My Journey Through 1970s TV; Friday Nights, 1973

 

Anyone else have happy memories of Friday nights in the 1970s? Television certainly played a role in those fond recollections, as evidenced by a closer look at the 1973 prime time schedule.

 

Some old favorites were back for one final season, along with a couple of promising newcomers that may have disappeared before they found their groove. As always, the goal is to find out if I can watch at least one episode from every show – but – spoiler alert – for this night it’s not looking good.

 

Friday, 1973

 

ABC

The Brady Bunch

The Odd Couple

Room 222

Adam’s Rib

Love American Style

 

Four of these five shows would be gone the following year, beginning with The Brady Bunch, arguably the decade’s most iconic family situation comedy. Its last batch of episodes were a mixed bag, with the unnecessary addition of Cousin Oliver offset by such memorable efforts as “Adios, Johnny Bravo,” “Mail Order Hero” (with Joe Namath), “The Cincinnati Kids” (shot at King’s Island Amusement Park) and “Getting Greg’s Goat.”

 

The show’s last episode, “The Hair-brained Scheme,” was so famously despised by Robert Reed that he refused to appear in it. Thus, when the family returns home after celebrating Greg’s high school graduation, Carol laments how Mike was out of town and had to miss an important milestone in his oldest son’s life. All these years later that’s still a bit sad, and I wonder if Reed had to do it over again, given how much this fictional family has come to mean to generations of viewers, he would reconsider. 

 

 

No one ever graduated from Walt Whitman High on Room 222, which also now wrapped up a five-season run, all with the same students in the same classroom. Stuff like that wasn’t as important back then – viewers had come to know and like Bernie and Helen and Jason, and would have missed them if they were not around. That’s a lesson later shows like Fame and Glee failed to learn. 

 

Love American Style, another Friday night staple on ABC, would also be gone at the end of this season. As would Adam’s Rib, an adaptation of the classic film about lawyers in love starring Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. Tough act to follow, obviously, but Ken Howard and Blythe Danner made a better go of it than you might expect. 

 

 

So what new shows would join The Odd Couple on Fridays next year? Stay tuned…

 

NBC

Sanford and Son

The Girl With Something Extra

Needles & Pins

The Brian Keith Show

The Dean Martin Show

 

Sanford and Son was the night’s top-rated series at #3, but its strong lead-in audience couldn’t save The Girl With Something Extra, about a young married couple (John Davidson and Sally Field) whose relationship is complicated by a wife with ESP. Field’s subsequent stardom would revive this short-lived series in syndication for decades. I enjoyed it for what it was, a half-hour spent with effortlessly likable leads, ably supported by a quirky supporting cast: Jack (“Conjunction Junction”) Sheldon, Zohra Lampert and Teri Garr. 

 

 

Set in a clothing manufacturer warehouse in New York’s Garment District, Needles & Pins was gone after just ten episodes. Having never watched it I can’t presume to know why it failed, but perhaps it was  because the cast was comprised of veteran second bananas – Norman Fell, Louis Nye, and Bernie Kopell, who I am now convinced must have appeared in every television show ever made. There’s an extended clip on YouTube that suggests there may have been something there with a few modest tweaks. 

 

 

I covered The Brian Keith Show in a previous piece under its original title of The Little People. And this would be the final year for The Dean Martin Show after nine successful seasons. Martin would remain prominent on NBC as the host of a series of now-legendary roasts, in which comics like Foster Brooks, Don Rickles and Red Buttons would skewer the guest of honor with material that would now get them canceled in a heartbeat. 

 

 

CBS

Calucci’s Department

Roll Out

CBS Friday Night Movie

 

Any television show that gets “worst series ever” notices is one I’m automatically curious to see. It’s hard to tell if Calucci’s Department earned that status from the few clips available online, but it certainly doesn’t look like something anyone would miss.

 

From what I’ve read and the footage I’ve watched, it’s set at a New York City unemployment office, where the beleaguered staff deal with a different set of out-of-work visitors every week.

 

Top-billed as the office supervisor was James Coco, one of those actors who never found the kind of signature role that, when viewers saw him in other projects, they could say “Oh, that’s the guy from…”  What I saw of the show reminded me of Lotsa Luck, another failed 1973 series where the comedy emerged mainly from how miserable everyone felt about their lives. 

 

 

It was followed by an equally short-lived series in Roll Out, a military sitcom created by MASH producers Larry Gelbart and Gene Reynolds. Set in France during World War II, the stories revolved around the lives and adventures of an Army transportation unit.  The mostly African-American cast was led by Stu Gilliam, Hilly Hicks and Mel Stewart. The comedy was much broader than what viewers enjoyed in MASH, even in its early seasons, but was rarely actually funny despite the amped-up laugh track responses. It was canceled midseason, and replaced by another sitcom with an African-American cast – Good Times. That one was a keeper.

 

Shows Missed:

The Don Knotts Show (1970)

San Francisco International Airport (1970)

Nancy (1970)

The Headmaster (1970)

The Man and the City (1971)

The Chicago Teddy Bears (1971)

Search (1972)

Assignment: Vienna (1972)

The Delphi Bureau (1972)

Jigsaw (1972)

The Little People (1972)

The Sixth Sense (1972)

Tenafly (1973)

Faraday & Company (1973)

Love Story (1973)

Needles & Pins (1973)

Calucci’s Department (1973)