what is the weirdest show to ever be broadcast on a major u.s. broadcast network?

it can be a series, a miniseries, something that only one episode was broadcast and then canceled, a made-for-tv movie, but it has to be something that was broadcast on TV first and shown on either ABC, CBS, NBC, or FOX. no cable, no pbs, etc.

caroline in the city

obvious answer is something like twin peaks but i feel like it's got to be something that was only on for an episode or two and then canceled because it was too fucked up

or caroline in the city

The little bit of On The Air that I've seen might trump Twin Peaks in weirdness.

how about single weird episodes of largely non-weird series? i haven't seen it, but the episode of "too close for comfort" discussed here might deserve a nomination...

Does it need to be a story told comedically or dramatically, or can it be something like a music special full of avant-garde weirdness?

Never heard of it until I read the new Pynchon, but Dark Shadows sounds like a contender.

there's weird like twin peaks and then there's weird in more subtle ways perhaps? Like early Seinfeld?

it can be a special

^^^I was gonna say every single late '60s supernaturally-themed show save Bewitched and I Dream Of Jeannie.

Twin Peaks and/or Twilight Zone

Budget Saturday morning live-action superhero dramas eg. Electrowoman and Dynagirl, or Isis.

iirc Wild Palms bit Twin Peaks's steez and was even weirder

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Palms

First thing I thought of was the sitcom version of Lanford Wilson's Hot L Baltimore...but it wasn't really weird so much as standards-pushing.

some weird stuff i;ve run across while looking for other wierd stuff:

Automan - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0343386/
The Phoenix - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083464/plotsummary
Quark - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077066/plotsummary

I think I might vaguely remember Automan

the weirdest show is not going to be some touchstone that connected with a huge swath of ppl like Twin Peaks or Twilight Zone, guys. This is the internet, dig a little deeper

xxxxxxxxx-post (Suzy beat me to it!)

I assume we're going to exclude Saturday morning kids shows from this. Because that's a wellspring unto itself.

Cop Rock

^^

Yeah, Pee Wee's Playhouse is a strong contender. xxp

Cop Rock is pretty fuckin weird

I mean...any of the Krofft shows, any cartoon where they sent the cast of a traditional sitcom into space/back in time/to the army, Gary Coleman as an angel. It's harder to think of a prime time show with the tweaked sensibility of those kids shows.

Cop Rock is a good one.

I remember Automan, it was basically a Tron cash-in.

This was pretty bizarre, but also bad: Otherworld

Probably not the weirdest but still a curiosity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6D5C1C7Nso

mike white's pasadena which i think managed like four or five episodes on fox was weird not in a twin peaks way but it was quietly discomforting and pretty dark

We loved Dark Shadows as a kid, vampires in the daytime, scared the hell out of us.

And I can't believe no one has mentioned Clutch Cargo, speaking of scary....

I have to say, I loved all these shows because they were so fucking weird and great. I was not alone: there's nothing funnier than a posse of third-graders making Wonder Woman deflector bracelets out of waxed Dixie cups and pretending to deploy them in the playground.

Gotta have clips!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFnLirXjjto

How is this not terrifying to a six-year-old?

Cartoon Network has at least 7 shows that have worse animation than that

I have seen worse animation, but Clutch Cargo was famous for its creepy use of REAL HUMAN LIPS!

Because of budgetary limitations and the pressure to create television animation within a tight time frame, the show was the first to use the "Syncro-Vox" optical printing system. Syncro-Vox was invented by television cameraman, and partner in Cambria Studios, Edwin Gillette, as a means of superimposing real human mouths on the faces of animals for the popular "talking animal" commercials of the 1950s. Clutch Cargo employed the Syncro-Vox technique by superimposing live-action human lips over limited-motion animation or even motionless animation cels.

i feel like the answer has to be something FOX's reality division put on the air in the last 10 years, they've gotten away with some pretty fucked up shit

i remember for years Conan referred to his bit w/ creepy human lips speaking through photos as "clutch cargo" and i had no idea why

yah some dude i was thinking of the one where ppl are hooked up to lie detectors and forced to answer damning personal qns for money (xpost)

ive been trying to think of shows that were formally "weird" but i mostly just come up w/individual episodes of shows like seinfeld or the simpsons

