Walking in on a true WTF TV moment

So was the motive for nuking the town just vengeance against the rich guy? Damn, I stopped watching that show way too soon, who'd of thunk sweet lil Laura and Pa would go Rambo in the end.

 

Michael Landon was a weird motherfucker. That may have been how it was plotted in the show. In real life, Landon didn't want the Little House sets used for any other purpose.

Even when I was young, I thought Little House was hokey. Had I known they would eventually add an orangutan, I might have paid more mind.

I do remember that there was a brief battle in my house on Monday's between my mom wanting to watch (and by proxy ... myself and my sister) Little House and my dad wanting to watch The White Shadow.

Then they moved WKRP to the slot the White Shadow had been in and our Little House-watching days were numbered. My mom would switch over to CBS anyway because M*A*S*H was on at 8 p.m.

It was kind of a side-show to the real battle on Sundays when 60 Minutes aired opposite The Wonderful World Of Disney. I'd say whichever network had the late football game tended to win that skirmish by fait accompli.

It's weird how I remember TV nights by network. In the late 70s/early 80s, it was as thus:

Sundays -- CBS (60 Minutes, Archie Bunker's Place, One Day At A Time, The Jeffersons, Alice)
Mondays -- CBS (WKRP, M*A*S*H, House Calls, Lou Grant)*
* During the fall, ABC would run neck-and-neck due to Monday Night Football
Tuesdays -- ABC (Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, Three's Company, Taxi, Hart to Hart)
Wednesdays -- ABC (Eight Is Enough, Charlie's Angels, Vega$)
Thursdays -- NBC (Buck Rogers, Quincy, Rockford Files ... pretty sure this was the one night my dad ruled the TV with Quincy being the allure for my mom. When my dad wasn't home, my mom would veer over to ABC for Mork & Mindy, Benson, Barney Miller and Soap)
Fridays -- CBS (The Incredible Hulk, Dukes Of Hazzard, Dallas)

Saturdays are the one night I don't recall us having a dominant network choice. I have fond memories, however, of watching the $1.98 Beauty Queen in syndication.



I guess it was actually called the $1.98 Beauty Show. All I know is that Rip Taylor sang to the $1.98 Beauty Queen at show's end.

It was the late 70s. A great time to be weird.

 

I remember when this was THE must watch murderer's row lineup (that is, IF you could sneak around Mom forbidding you from seeing the "scandalous" Three's Company). If you missed it you were completely out of the loop for those next day 4th grade lunch conversations.

Today Taxi is the only one of those shows that holds up as anything beyond wretched crap.

 

Oh, the days before cable.

 

According to the Wikipedia (I know, I know) page about the TV show, the buildings were blown up to prevent the railroad tycoon, who somehow owned the property deeds for the township, from using them for his own purpose.
The episode originally aired as a two-hour movie, but is sometimes aired in connection with the series as a two-parter.
Here's a link to the Wikipedia page, with the explanation near the bottom:
Little House: The Last Farewell
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Little_House_on_the_Prairie_episodes

 

I remember watching reruns of the Dukes of Hazzard as a child of the 80s. However, I don't remember an episode in which Bo and Luke rescue an alien and help the alien return to his spaceship. But, while on a gym treadmill on late evening not long ago, I watched CMT in horror as this episode unfolded right in front of me.

 

WTF? Granted it is just Dukes of Hazzard, but still.....

Man, I'd love to know what TV script writers were drinking/smoking during those years.

 

Wow. Do not remember that. Maybe it was like a moonshine episode and everyone was hallucinating.

 

God bless Tom Wopat and his tight jeans.

 

TV Tropes alert: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EverythingsBetterWithMonkeys

 

The Friday lineup seems very familiar.

Also, I think that the Sha-Na-Na show was part of our rotation.