacKenzie and Ellen DeGeneres
By the time Duet ended, there were only two reasons I was still watching -- Alison LaPlaca sharp-tongued snobish yuppie's Linda and the sassy maid played by Arleen Sorkin (best remembered for her roles on Days of Our Lives and as the voice of popular Batman villain Harley Quinn). Duet gave way to a spin-off series, where LaPlaca (who got me watching a Tom Arnold sitcom, talk about loyalty) moved into real estate. Open House sounded promising at first; her main rival in her new occupation was Phillip Charles MakKenzie (who was very funny as Paul Regina's flamboyant gay pal on Brothers) while the office's assistant was the then-up-and-coming comedian Ellen DeGeneres (who, admittedly, didn't have much of a gay following yet). Too bad Open House wasted all that talent on bland jokes that left me regretting thinking Duet was past its due.
Morgan Fairchild
As I mentioned earlier, the little bit of telenovelas I've seen while filpping channels made me wish I could understand all that drama. A part of me was excited about MyNetwork TV's initial slate of limited-run soaps ... until I saw the trailers for the first two shows. Both seemed pretty dull, until soap diva Morgan Fairchild joined the cast as a troublemaker on the already campy-sounding Fashion House. Once ads for the serial started airing showing the 80's glamor icon getting stabby with a syringe I had to tune in. Was it worth the hours of Bo Derek's flat acting (is that the face where emotion goes to die)? Well, La Fairchild knows how to throw a vase amid a mess of Velveeta. Submitted by on Thu, 2008-04-17 14:51. |
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great post, lyle!
Thanks!
Open House was...
an okay show, but Alison LaPlaca's Linda Phillips was much better as a supporting character (like she was in Duet). If the creators of the show had not gone so far in trashing what had happened in Duet I might have been a bigger fan...but you were right in shouting out to Ellen, who was the sort of break-out supporting character (Margo) that you remember long after the show dies out. In a way, she was a break-out character like Linda was on Duet.
If I remember correctly, Madeline Kahn's "Mr. President" character was the sister-in-law of George C. Scott's. In season one of Mr. President, he had a wife, but when they were renwed, the actress playing his wife didn't come back. Voila! Kahn's character entered, saying the First Lady (her sister) had walked out on the Prez.
Speaking of Morgan Fairchild...
...another of the top 10 TV openings of all time: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1h9JPnypNlg
Oh, and those classic big event mini-series, how I miss them: Rich Man Poor Man, Roots, Centennial, The Thorn Birds, Evergreen, Kane & Abel.... Sweet memories.
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