My Mother the Car.

there were some episodes of magnum that had these crazy 'nam flashbacks, endless stretches of silence. probably not that weird but whenever action procedural tv does a little 'experiment' it looks crazier in context (i brought this up once in conversation and everyone assured me magnum did the 'nam flashback trick like all the time)

i really vaguely recall a very short lived comedy show/special on fox called 'the vidiots' that seemed, to my young brain, to be trying not to be funny. a little googling suggests this might have been george carlin related?? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0362279/ i don't remember bobcat goldthwait either... probably was not that weird anyway.

"Pink Lady"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_Lady_%28television_series%29

The series starred Japanese female singing duo Pink Lady, which comprised two singers, Mitsuyo Nemoto ("Mie") and Keiko Masuda ("Kei"), and American comedian Jeff Altman. The format of the show consisted of musical numbers alternating with sketch comedy. The running gag of the series was the girls' lack of understanding of American culture and the English language (in reality, Pink Lady did not speak fluent English[1]). Jeff would then attempt to translate and explain the meaning of things which led to more confusion.[2]

The series also featured Pink Lady performing various songs (usually English-language disco and pop songs such as "Boogie Wonderland" or "Yesterday", which the duo sang in English) along with interaction with celebrity and musical guests. The group would end the show by jumping into a hot tub together. After the poorly rated series premiere, NBC moved Pink Lady to Friday nights and added Jim Varney, who achieved later fame as Ernest P. Worrell in the Ernest series of movies and television shows, as a character actor. The series was also retitled Pink Lady and Jeff, however, the move and retooling failed to help ratings and the series was canceled after five episodes.[2]

yes, there is youtube. watch it all the way through. if you can.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIOcK1B_Osw

What's Alan Watching?

Although the finale of Twin Peaks is probably the single most fuck episode ever shown on a major u.s. broadcast network.

Nova

Herman's Head?

i vote for the american broadcast of the xuxa show. only lasted 4 or 5 episodes (i think). pure insanity.

http://www.corianton.com/tullyblog/uploaded_images/TRIBECA-767389.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Au3CEZMd24

gong show

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5j2A0UIqwo&feature=related

In Search Of did my head in so many times as a grade-schooler. Such a dirt-common show concept now, but at the time it just radiated dark energy. I am still scared of waking up and seeing OMG Bigfoot at the end of my bed.

Oh, I don't think I knew that there was a Shields and Yarnell show proper. I think I thought they were just frequent variety show guests or something. But I imagine that show would qualify, for sure.

We loved Dark Shadows as a kid, vampires in the daytime, scared the hell out of us.

OTM. I watched every single day, from behind the couch.

gong show

also OTM

Nova

"no cable, no pbs"

wiki sez Shields and Yarnell had their own show during '77-'78.

i never missed shields & yarnell show when it was on! i loved them. also a big mummenschanz fan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eazq_8jCOg

yeah they had their own show. Mimes!

shields and yarnell show always had one scene in every show that was just unbearably twee. just beyond maudlin. even for mimes.

tears behind the silence

Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. without a doubt.

i knew you would say that!

and i knew i would say MAUDE cuz that woman's a fuckin psycho

no PBS is a stupid rule so I ignored it

I remember Xuxa!!!

Ren & Stimpy was pretty fucking weird, especially for a show on Nickelodeon...

Was Ren & Stimpy weirder Spongebob or something like that? I feel like their brand of weirdness has been standardized and maybe one-upped, if not necessarily in a good way.

weirder than

Turn-On! I actually saw this, age 10, surreptitiously, on the rec room set while my parents were watching something else in the living room.

Turn-On is an American television series from 1969. Only one episode was shown and it is considered one of the most infamous flops in TV history.

Turn-On's sole episode was shown on Wednesday, February 5, 1969. The writing staff included a young Albert Brooks. The guest host for the episode was Tim Conway, best known for his long run on The Carol Burnett Show.

