In My Footsteps: A Gen-X Nostalgia Podcast

Episode 188: 1970s TV Show Fails, Return of 3-D Movies In the 80s, Best Made For TV Movies(3-26-2025)

• Christopher Setterlund • Season 1 • Episode 188

Share episode

Send us a text

Some of the worst TV shows of the 70s. The brief return of 3-D movies in the 80s. Some great Made-for-TV movies.

Episode 188 of the podcast celebrates spring with a colorful menagerie of nostalgia in bloom.

It all begins with a look back at the relatively brief and somewhat unspectacular return of 3-D movies in the 1980s. Nostalgia is a powerful emotion and memories of the 1950s 3-D films prompted a comeback. Some films were alright. Some were downright awful. In the end, it was a short return and we will do a deep dive into 3-D.

We go way back in the day to find some of the biggest television show failures of the 1970s. These run the gamut of flops from established names, budgetary disasters, spin-off sadness, and insane ideas. We'll look at all of them.

Made-for-TV movies are a bit of a relic of a bygone era. For we who grew up in the 70s, 80s, and 90s we remember them well. This week's Top 5 will look at some of the best Made for TV movies ever. Did you watch any of these when they first aired?

There is also a brand new This Week In History and Time Capsule centered around the quarantine of the infamous Typhoid Mary.

For more great content become a subscriber on Patreon!

Helpful Links from this Episode

Listen to Episode 187 here

Support the show

Speaker 04:

