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CarolTheDabbler's Replies
Thanks for the reminder, Kowalski! Well, this time I was able to take things in stride much better, probably because they didn't blindside me. Overall, I liked it just fine and was actually sad to see it end.
Andy had a "play list" that he wanted all of the DJs to use. Presumably it was the current top 40 plus some new releases. But Johnny preferred to play his own favorites from the past (and Venus seemed to have his own style as well).
It just occurred to me that one very plausible reason for the repertory company might be this: Because the show was filmed in Canada, they were required to use a certain percentage of "Canadian content." So not only are some of the continuing characters played by Canadian actors, so are many of the one-shot roles (and Kari Matchett is included in both categories).
They not only needed a lot of good Canadian actors, they needed ones who could reliably do a convincing US accent (due to most of the characters being from the US), and I must say they did a good job of that. I may be forgetting a few other incidents, but right now I only recall noticing one accent slip, from an actor who was in a number of episodes, but had the misfortune to have an "ou" word feature prominently in one particularly impassioned speech. (His character could, of course, have been a Canadian who had moved just across the border to New York State.)
Canadian actors in the series include the following
(from the 27 non-pilot episodes):
Colin Fox (Fritz Brenner, 25 episodes)
R. D. Reid (Purley Stebbins, 22 episodes)
Robert Bockstael (various, 19 episodes)
Kari Matchett (Lily Rowan & others, 17 episodes)
Steve Cumyn (various, 15 episodes)
Trent McMullen (Orrie Cather, 13 episodes)
Richard Waugh (various, 13 episodes)
Boyd Banks (various, 13 episodes)
Fulvio Cecere (Fred Durkin, 12 episodes)
Christine Brubaker (various, 12 episodes)
Saul Rubinek (Lon Cohen, 10 episodes)
<blockquote>"Rock" music/radio, in the context of the time of WKRP, is distinctly different from the early rock 'n' roll of the 50's & early 60's.</blockquote>
That's quite true -- and is the difference between what Andy wants and what Johnny actually plays.
<blockquote>By the late 60's/early 70's, rock format stations had largely moved to the FM band, which was capable of broadcasting in stereo, which was more suitable to album oriented rock.</blockquote>
That makes sense. I'm gonna guess that the album orientation was a cause and/or effect of the move toward "canned" (AKA automated) stations like the one that tried to hire Venus to "just sit around and be black." If you play whole albums at one stretch, who's even gonna notice whether there's a DJ or not?
I'm gonna guess you weren't listening to radio circa 1960. Back then, at least here in Indiana (around 100 miles from Cincinnati), rock 'n' roll and other top-40 music was pretty much exclusively on AM, with FM being devoted to classical music and other "grown-up" stuff. My husband says that had changed by sometime in the 70s, but it may have depended on where you lived. One of the extras on the DVD set mentions that at first they were assuming WKRP would be an FM station, till they realized that rock would be on AM -- so maybe the show's creators/producers/writers were remembering their own childhoods?
It sounds like you realize that the reason Cramer and Stebbins were missing was simply that the setting was outside of NYC. But I found the whole episode a bit jarring.
My husband and I are about halfway through reading Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe stories aloud, in chronological order. And each time we finish one that has an A&E adaptation, we watch that. We watched their "Immune to Murder" last night, and it looked to me like someone (screenwriter? director?) was being awfully "creative." Unlike the other episodes we've watched, there was a whole lot of original dialog (much of it very loud), and even some original scenes. The whole tone felt different from Stout's story and from the other episodes. (I could also mention that Wolfe did an awful lot of snarling and bellowing, but that is, alas, simply the way Maury Chaykin usually played him.)
They moved the ambassador's home country (never specified in Stout's story, but clearly somewhere in the Middle East) to a fictitious country in Latin America (and I think they mentioned the name of the county -- did anyone happen to catch it?). Couldn't they find Middle Eastern actors to play the ambassador and his wife?
The U.S. version at least had what I think was his voice in that scene. I was wondering if perhaps the actor wasn't available on the day they were filming, so his voice was dubbed in later -- but if that scene was longer in Europe, then apparently we just happened to miss out on seeing his face.