The show was created by Ed Friendly and George Schlatter, the producers of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, and picked up by ABC after NBC and CBS rejected it; a CBS official confessed, "It was so fast with the cuts and chops that some of our people actually got physically disturbed by it." Production executive Digby Wolfe described it as a "visual, comedic, sensory assault involving animation, videotape, stop-action film, electronic distortion, computer graphics — even people."

Dynasty was pretty weird. i mean the alien abduction of Fallon Colby c'mon.

Also, what about Riget? Did that air in the US at all?

xuxa clip is awesome

it's pretty amazing that wonder showzen was ever broadcast, but it's pretty self-aware and thus less weird than most of this stuff - even if the content itself might be up there with anything on this list

Was Profit on a major US network ? Cause that was quite weird (and good too).

it was on for, like, 3 episodes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bScDYmPe4Mo

(For the record, even though it's not a broadcaast show: I don't know if Ren & Stimpy was necessarily weirder than Spongebob, but it was weird in a much darker way.)

ren & stimpy and wonder showzen were cable; not trying to be a stickler but i think adding cable makes it a lot less interesting since cable is by difficult more open to niche programming

stuff like Spongebob and Weird Al Show was always a "safe" sort of weird, but Pee-Wee's Playhouse attained a level of weirdness that seemed borderline-inappropriate for reasons you could never put your finger on ("Is he actually pretend-marrying a bowl of fruit salad?? What does this mean??")

i dunno, i think that might be retroactive from the paul reubens arrest

Although the finale of Twin Peaks is probably the single most fuck episode ever shown on a major u.s. broadcast network.

The finale of The Prisoner is equally as messed up.

At risk of invoking Godwin's Law here, I think the winner of this thread is Heil Honey, I'm Home!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heil_Honey_I%27m_Home!

i found the live "pee wee for adults" theater special thing they used to show on comedy central more disturbing than pee wee's playhouse

me watching "the prisoner" for the first time is what inspired this thread! though i've only watched two episodes so far. that is a messed-up show.

i have heard tell of legendary meltdowns during the homestretch of a jerry lewis telethon...

Was Profit on a major US network ? Cause that was quite weird (and good too).

Fox only ran a couple of episodes, but Trio (R.I.P.) showed the rest of the series. John McNamara's follow-up show Eyes is also worth tracking down.

t.v. was soooooooooooooooo weird during the wild west days of cable. they would show ANYTHING to fill up time. i have old vhs tapes i made where it's just me channel-surfing late at night (this is in the late 80's) and it is a hallucinogenic feast of weirdness. i miss those days. hours of random public access dementia. conspiracy theorists with their own talk shows. old lady dance troupes. scary kids shows.

Like this -- a clip I will never tire of:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVntAA6fKSA

almost forgot, nothing scared me more than Insight when I was a kid:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYQv-OSTaCw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSm1eVNC6So

scared me even more than the twilight zone.

The Redman/Method Man sitcom was kind of mindblowing in the same sense that "I like big butts" being used to sell tweener backpacks at Target is kind of mindblowing, but it was mostly pretty bad and Brian Posehn couldn't save it.

i miss watching al alberts showcase in philly. it was the only thing that could make me feel better when i was hungover on a sunday morning. so so bad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBkkZ1pE7oQ

dark shadows fuckin owned

d...a....r....k.... s...h...a...d...ow...s... s...l...o...w....e....s..t.......s...e...r.....ie...s.... e...v...er

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQZxRH6uoiY

really I am just looking for an excuse to post this clip

Hahaha choice.

"Manimal" and "Automan" are two of my favorite shows of all-time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQWufjVHn6k

I had forgotten how fucked up "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" was

Also, if it's like what I remember from when I was 12, No Soap, Radio, which ran for a few weeks on ABC and was modeled on the tripy randomness of Monty Python.

Mary Hartman and Twin Peaks are pretty similar as far as taking the soap opera construct and then making it about everything but plot.

(trippy)

A psychic named Mrs. Druse has checked into the hospital numerous times and is taken by the staff to be a hypochondriac. She asks for the assistance of Dr. Hook to uncover the truth about the hospital and the mysterious spirits who haunt it — including a young girl, killed after the original fire; a teenage boy who was subjected to horrible test experiments in the Old Kingdom; and a strange animal, similar to a giant anteater, whose long snout opens up to a horrifying set of teeth.