Hello world, and welcome to the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund, coming to you from the vacation destination known as Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and this is episode 188. We are busting through the end of March, getting ready for the April showers to bring May flowers and all that good stuff. Everything's gonna start to bloom and we're gonna kick it off with a load of nostalgia. We're going to kick it off with a look back at the return of 3D movies in the 1980s. Some were okay, some were pretty terrible. Speaking of terrible, we're going to go way back in the day and look at some of the worst television shows of the 1970s. These definitely put the F in fail. There'll be a brand new top five as we look at the top five made-for-TV movies. And there'll be a brand new This Week in History and Time Capsule looking back at the quarantine of typhoid Mary. All of that is coming up right now on episode 188 of the In My Footsteps podcast. So what are we going to talk about this week? About how Cape Cod spring is in full bloom, 45 and foggy with drizzle pretty much every day. Maybe we'll talk about finishing up my first ever acting gig. Obviously, first, I've got to thank my Patreon subscribers, those that are my biggest fans, my actual backers who put their money where their mouth is to support me and support my podcast, my content work. Lori, Mary Lou, Ashley, Kevin, Leo, Marguerite, Neglectoid, Crystal, Matt, Thank you all so much for being my biggest supporters. I really appreciate you. In fact, I just finished up recording next month's bonus podcast episode for the Patreon subscribers. That will drop on April Fool's Day, but I promise it's a real podcast. It's not fake. Although I should have done something like that. Ah, man, it's too late now. Now I'm thinking I shouldn't have mentioned April Fool's at all. Because I could have made some kind of a post on Patreon saying something outlandish, but now you'll know it's April Fool's. Although I give the big shout out to my Patreon subscribers, I obviously appreciate all of you that tune into the show, who share it, who tell others, hey, you should listen to this Gen X Nostalgia podcast. He talks about a lot of stuff that we who are now in our 40s, 50s, 60s really enjoyed as kids. Because that's the main thing. I do this because I know there's an audience out there. Those of you that are interested in the same things as me. But the big thing is I do it for myself. Any excuse to get to reminisce about my childhood, I take advantage of as I stare down 50 in a few years. But just remember, 50 doesn't mean you're old, you're just vintage. Or whatever excuse we try to come up with that we're not half a century old. Anyway, let me pause this and go cry a little. By the time this podcast goes live, the filming for my first acting gig will be done. My scenes are already done. But this weekend, so I record this on the Friday, it goes live on the Wednesday. The full filming wraps up this weekend. I'll be on set a little later. to maybe get some behind the scenes photos, videos, unless the director doesn't want me there, then I'm not going to try to become a diva and say you need to bow down to my wishes. This weekend, I'm going to be walking to Race Point Lighthouse with my friend producer Frank Durant and our other friend Brian. I have been suckered into getting up earlier with promises of breakfast purchased by Frank, so we'll see how it goes. I'm going to have to get up Earlier on my day off to go hike out to this lighthouse than I would on days that I work. So on next week's podcast, I'll definitely have news about how this hike went. And the hike out there, the video, the interview, that's going to be on my YouTube channel in a couple of weeks. So that'll be fun. You'll get to see behind the scenes of us struggling to walk out there early in the morning. My plan is to also, in the next couple of weeks, do kind of a standalone video where I just talk about the process of my scenes in the film, you know, without spoiling too much and what goes into preparing for things like that. My scenes are smaller, they're low-key, so I'm definitely not a pro when it comes to acting, but I do now have an idea. And I did enjoy it, so I'm hoping this is not my only dalliance into acting. But only future me will know the answer to that. I can tell you one thing. I'm pretty sure that future acting gigs will not be in 3D for me. Who knows? But we're going to kick off the podcast with a terrible segue that I just tried. As we look back at the return of 3D movies in the early 1980s, including some examples of the good and the bad. So let's get into those right now. I say so much on this podcast about how powerful of an emotion nostalgia is, reminiscing about childhood, what's old is new again. We're living in a world where a lot of 90s stuff has come back into fashion. It seems like typically the cycle of nostalgia is like 30 years in the past. One such example of the cyclical nature of nostalgia is was the return of 3D movies in the early 1980s. It was like they came back and were just everywhere, and then they were gone again. 3D movies had first captured audiences' imaginations in the early 1950s. The revival in the early 80s produced a mix of cult classics, horror hits, and some just terrible ones. In order to understand this boom and bust cycle, We got to go back to the origins of 3D films, which ironically date back to the mid-19th century. This was with the invention of something called stereoscopic photography. This used two images viewed through special viewers to create the illusion of depth. Filmmakers began experimenting with the idea of three-dimensional motion pictures in the early 20th century. The first ever 3D film was called The Power of Love and it came out in 1922. This was shown using an anaglyph process, which is the red and blue lenses, but it failed to spark public interest. There are a lot of cases where the revolutionary technology seems to fail at first because people aren't ready for it and it takes a couple of kicks at the can before people come aboard with it. So when it comes to 3D, the true golden age was the early to mid-1950s. Television sets became more common in American households and Hollywood sought new ways to lure audiences back to the theaters. Because why are you going to go to the movie theater when you can sit in your living room and watch Howdy Doody, I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners? The first major 3D motion picture hit was Buona Devil, which came out in 1952. It was a low-budget action-adventure film that became