The late eighties and early-to-mid nineties brought out some of the filthiest, bottom-feeding talk shows our country has ever seen. From Morton Downey Jr. and Sally Jesse Raphael to Jerry Springer and Maury Povich, it was the era when "trash TV" became a symbol of a country's swift spiral down one giant cultural toilet in opposition to people like Larry King and Oprah Winfrey, who effortlessly made interviews with, like, Fran Drescher come off looking like Masterpiece Theater.
Around the latter half of the "boom" came Ricki Lake, the formerly obese star of Hairspray (no, seriously, that was basically her résumé), with a show that combined the usual elements of trashy talk (read: "freaks") with something impossibly dumber yet: catchphrases. Unlike today, when it takes weeks to months for squawk-boxes to latch onto cultural buzzwords like "metrosexual" and "baby daddy," Ricki Lake was trotting out episode "subjects" like "You're not all that!" and "Dump that zero and get yourself a hero!"
After several high-profile movie roles in films such as Menace II Society, Dead Presidents, and Crash, Larenz Tate headed to New York City for a regular gig on the FX drama, Rescue Me. Tate plays "Black Sean," the newest probie forced to contend with Tommy Gavin and the rest of the motley crew at the firehouse.
Tate joined in season four, which had its season finale in the summer of 2007. That November, the writers' strike began, which pushed production of season five back, oh, about twenty years or so. Okay, maybe not that long, but I've moved at least twice since I watched Rescue Me last. The series (finally) returns to FX on Tuesday, April 7.
I got to speak to Tate recently about what's in store for his character in season five, including some good dish on Sean's love life and how FX is planning on making it up to the fans who have been waiting so long for Rescue Me to return.
Sure, her recent drug bust was a major headline a few weeks ago, but there was never a moment when I thought, "Man... I guess she won't be on Rescue Me anymore." Last I heard, her charge was only a misdemeanor. According to TVG, she's already filmed 2 episodes for the drama's fifth season, which doesn't return until 2009.
Remember Sony's Minisode Network? Basically Sony is sitting on a huge library of television episodes that don't see much airtime anymore. So the company decided to slice up classic TV shows like Charlie's Angels, and T.J. Hooker and create 5 minute "minisodes."
The interesting thing is that the cliff notes versions of these shows work surprisingly well, if you don't care about things like plot, character development, and dialog.
The minisodes were originally available online at MySpace. Now Sony is making the mini-shows available on Crackle, AOL, and Joost, as well as MySpace. Sony is also bringing more shows out of the vault including Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie and The Jeffersons.
Some cool news for fans of Farscape: the series is coming back in the form of ten new webisodes. As of this moment no actors and writers have been attached to the project, nor have any storylines been announced. According to the Post Gazette, if the Web series is successful enough, the series could return to television. I'd say that's quite a long shot (the series went off the air in 2003), but I certainly wouldn't complain if it came back. I was late getting into Farscape, but I thought it was fun and imaginative.
Question: What's better than full episodes of T.J. Hooker? Shortened episodes of T.J. Hooker, of course.
MySpace has launched The Minisode Network, a place devoted to edited versions of episodes of old TV shows like Silver Spoons, Starsky & Hutch, Diff'rent Strokes, Who's The Boss, Sheena, and others. They're actually sort-of complete episodes, it's just that all the trivial parts have been edited out. More like a quick summary of the plot/episode than a full episode. I don't know how this benefits the storytelling, but then again, if you're watching Silver Spoons you're probably not watching it for the storytelling. Of course, you can watch complete episodes of shows over at In2TV.
As for T.J. Hooker, it amazing how cheesy and ridiculous it is, though in an entertaining way. It's like Police Squad.
Posted May 1st 2007 11:10AM by Brad Linder Filed under: Web
Feel like reliving your childhood, but just can't find the time? Sony Pictures wants to help. The company is partnering with MySpace to create a Minisode Network that will show brief versions of classic television episodes.
Each minisode will run from 3.5 to five minutes in length. These won't be sets of random clips. Each minisode will tell a complete story. Which is to say, most 22 or 42 minute television episodes you watch probably have a whole lot of fat that could be trimmed without getting in the way of storytelling.
Programs will include Charlie's Angels, T.J. Hooker, and other content from Sony's television library. Interestingly, the project was already in the works when Sony executives saw the popular Seven-Minute Sopranos clip on YouTube.
The late eighties and early-to-mid nineties brought out some of the filthiest, bottom-feeding talk shows our country has ever seen. From Morton Downey Jr. and Sally Jesse Raphael to Jerry Springer and Maury Povich, it was the era when "trash TV" became a symbol of a country's swift spiral down one giant cultural toilet in opposition to people like Larry King and Oprah Winfrey, who effortlessly made interviews with, like, Fran Drescher come off looking like Masterpiece Theater.
File this one under "non-story of the day." TV Guide is reporting exclusively that yes - wait for it - 
Some cool news for fans of Farscape: the series is coming back in the form of ten new webisodes. As of this moment no actors and writers have been attached to the project, nor have any storylines been announced. According to the 
Question: What's better than full episodes of T.J. Hooker? Shortened episodes of T.J. Hooker, of course.
Feel like reliving your childhood, but just can't find the time? Sony Pictures wants to help. The company is partnering with MySpace to create a 
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