An Open Letter to the Worst Entertainment Critic On the Planet

To: Chris Nashawaty

Entertainment Weekly magazine

Sir,

My blood pressure goes up every time I read one of your articles. That was negligible when I was in my 40s, but now I’m at the age where people take pills for that.

This isn’t about disagreeing with your reviews; everybody has those moments with critics. Ken Tucker, who used to head up your magazine’s TV coverage, hates both The Brady Bunch and Lou Grant, two of my favorite television classics.

That’s fine – I respect people with different opinions if they are intelligently expressed. He watched them and didn’t like them. It happens. I think we’d have some interesting discussions.

Here’s how you are different from Tucker – you write about subjects and assess their artistic merits without having experienced them.

How do I know this – well, let’s go back to the first time I noticed your byline about 10 years ago, as I was paging through the then-current issue of EW while waiting in line at the post office. The topic of the piece was your assertion that no comedy was still funny if it was shot in black and white.

Think of that: in one sweeping generalization you summarily dismissed the entire works of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, The Three Stooges and The Marx Brothers, Laurel & Hardy and the Thin Man movies, His Girl Friday and Some Like It Hot.

And on television, which is close to our hearts around here, you condemned Sid Caesar and Ernie Kovacs, I Love Lucy, The Dick Van Dyke Show, the first two seasons of Bewitched, The Addams Family and The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet; The Honeymooners and The Phil Silvers Show. 

Apparently, you decided that any film or television show made before a certain date is no longer relevant or worth your time. In this blog, which focuses exclusively on the television from generations past, you can understand how that touches a nerve. 

Wrong Finger, Thing

It also calls into question your credentials as a critic of anything, since one quality essential to that profession is knowledge that surpasses that of your readers. If someone is going to be paid to review Broadway musicals, he or she has to know not just Hamilton and Dear Evan Hansen, but also Show Boat and Carousel, and to be really conversant On Your Toes and Lady In the Dark.

Television is the same. You don’t have to prefer old stuff to new stuff, or have the same affection for it shared by those who grew up with these shows. But you need to be aware of them, and have some first-hand experience of them, and understand their importance and their influence on everything that followed. 

When you wrote that piece you lacked that perspective. I’m guessing you were in your 20s, when a lot of writers (myself included) first started getting published, and thought we knew a lot more than we did.

Here’s the good news: If you live to be 100, you’ll never write anything that dumb again. So at least you got it out of your system early.

I had hoped your judgment had evolved in the interim, but that brings me to the reason for this letter: your recent review of Mission Impossible: Fallout confirmed you’re still up to your old tricks.

This was the line that had me asking my doctor about a Beta-blocker prescription:

“Twenty-two years after (Tom) Cruise first rebooted the hokey TV espionage series…”

“hokey”?

You could have written “classic” or “popular,” or excised the adjective altogether, but instead you chose “hokey”?

See, that’s something Ken Tucker would never have done. I don’t know if he liked Mission: Impossible but he wouldn’t call it hokey, because good writers know what words mean before they use them. 

What a Hokey Bunch

The Oxford Dictionary defines “hokey” as “mawkishly sentimental.” You would be hard-pressed to find a trace of sentimentality in any of Mission: Impossible’s 171 episodes. The agents of the IM Force carried out their missions with a cold and clinical professionalism, detached from friends, family or any emotional ties. Sure, you saw concern when Cinnamon was captured in “The Exchange,” but the mission still took precedence even as rescue options were considered.

If you thought that description was appropriate, I can only conclude that you’ve never actually watched the show. Or did you just need an insult, and that was the word that popped into your head? What’s the difference, as long as the point was made that Tom Cruise took some silly old TV show and turned it into something worth watching. How fortunate we are that today’s creative geniuses in Hollywood are able to create such masterpieces from such feeble, passé source material.

Where does this hostility toward the past come from? Please tell me you’re not in that group that shuns yesterday’s pop culture because it wasn’t as inclusive and enlightened (some say) as it is now. Is that it? Will you never watch Eight is Enough because there were eight kids and not one of them was gay or adopted from Guatemala? I know those are the only kinds of folks EW is hiring these days, which is why the magazine has devolved into The Huffington Post with an occasional piece on Carly Rae Jepsen. 