And elsewhere, Peter Rickman, a painter who is admitted to the hospital following a road accident (with severe injuries to his skull and spine) begins to discover the ghastly goings-on while he lies comatose in room 426.

I agree with people upthread who said both On the Air and Wild Palms were even weirder in general than Twin Peaks, though my memories of them are kinda dim as I haven't seen either of them since they first aired. I'd love to rewatch Wild Palms, because I remember by the end of the series I had absolutely no idea what was going on anymore.

has anyone here watched Passions? the clips and ravings by stand-up comics about it make it sound amazing.

It wasn't as amazing as you would want it to be. Parts of it were crazy but most of it was boring.

That Mary Hartman clip is amazing.

"That Mary Hartman clip is amazing."
Is that clip representative of the show? Because I must watch it now if it is!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-yLYz6ejqw

sid & marty don't count. that actually IS a fair representation of how people were feeling at the time. all their shows seem perfectly normal to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ja-GY94rKO8&feature=PlayList&p=69B3932D741291BA&index=0

Is that clip representative of the show? Because I must watch it now if it is!

Kind of. It's that level of weird. I think a lot of it came from having to shoot 5 half-hour episodes a week, which sometimes meant a single scene taking up an entire episode (or runs of episodes). Filled with awkward pauses, weird interjections, and other touches of complete surrelity

I am not a huge tv watcher, but my first thoughts were: Profit, Twin Peaks, On the Air, Wild Palms, and from what little I saw, Kings. I guess it makes more sense that some kid's show from the 80s would win though.

Reality shows can be pretty weird in concept, but they always seem to amount to the same shit. Out of that type of show, I've always thought "Breaking the Magician's Code: Magic's Biggest Secrets Finally Revealed" was kind of a so-cheesy-it's-surreal kind of weird.

"Man vs Beast" was actually kind of bonkers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__Omp5-8vZY

how about Supertrain?

or the New Zoo Revue?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tx3ZGErWwIk

I love how simple and actor-driven and crazy that Mary Hartman clip is. And how the outfit is so unrealistic but then it's coupled with showing how someone who really experiences all the crazy plots of a soap opera might behave.

"That Mary Hartman clip is amazing."
Is that clip representative of the show? Because I must watch it now if it is!

― Philip Nunez, Tuesday, August 18, 2009 6:19 PM (56 minutes ago) Bookmark

it was all that great. I remember channel surfing into this when I was a kid, about 10 minutes worth of boring stilted dialogue but the reaction shots of mary listening, she looked so utterly demented that I kept watching, and then when her husband finally says 'oh enough about me, mary what's for dinner', she turns from the pot she's been stirring the whole time and pulls out a can of soup, pauses for a long moment and then says 'soup'. and that was the punchline for that whole 10 minute section

soup

I never watched "Passions" but everyone who has ever summarized the plot lines of that soap opera makes it sound like the most fucked up, gnarly narrative car-accident ever. A bunch of SF artists got obsessed and did a group show about "Passions" a few years back when that one cast member died.

friend wrote an opera using samples from the 'Timmy' episode

http://www.circusmusic.com/timmy/

passions was great whenever timmy was around

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xs1bhyMb_Kg

ZOMBIE CHARITY: Let evil reign forever more

TIMMY: Nooooooooooo

ZOMBIE CHARITY:You die!

CHARITY: Timmy, you saved my life!

ZOMBIE CHARITY: Damn that little imp! Damn you, Charity! Damn you, Timmy! Damn you to hell! damn all the people of Harmony to Hell! AH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

Dies irae, dies illa
Solvet saeclum in favilla,
Teste David cum Sibylla.

In 2003, Passions submitted a trained orangutan named BamBam, who had been portraying the recurring role of Precious, for a Daytime Emmy Award. Precious was the non-speaking live-in nurse and caregiver for elderly Edna Wallace, and held an unrequited love for Luis Lopez-Fitzgerald, which was depicted in elaborate fantasy sequences. In early 2004, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, which administers the awards, disallowed the entry with the following statement:

Our ruling is based on the belief that the Academy must draw a line of distinction between animal characters that aren't capable of speaking parts and human actors whose personal interpretation in character portrayal creates nuance and audience engagement that uniquely qualifies those performers for consideration of television's highest honor.

