TVSquad

Barry Livingston, who played Ernie Douglas on the 60's/70's sitcom My Three Sons (TV's second longest-running live-action show after The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet) will be appearing on the Hallmark Channel this coming Saturday at 8 p.m. in an action movie called Final Approach. He joins a cast that includes Dean Cain, Lea Thompson, Richard Roundtree, Ernie Hudson and Anthony Michael Hall.

Livingston has appeared in other TV shows including Mad Men, Eli Stone and Crossing Jordan. The 54-year-old former child star will play an aeronautical engineer on a plane who helps Dean Cain's character foil an attempted hijack.

As my newborn son (part of a twin set; the other is a girl) rests in my arms, I just want to take this moment to thank two cable channels for being there for us as we struggled through the sleepless first night home:  Nick@Nite  and The Hallmark Channel.

Yes, I said the Hallmark Channel!

The Hallmark Channel was on during the 11 P.M. till 1 A.M. shift with four episodes of M.A.S.H . When I was younger I never liked the early episodes with Frank Burns, Colonel Blake, and Trapper John. Now I like those more, as well as the first two seasons where Colonel Potter and B.J. Hunnicutt joined the cast (these are the episodes The Hallmark Channel is showing now). Once Frank Burns left and Charles Winchester joined the 4077th the show got a bit too preachy for me, and Col. Potter began to spout too many southern cliches.