<blockquote>Lily didn't appear nearly as much in the tv series as she did in the books</blockquote>
If you're talking about "screen time" in both media, you may well be correct, though I haven't done a statistical analysis. But according to IMDb, she is in 4 of the 29 or 30 episodes (depending on whether you count the pilot as one episode or two) of the A&E series (13.8% or 13.3%), and according to Goodreads (<url>https://www.goodreads.com/characters/978604-lily-rowan</url>), she appears "on screen" in 9 of the 74 written stories (12%). Admittedly, the A&E series did not get around to adapting some of her more extensive roles before being cancelled, but they did include her in a brief introductory scene in "Door to Death" even though there's nothing of that sort at the beginning of the novella.
What drprod said -- but alternatively it could easily have been a syndicated rerun of The Bob Cummings Show (1955-59, <url>https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047752/?ref_=nm_flmg_t_29_act</url>). Cummings was also in a number of other TV and movie productions, some of which may have turned up on TV circa 1964.
In "Fish Story" the spelling is quite easy to see (though you still might not notice if you're not paying attention to the jacket). Did an internet <u>image</u> search on
<blockquote>Cincinnato WKRP</blockquote>
(then assured the search software that I really did mean that spelling) and there are bunches of red tshirts, sweatshirts, hoodies, stickers, mugs, etc. for sale with the "Cincinnato" logo -- surely a testament to the lasting popularity of the series!
We've watched the first 17 episodes on our DVDs so far, and won't get to "Fish Story" (#21) for a few more days -- however I recall noticing Venus wearing a red sports-type jacket a few episodes back. I was having trouble reading what it said, and assumed that was because the fabric fell into folds, so that I couldn't see the whole front at once. Didn't think too much about it, but now I'm beginning to wonder....
The answer popped into my head overnight. Martin Crieff was a character (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) in the BBC radio sitcom <i>Cabin Pressure</i> (available on YouTube and well worth a listen).
Sorry about that!
Am I the only person who doesn't find this episode funny? (Silly, yes.) So if turkeys *could* fly, it would have made perfect sense to toss them out of a helicopter? Or even just let them loose in a metro area?
The Mississippi was the original divider, yes, but I believe I heard a while back that they were running short on new station names, so they apparently assign W and K rather indiscriminately nowadays. Older stations would generally still have their original letters, though.
Note, however, that the word "station" seems to mean the combination of frequency, owner, and location -- so if any of those factors change, there could also be a name change.
<blockquote>... after season 4 the creators and writing staff left to start Frasier. Because that was a more high-profile project spinning off a major character, they sent over their best people.</blockquote>
Hmm, kinda like the <i>Mary Tyler Moore Show</i> spinning off two of its best characters, Rhoda and Phyllis, into shows of their own, leaving the original show kinda gutted? But, like you, I'm not sure I noticed that result with <i>Wings</i>.
At this point, months after finishing our rewatch, I'm left with an overall positive feeling for the show, much as I felt after its network run. I liked the characters, thought they were a well-orchestrated ensemble, and liked the setting, so I enjoyed "visiting" there even when an episode left something to be desired.
I can neither confirm nor refute any of your specifics, but I have heard one story about an immigration clerk being pretty cavalier with someone's name. I worked with a fellow who had a typical German-Jewish surname which he seemed to be mispronouncing, so I asked him about that. He said it wasn't actually his name anyhow. His family was from Russia, apparently with a long, complicated Russian surname. When his uncle came to the US, the immigration clerk told him that no one would be able to pronounce his name, and suggested that he use this other name instead, because "it's a nice Jewish name" (never mind that it was German instead of Russian). Then when the coworker's father came over, the uncle told him "over here, our name's such-and-such."
The two brothers came from a totalitarian country, so it may never have occurred to them that there was anything unusual about this. And in all fairness, the clerk was presumably just trying to be helpful. Many people are now saying that "Ellis Island name changes" were largely a myth, which may or may not be true. I would personally tend to discount the "Yid" story, but such name changes did apparently happen at least once (though not necessarily at Ellis Island).
You forgot to mention heavier-than-air flying machines.
... and they say my husband is Joey -- so we're a good match!
Says I'm most like Phoebe, which is probably true, though I don't quite see how they got it from those questions!