I'm surprised no one's mentioned Max Headroom.

Though they don't qualify, Night Flight and Up All Night on USA were great with lots of strange B to D-movie oddities, cult films, obscure music clips from Snub TV or New Wave Theater, and quick cut ADD weirdness - non-sequitur television at its best.

http://subcin.com/nightflight.html

Apparently some obsessive has managed to get most of Night Flight down on DVD.

this is so awesome. watch this and go mad:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxL4kSQJYhk

lolololololol @ daytime emmys

Yes to Night Flight. Simply amazing. Not valid for nomination, but amazing.

american gothic was pretty fucked up but now i feel like it paved the way for small town supernatural stuff like true blood.

I just think a lot of what made "Passions" fucked up wasn't so much that it was markedly different from the other soaps ("Days of Our Lives" had a storyline that ran from 94-95 that featured a major character being possessed by Satan that I think launched "Passions") as much as it was just a total circus carnival. In a world post-"Twin Peaks", it came across to me as goofy but too self-conscious and knowing to be weird.

I thought I was the only one bearing memories of Caroline in the City.

that one Lynch did after Twin Peaks that ran about 3 weeks? or was it before?

sad that i know this but days of our lives also had a satan-possessed story line way before passions was even created.

wait i totally read that wrong. that is exactly waht u said nevermind.

man, that 'mary hartman mary hartman' clip is profound. most of the show has a more slowburn shaggy-dog approach, but that clip is just the most on target meltdown I've seen in a while

Okay looking through the Wikipedia entry on MHMH (which I barely remember beyond seeing a couple of ads) and the hell?

When Lasser left the show in 1977, it was re-branded Forever Fernwood and followed the trials and tribulations of Mary's family and friends after she ran away with a policeman. The series finally ended in 1978, after only 26 weeks on the air, along with the talk show parody spin-off Fernwood 2-Night.

Mary Kay Place was nominated for a Grammy Award for the album Tonite! At the Capri Lounge, Loretta Haggers on which she sang as her MH2 character, Loretta Haggers. The album featured cameo appearances by Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson, and one of its songs, "Baby Boy", climbed to the Top 60 on Billboard's Pop Charts, and #3 on the country charts, in 1976. Place also won an Emmy Award for her performance on the show. The show's writers realized Loretta Haggers' newfound fame made it harder to keep her character in Fernwood, so they devised a storyline wherein the country and western star makes an anti-semitic, career-shattering remark on the Dinah Shore talk show.

The thing that's frustrating is that there's a torrent of the complete series of Fernwood 2-Nite floating around, but I've never been able to find anything for MHMH. And there doesn't seem to be any indication that there's going to be further DVD releases.

"In a world post-"Twin Peaks", it came across to me as goofy but too self-conscious and knowing to be weird."
My understanding was the main draw of Passions was its total sincerity and lack of archness... Were the hipsters out-hipsed?

that one Lynch did after Twin Peaks that ran about 3 weeks? or was it before?

On The Air, mentioned at the top of the thread and several times after. I think it was concurrent with the second season of TP, if I'm not mistaken.

Summer of 1992 is when On the Air finally ran.

Fish Police was based on a really obscure comic book that I was obsessed with and collected and it broke my heart that it became a shitty cartoon in the "next Simpsons" sweepstakes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6D5C1C7Nso

ok after watching the clip, mary hartman mary hartman might be winning this thread

that clip is a really good argument, definitely.

