TVSquad

You can talk all you want about the best thing about the web: keeping friends and family connected, shopping, maps to help you get where you are going, making money. But I think the best thing about the web is that someone actually takes the time to upload episodes of short-lived 80s TV show.

Case in point: It's Your Move, the NBC sitcom that starred a teenage Jason Bateman and Married...with Children's David Garrison. The opening is pure cheese, but the writing was a notch above typical sitcom fare. Here's the first episode (parts 2 and 3 after the jump - more episodes here). Bateman's first little speech has a really funny payoff, and he always had great timing. River Phoenix shows up in this episode too.

For some reason, I don't remember much about It's Your Move. It was on for one season, 1984-85, and I remember thinking that it should have been on much longer. I don't remember anything about the particular episodes. But here's what still sticks in my mind after not having seen it in over twenty years: Jason Bateman played one fantastic smart-ass.

People forget about that, don't they? I mean, these days, Jason is playing the "good guy" roles in shows like Arrested Development and The Jake Effect (the pilot for that is now showing on BrilliantButCancelled.com). Granted, the roles have some wise-ass edge to them -- Michael Bluth's straight-faced diggs at his family were one of my favorite running jokes in AD -- but back in the eighties, Jason was known for playing the smooth-talking teenager who stopped at nothing to get his way. And his role as Matthew Burton in IYM went a long way towards establishing that persona.