Street Hawk (1985 -13 episodes)

I wasn’t at the Street Hawk pitch meeting, but I imagine it went exactly like this:

“It’s like Airwolf, but with a motorcycle”

“Well, I’m sold.  Let’s do some coke and listen the new Huey Lewis and the News album”

Similar to its techno-cousins, Street Hawk featured a high tech vehicle with impossible technology including endless-ammo machine guns, rockets, a frickin’ laser beam, and KITT-inspired jumping abilities. Don’t you worry your pretty little head over how you could put all those things into a motorcycle without it weighing the same as a Lincoln Towncar.

However my favorite effect was that Street Hawk was capable of 300 miles per hour on the streets of LA, but only when cleared by mission-control’s required stereotypical nerdy sidekick, Murphy Brown’s Frank Fontana.  How did they accomplish this amazing effect?  How about some B-roll footage of a motorcycle driving down a city street sped up with a HUD display superimposed showing a speedometer hitting impossible speeds.  Presto – a motorcycle going 300 miles an hour!

Opening credits with backstory narration:

Street Hawk did feature one significant guest star in its second episode.  Check out the guy with the cartoon-like pompadour haircut and vaguely east coast accent:

Is that Jay Leno’s cousin?  No it’s….GEORGE CLOONEY?!?!?

See George arrive at the 9:35 mark (the link doesn’t start at the right spot) and participate in some Santa Monica Pier montage after some stilted reminiscing with our hero….

See George also perform a death scene at the 45:00 mark that would get him booed off the stage at a community theater.

Despite an impressive amount of merchandizing, Street Hawk was soon cancelled…

Dukes of Hazzard (Coy and Vance Season) (1982- 17 Episodes)

So in 1982, CBS is riding high with its powerful Friday night lineup of Dukes of Hazzard, Dallas and Falcon Crest.  However, Bo and Luke Duke (aka John Schneider and Tom Wopat) tried to translate the popularity of their title characters into some more sweet, sweet cash and held out for raises.  CBS decided not to give in to their demands, and simply replaced the original puckish cousins with discounted copies – Coy and Vance Duke.

How quick did they do it?  Bo and Luke are gone using some b-roll stock footage of the General Lee jumping and a Waylon Jennings’ voiceover before the opening credits of the first episode of the season are over:

Total time to dispose of the original 3 years of title characters: 24 seconds

How much a copy were Coy and Vance of Bo and Luke?  Not only were actors cast who look alike, but according to a book on the series, the producers literally just crossed out Bo and Luke’s names and replaced them in the scripts that had already been written for the season with Coy and Vance and made no other changes.

Total time to introduce and backstory the arrival of new title characters, previously never mentioned on the show in a single scene of awkwardly expositional dialogue: 1 minute, 45 seconds

At least producers tried to shake up things by having Luke’s replacement, Vance, dress like Bo and having Bo’s replacement, Coy, dress like Luke:

Needless to say, Coy and Vance didn’t last long and were quickly written out and the originals were back in after just 17 episodes.

Blue Thunder (1984 – 11 episodes)

Blue Thunder starts out with the deck stacked against it. First, it is a TV show based on a movie. Which is pretty much as certain a death sentence as when Karen makes Frosty take her into the greenhouse.

While the show was essentially supposed to continue the movie, you pretty much had to ignore the movie’s entire premise for the show to make any sense. In the movie, Frank Murphy uncovers a government murder plot around the use of the titular super-chopper, witnesses the death of his partner JAFO, and ultimately destroys Blue Thunder by landing it in front of a train that likely killed or at least seriously traumatized some innocent engineer.

See our hero attempt to murder a man he doesn’t know, for no good reason (Sorry you have to jump to 1:39:00 on the clip):

Meanwhile, the show featured Discount Roy Schneider (James Farentino) as Frank Chaney (not Frank Murphy) and Discount Daniel Stern as not-dead sidekick, JAFO —-HOLY CRAP is that pre-SNL Dana Carvey?!? It sure is. Now apparently cool with the government program the duo spent the better part of the movie trying to derail, they are using the apparently fresh from a hell of a MAACO repair job super-chopper to fight crime.

In perhaps its most terrible attribute, the show also added “Rolling Thunder” a box van manned by ex-football greats and accomplished great taste/less filling debaters, Bubba Smith and Dick Butkus. (Because it is very difficult to apprehend the bad guys while flying a helicopter) They must have been terrible at acting, because their characters were backstoried as ex-football players and literally named Bubba and Butowski.

Secondly, Blue Thunder aired against a little show called Dallas on Friday nights. In the pre-DVR age, this created a losing battle between kids and their functional-alcoholic-power-hungry-family-drama loving parents.

Finally, Blue Thunder also competed against the newly launched Airwolf for the advertiser-coveted super-attack-helicopter-show fan base. Not really a fair fight given that it pitted Blue Thunder’s essentially real-world technology against Airwolf’s infinite-ammo rocket launcher, supersonic speed and the unstoppable charisma and wit of one, Ernest Borgnine.

Not surprisingly, Blue Thunder didn’t last long.

Opening Credits to Blue Thunder:

Extended clip featuring scenes directly lifted from the movie and terrible acting by Dana Carvey, Bubba Smith and Dick Butkus:

Introduction

This blog will attempt to make you feel very old by reminding you of TV shows primarily from my youth (1980s) that were terrible for a variety of reasons. Ideally your reaction to each show should be “I remember that show” or “wait, that was a real show?”

Shows will be judged solely in my estimation which is not appealable or reviewable. Besides, do you think if there was a blog making fun of you that some 80s TV show would stand up and defend you? It wouldn’t.

Factors for selection will include fewest episodes before cancellation, ridiculous premise, stereotypical characters and plotlines, actors before they were famous and other intangibles, such as my general fondness for the show. I will be happy to entertain submissions for consideration.