If i had an Insight clip though i might get you to change your mind. low-rent early 70's christian twilight zone morality tales that were big on shock value.

someone get those Paulists to put out a boxed set:

Insight was nominated for the Emmy for Outstanding Achievement in Religious Programming in 1972 and 1973 and won the category from 1981 to 1984. The anthology format and the religious nature of the program attracted a wide variety of actors (including Ed Asner, Jack Albertson, Beau Bridges, Patty Duke, Cicely Tyson, Jack Klugman, Robert Lansing, Walter Matthau, Bob Newhart, John Ritter, and Martin Sheen), directors (such as Marc Daniels, Arthur Hiller, Norman Lloyd, Delbert Mann, Ted Post, Jay Sandrich, and Jack Shea), and writers (Rod Serling, John T. Dugan, Lan O'Kun, and Michael Crichton) to work on the series.

most MHMH, a lot more punishing, they really made you wait for it. but the payoffs stay with you for life.

that clip just prompted me to buy the DVD set which has the first 25 episodes, but I almost wish it were just a comp of the best 25 episodes, it was a daily show and there were 300+ episodes (the talk show episode above is episode #130, thank you internet episode guides)

why were they being so mean to her?

The mere existence of A Film By Kirk elevates Gilmore Girls into the top 3 easily.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0bwQzUmo78

why were they being so mean to her?

― Philip Nunez, Tuesday, August 18, 2009 9:13 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

her essay wins a contest looking for America's Typical Consumer Housewife, and she winds up on the David Susskind Show

Reading through, lots of good suggestions. All the picks for shows with weird premises got me thinking; there's a big problem though, because there are so many TV shows that have weird, zany, or surreal in their premises but once the show starts and it's established that kooky context it really kind of settles into homogeneous TV BS for the most part.

okay, i checked, the paulist press sells videos of insight episodes. 25 bucks! sheesh, greedy bastards. the videos are probably 30 years old:

God in the Dock: In a class action suit, God is placed on trial for all the pain, injustice, and misery suffered by mankind. The results are surprising. The Long Road Home: Filled with self doubt, James Conklin panics and walks out on his fiancée the night before their wedding. A witty yet penetrating, treatment of fidelity God's and ours. Missing Person's Bureau: A Vietnam veteran returns home to face a tragedy of his son's death and his wife's infidelity. Furious at his misfortunes, he tries to locate God at a Missing Person's Bureau; there he discovers that forgiveness is the key to knowing that God has always been with him.

I remember watching the very first episode of MHMH back when -- I think it was the first -- and things are getting more and more heated as Mary's grandpa is revealed as the Fernwood Flasher, and the whole family goes to the police station to bail him out, and Mary has this increasingly hysterical speech, trying to take control of the situation, that ends up with her telling the family "...and we are ALL...GOING...to the INTERNATIONAL...HOUSE...of PANCAKES!" [CUT TO BLACK; CREDITS]

the show was actually on into the 80's, but those old 70's ones scared the hell out of me. some of them were so bleak. just people raging against god for half an hour.

haha Rajskub looking mad as ever. (re: gilmore girls fake arty short)

mary hartman used to confuse the hell out of me as a kid.

between all the insane 70's t.v. movies, edith bunker getting raped, and starsky & hutch dead hooker episodes, it's no wonder i'm so fucked up.

"why were they being so mean to her?
her essay wins a contest looking for America's Typical Consumer Housewife, and she winds up on the David Susskind Show"

is it the nature of this show that there is no further explanation to be had?

just to refresh y'all's memories:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0CGzPaJUOE

After having watched that Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman clip, I'm not so impressed by Twin Peaks anymore. That's some next level stuff.

is it the nature of this show that there is no further explanation to be had?

the basic idea of the show was very much like Twin Peaks, it's shot like a really tedious, silly soap opera that takes _forever_ to get to its resolutions, but as opposed to soap operas, truly unsettling things are happening, family next door getting mass murdered, husband impotent or bringing home VD, perversions in the family, friends getting crippled or your friend's husband accidentally overdosing on sleeping pills & jack daniels, and then the punchline is like a 15 second silent reaction shot of Mary Hartman spacing out or being preoccupied with consumer products

I'm curious as to how much of the DVDs I'm going to be able to watch, back then it could have gone down like an antidote but now it seems like that much more of a nightmare

that MHMH clip would be a hell of a lot more groundbreaking if it hadn't been pre-enacted by Gena Rowlands in about 4 Cassavettes movies.