#Bradfordssowhite

In the end I guess it doesn’t matter. You’ll keep writing, and for some reason I’ll keep reading and suffering the potential health risks of doing so. I look forward to your take on the next Star Trek film, when you’ll no doubt celebrate how this stodgy old franchise finally ditched all that talk about ethics and morals, and replaced them with explosions and motorcycle chases. Nothing hokey about that.

Classic TV Two-Part Episodes: Hits and Misses

 

Theoretically the two-part episode is an option that should be utilized only in conjunction with a major milestone in a series (births, deaths, new character introductions, weddings, big name guest star) or when a writer comes up with an idea that is so good, it deserves a little extra breathing room to be fully explored.

But think back over the hundreds of two-parters presented in the Comfort TV era – how many of them really needed more time to tell their stories?

Having conducted my own informal study, I would say the results are about 50/50. Too often, these shows were a marketing ploy to leverage the built-in ‘event’ status afforded to super-sized episodes. That’s why they were used so often to open or close a season.

When there is legitimate reason for a “continued next week” freeze-frame, the result is often one of the most memorable moments in a series – think “The Menagerie” on Star Trek, “Fearless Fonzarelli” on Happy Days or “Carnival of Thrills” on The Dukes of Hazzard.

And when there is not enough content to justify a second episode, we’re left with a story that might have worked as a single show, padded and stretched to fill out a longer running time.

This is a big topic and one that may be revisited in a future blog, but for now here are five examples of when TV got it right – and five underwhelming misses.

Good: Family Ties: “The Real Thing”

Alex Keaton had no shortage of girlfriends in the first three seasons of Family Ties, but when he meets Ellen Reed early in season four, the show wanted to make sure we knew this was going to be different. Their opposites-attract romance, bolstered by the strains of Billy Vera’s “At This Moment,” was a major turning point for Alex and for Michael J. Fox, who is still married to the girl that played Ellen, Tracy Pollan. 

Bad: Charlie’s Angels: “Terror on Skis”

A typical Angels plot – protect a government agent from foreign radicals – is hampered by scene after scene of monotonous stock footage of people skiing during the day, at night, and in freestyle competitions. I had a little inside information on this one, having interviewed the episode’s writer, Ed Lakso, for my Charlie’s Angels book. He readily confessed to padding out the story to justify a location shoot in Vail, Colorado, because his wife wanted to go skiing. 

Good: The Dick Van Dyke Show: “I Am My Brother’s Keeper/The Sleeping Brother”

These episodes introduced Dick Van Dyke’s brother Jerry, playing Rob Petrie’s brother, Stacy. The bizarre plot has Stacy trying to break into show business but only being able to perform while he’s asleep (due to a rare, advanced form of sleepwalking). Despite that contrivance the shows are smart and funny, particularly during the cast performances at those Bonnie Meadow Rd. house parties that always made the suburbs looks so cool and sophisticated. 

Bad: Eight is Enough: “And Baby Makes Nine”

Flashbacks are a convenient way to stretch a story, but no two episodes abused that privilege more than the Season 5 opener of Eight is Enough. The saga of Susan’s difficult delivery of her baby not only offers numerous looks back at her romance with and marriage to Merle, it also reprises scenes that aired just ten minutes earlier in the same episode. Why not just play the theme song again while you’re at it?

Good: Get Smart: “A Man Called Smart”

The only thing tougher to pull off than a great two-part episode? A great three-part episode. But the laughs never fizzle in “A Man Called Smart,” an adventure originally conceived for theatrical release but re-cut for the series. One physical comedy sequence with a stretcher and a revolving door is as funny as anything that’s ever been on television. 

Bad: Mission: Impossible: “The Contender”

For all its many outstanding qualities, M:I never got a two-part episode right. I chose “The Contender” because the plot was particularly weak – capturing a guy who fixes prize fights seems beneath the IMF – but I also could have gone with “The Slave” or “The Council” or “The Controllers.” Viewers were accustomed to seeing the team solve any problem in an hour, and writers could never dream up any good reason for some missions to take longer.

Good: The Bionic Woman: “Doomsday is Tomorrow”

Where Mission: Impossible struggled with the two-part format, The Bionic Woman flourished. From the irresistible “Fembots in Las Vegas” to “Deadly Ringer,” the shows that earned Lindsay Wagner an Emmy, the series was always at its best with multi-episode storylines. My favorite is “Doomsday is Tomorrow,” in which Jaime must figure out how to shut off a computerized weapon (with a HAL 9000 voice) capable of destroying all life on earth. 

