Family Dog!
This one’s gonna be tough, as I’ll be describing something I haven’t seen or even really thought about in literally three decades:
I’ve run episodes of Amazing Stories on Dino Drac After Dark before, but this one was a massive departure from the show’s usual lean on semi-macabre stuff.
Premiering in 1987, Family Dog was about… well, a family dog. What I remember most about the episode is how hard my whole family laughed at it. Like serious fist-pounding laughter, from a roomful of hard sells.
By 1987 standards, seeing a cartoon dog piss on a cartoon carpet was unheard of. Family Dog seemed downright edgy in its time, and we couldn’t help but draw comparisons between the titular pooch and our own dog.
Family Dog would get its own series in 1993, but I don’t believe I ever caught it. No idea how firm the connection was to this older Amazing Stories episode, but the lineage is definitely there.
Herman’s Head!
Here’s another early ‘90s FOX sitcom that I used to be obsessed with:
Herman’s Head!
While on its face a normal sitcom about a guy’s (William Ragsdale) struggles with work and romance, what set this series apart was its truly bizarre gimmick.
Whenever Herman had to make a big decision, we’d cut to scenes staged from inside his brain, where his various emotions (played by four other actors) would battle to dictate his actions.
It was goofy and weird, but it worked. Interestingly, when the show finally found some legit footing, it was in the “real life” portions, which as I recall led the “brain scenes” to be trimmed down and adjusted to become more like Family Guy cutaway gags.
Embedded here is the pilot. If you dig it, it looks like the whole series is floating around on YouTube.
Get a Life!
Here’s one of the more famous episodes of Get a Life, Chris Elliott’s incredible sitcom from the early ‘90s:
Get a Life lasted for two seasons. The first season was a more sincere attempt to do a “real” sitcom, with Chris (playing a character named Chris) bumbling through life as a too-old paperboy and lovable loser. It had its bizarre moments, but the first season wasn’t wildly out of the ordinary for its time.
During the second season, all bets were off. My best guess is that everyone knew there was zero chance for a third season, so they vowed to make the weirdest show possible with whatever time they had left. (In what’s honestly one of the tamer examples, Chris dies — literally dies — in most of the second season episodes.)
The episode featured here, SPEWEY and Me, was a spoof on E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. You’ll find it hard to believe that this really aired on FOX (in the early ‘90s, no less), but I swear, it did. And this wasn’t even close to the strangest episode!
Get a Life was just brilliant in its oddness. I don’t know if it’ll land for everyone, but I hope posting about it here turns a few of you into new fans.
Free-For-All Friday Thread #5!
Time for another Free-For-All Friday Thread, where you’re free to talk about whatever you want in the comments.
Tell us about your week! Review the food from that weird diner down the street! List off ten of your favorite blue things! The choice is yours.
Happy Friday!
PS: I usually search for a “mood” video to add to these threads, but I’ll totally miss the deadline if I do one now. We just finished recording the next Purple Stuff episode literally five minutes ago. So just imagine this post accompanied by some pleasant background noise. Picture me humming softly.
UPDATE: I’m a minute or two late, but this oughta do:
The whole soundtrack to A Nightmare on Elm Street. It’s still so good.