None of which showed up on tv 5 days a week throughout the late 70s.

why is Mary dressed like a little girl...?

xpost Shasta's point well taken, but indeed

http://www.geocities.com/mhartmanmhartman2/people01.jpg

http://www.geocities.com/mhartmanmhartman/index.html

boston public tops all this shit

how is it you are not banned yet

To be fair, Shatner dry-humping a mannequin of Candace Bergen is pretty out-there TV.

surely all these ppl going on about twin peaks for 100 posts are trolling more than i am

the last episode of the Prisoner is some pretty weird stuff, ditto almost the entire run of the Avengers; I know these came out of the UK but they did run on networks in the US.

Too many choices. Most US network tv is deeply, deeply disturbing. We just don't notice it because it is so normal.

"why were they being so mean to her?
her essay wins a contest looking for America's Typical Consumer Housewife, and she winds up on the David Susskind Show"

why is Mary dressed like a little girl...?

Especially out of context, that clip reminds me so much of Inland Empire and Mullholland Drive, except that it's meta about TV instead of film. But the whole thing feels like a bad dream, how she has a different level of realism than the characters around her, and she's saying "You're assuming these things about me because you're seeing fragments of my life with commercials in between."

Would love to ask David Lynch and Todd Haynes if the show influenced them.

Chuck Barris ftw.

The Gong Show or $1.98 Beauty Show are bizarre inversions of the showbiz biz.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUkzIx382mM

That's entertainment!

that MHMH clip would be a hell of a lot more groundbreaking if it hadn't been pre-enacted by Gena Rowlands in about 4 Cassavettes movies.

...seen by 4 people who weren't enrolled in the Actors' Studio.

MHMH may be the best combo of good and weird, but it's not the weirdest.

scott, that was only attempted rape on Edith Bunker. Maybe your trauma was induced by the laughter of the studio audience during that scene?

this thread makes me glad the weirdest TV show I've ever watched was The Tick

What about this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom_broadcast_signal_intrusion_incident

OK it isnt technically a proper show but BY GOD IS IT CREEPY :|

no but there was an actual Max Headroom show

Of which I'm quite well aware =)

Dunno if I'dve called it weird though. They showed some awesome video clips! Movie was a bit rub though.

For your consideration: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_wars_holiday_special

there was a one-hour drama series though which is what they're talking about (aside from the max headroom 'interview' show), which was pretty weird for network television. (xpost). for some reason it's never been out on dvd.

Oh yes I'd forgotten about that.

xxpost: Aw, fuggit. Too slow.

Tracye, I think you're thinking of The Max Headroom Show. I believe Granny is referring to Max Headroom, which is a different show altogether.

while reading up on this I ran across a mention of Muppet Babies, which is surely one of the weirder cartoons I've ever seen.

sledgehammer (american tv program, not the peter gabriel song or the tool)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkdL1pIae7U

get a life was the weirdest show I'd ever seen when I was 9 and it's still the only show I can think of where the main character dies at the end of almost every episode.

ha i remember watching sledgehammer

Concert footage notwithstanding, I'm going to vote for Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park, which I watched on broadcast television with my extremely indulgent grandparents:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4-znGuyYb8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6lOXYTrtrg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83IXGaSpWaE

Madame always freaked me out.

OH MY GOD YES TO MADAME.

doogie howser MD

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axDN3kIQZ74

wtf was up w/ Mr. Floppy? I could never watch more than 5 mins of 'Unhappily Ever After' to find out

^painful

Sammy (Davis Jr) & Company

Sammy's guests are Dr. Joyce Brothers and game-show hosts, Monty Hall, Peter Marshall and Bob Eubanks. Highlights: Sammy sings "Ding Dong the Witch Is Dead

Sammy's guests are Anthony Newley, Robert Klein, Carmen McRae and Donald Rumsfeld, Assistant to the President. Highlights: Sammy and Anthony do a medley, which includes "Good Old Bad Old Days," "What Kind of Fool Am I" and "Candy Man."

Sammy's guests are Willie Mays, Leo Durocher, Jose Feliciano and Lorna Luft.

Sammy's guests are Lucille Ball, Freddie Prinze, Chuck Berry and Maya Angelou.

there's no way public access TV counts for this right?

hmm, I thought public access TV might have been broadcasted on PBS - guess not

sammy & co was probably syndicated rather than network. if local/regional counts JOE FRANKLIN pwns