Bad: The Facts of Life: “Teenage Marriage”

So many shows have built two-part episodes around potential crises that cannot possibly come to pass, lest it mean the end of the series. Here, Mrs. Garrett and the Eastland girls try to prevent Jo from marrying her boyfriend. Had Nancy McKeon announced she was leaving the show, we might have bought into the conflict; but this was her first season, and we all knew she wasn’t going anywhere, extra episode or not.

Good: Little House on the Prairie: “I’ll Be Waving as You Drive Away”

The Ingalls family face their darkest hour when Mary loses her sight after a bout with scarlet fever. The scene where Charles must tell his daughter the diagnosis, while barely able to control his own heartbreak, is devastating. Mary attends a school for the blind, where she gradually comes to terms with her fate in a hopeful finale.  

Bad: Laverne & Shirley: “The Festival”

When a two-part episode is inspired by a road trip, it helps if we actually see the characters go somewhere. Here, Laverne, Shirley, Lenny, Squiggy, Frank and Edna all “travel” from Milwaukee to New York, but all they really do is visit a different part of the studio backlot. Not much fun to be had, unless you enjoy watching Penny Marshall climb a greased metal pole.

When Actors and Roles Don't Mix

Casting is critical to the success of any television series, but sometimes it just goes wrong. In some cases the culprit is simply bad acting, but usually there’s a disconnect between actor and character that cannot be traversed regardless of talent.

Here are five of the most egregious examples. I avoided recasts, like Dick Sargent in Bewitched or Emma Samms in Dynasty, because replacements always start out at a disadvantage. In these cases there are no such easy answers.

Kate Jackson – Scarecrow and Mrs. King

In both The Rookies and Charlie’s Angels, Kate Jackson played clever, capable professionals. She had a famous falling out with the latter series, mainly attributed to the quality of the writing. Jackson once said a Charlie’s Angels script was so light, if you dropped it from the ceiling it would take a week to get to the floor. And yet her next series, Scarecrow and Mrs. King, was just as formulaic, and this time she wasn’t even the smart one. As Amanda King, Jackson frequently had to play scenes that made her character seem as dense as Chrissy Snow on Three’s Company. It was an awkward fit for an actress that radiates intelligence. 

Lyle Waggoner – Wonder Woman

You would think playing a valiant military man would be easy for someone who held his own with the comedic geniuses of The Carol Burnett Show. But Lyle Waggoner could do nothing with Col. Steve Trevor. Admittedly it was a thankless role, but this is where it is incumbent on the actor to find something in the character or situation to elevate Trevor beyond his status as a dashing hostage. Even a little romantic chemistry with Lynda Carter would have helped the audience understand what Wonder Woman sees in this guy. 

Lesley Ann Warren – Mission Impossible

Mission: Impossible was a pretty right-wing series. That’s not a criticism, just an observation. How else can we assess a show about federal government operatives who covertly invade foreign countries and overthrow corrupt dictators? What they did could be considered justified and perhaps even noble, but it certainly wouldn’t be supported by the counterculture at the height of the Vietnam War era. So how does one explain adding Lesley Ann Warren to the IM Force, since she looked and acted like a hippie chick just back from an anti-war sit-in at Berkeley? It’s not surprising she lasted only one season. 

Ted Knight – Too Close for Comfort

Was it just that the shadow of Ted Baxter was too long to escape? Or did the role of a family man frustrated by modern life not fit with an outsized personality like Ted Knight’s? Either way, Too Close for Comfort never gelled. Knight is not the only reason it hasn’t aged well, but with hindsight it may have been better to cast someone with less classic TV baggage. 

Doris Roberts – Remington Steele

Some actors have a look or persona that pigeonholes them into certain types of roles. For Doris Roberts, it’s the interfering relative, usually a mother or mother-in-law. It’s been her meal ticket for more than 25 years, from Angie to Everybody Loves Raymond. But it’s not the type of character you expect to turn up in Remington Steele, a self-effacing but still slick and stylish detective series. Roberts’ Mildred Krebs was a constant distraction from the urbane romance between Pierce Brosnan as Steele and Stephanie Zimbalist as his partner in crime-solving. The mistake was introducing the character in the first place, but it was compounded by casting an actress who once again did it her way, even if another approach might have worked better. 

Any more that I missed? Which TV actors did you think never settled comfortably into a particular role?