a surprise box office success. You know what that means. Surprise success, making money, that leads to a lot of people jumping on the bandwagon. What ended up coming out in the 1950s were a big wave of 3D releases, including House of Wax in 1953, which starred Vincent Price, Creature from the Black Lagoon in 1954, which is a monster movie, and the Alfred Hitchcock foray into 3D Dial M for Murder from 1954. Although that movie was actually released mostly in two-dimensional because of the decline in interest in 3D movies already. The initial boom of 3D films went away pretty quickly with some major issues, first being technical problems, There was a dual projector system required to screen 3D films, and that was prone to misalignment. They'd be blurry images, headaches for viewers. Not to mention the cardboard glasses with the red and blue lenses. These were clunky, often poorly calibrated. A big problem with 3D films in general... is the gimmick over substance issue where the films have no plot. It's just a lot of cheap tricks with things flying towards the camera. For me, a prime example of this is the 1953 Three Stooges short called Spooks that was in 3D. And it was all these gimmicks of things flying at the screen. Mo doing the eye poke, but it was just fingers coming at you. It was funny as a kid, but when it comes to things like that, it's like you've seen one, you've seen them all. By 1955, 3D had basically disappeared from theaters, with only a few scattered releases in the 60s and 70s that were more as novelties. But you can't keep a good gimmick down. So the early 80s saw a renewed interest in 3D. This was driven by advancements in technology, a growing appetite for genre films. And, of course, the power of nostalgia. Adults saying, remember 3D movies when we were kids? Well, here we go. A big thing that helped the re-emergence of 3D was the development of a single-strip 3D process, so it was one projector rather than two. This made it easier for theaters to show 3D films without technical issues. The resurgence in 3D also coincided with the rise of slasher films and low-budget horror, which were well-suited for that in-your-face nature of 3D effects. When we look back at the early 1980s and the resurgence of 3D films, there are some that were big-budget ones, but might not have been as well-received, I guess, critically. I'll be straight up. My favorite... Friday the 13th movie is part three, which is the 3D version that came out in 1982. It is a whopping 11% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, but I don't care about that. This is the movie where Jason gets his mask. It also has some iconic kills in it, where he shoots the arrow towards the screen that goes into the girl's eye. Or the famous one where the guy's walking on his hands and he looks up and there's Jason to just fillet him with a machete. Those of you that have seen the movie know exactly the scene I'm talking about. And if you haven't seen it, well, maybe go see it, but don't hold me to that as far as being traumatized. Another notable 3D film from the early 80s was Jaws 3D. Again, this had the novelty factor of 3D, so it would get people to go, but man, the 3D graphics were terrible, the shark looked terrible. Ironically, Jaws 3D is also 11% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. This is one of those, if you haven't seen it, maybe watch a little bit of it, like find clips on YouTube, but don't waste an hour and a half watching this junk. Another poorly received 3D movie was Amityville 3D from 1983. This was slightly better at 18% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. Ooh, go see it. It became the last major 3D horror release of the 80s. I don't know if it killed the genre as far as horror 3D goes, but those were a few of the bigger budget 3D films, and you can hear how the reviews went for that. And there were also low-budget films. So you imagine Friday the 13th, Jaws, Amityville, they had money behind them. What about low-budget ones? There were films like Parasite from 1982, which starred a young Demi Moore, but again, poor effects made it a box office failure. Treasure of the Four Crowns from 1983, which was basically an Indiana Jones ripoff that relied heavily on the cheap 3D tricks like objects flying towards the screen. Finally, there was the originator of the return of 3D movies called Comin' At Ya from 1981. It was an Italian-produced spaghetti western marketed as the first new 3D film of the 1980s. This movie's 25% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes and had a budget of $2.5 million and made about double its budget. So it wasn't a failure, but it falls into the same trap with a lot of the 3D movies. Heavy reliance on the gimmick and very thin plot. So it's sort of like you see the first few things flying at the screen and you're like, okay, that was fun. We're done. By 1984, the novelty of 3D had worn off again, so it only took a couple of years. The problems that resurfaced, it was the same stuff. Poor storytelling, technical difficulties, which, while there were single projector systems, it was still poor calibration, darkened images, those dang glasses. Then it came to audience fatigue, because once you find a gimmick that might be popular, you know it gets run into the ground. So if you've gone to the movies to see one 3D film, you probably don't need to go and see the next dozen that come out. An interesting problem with 3D in the 80s kind of goes full circle with the 50s. In the 50s, it was the rise of TV. In the 80s, it was the rise of VHS and home video, which made it easier for people to stay at home and watch movies, but also made it hard for 3D films to translate to television. Even though the 3D craze of the 80s died out pretty early, there were still some movies that came out that had a little bit of 3D in them. In particular, I remember being 13 years old, going to see Freddy's Dead The Final Nightmare in 1991. That had a 3D scene near the end, so the main character, she puts on her 3D glasses, and that's supposed to be the cue for us in the audience to put ours on too. And it was good. I liked the movie. It didn't get great reviews, but I was 13, so I don't care what critics thought. I think it was more palatable because it was only the last 15 minutes of the film that was 3D instead of the full hour and a half. Looking back now, 40 years after the 3D boom went bust in the 1980s, there was still a lasting cultural impact. Love Em or Hate Em, Friday the 13th Part 3, Jaws 3D, Amityville 3D. They have their audiences. I said I love Friday the 13th Part 3. But you can't keep a good 3D down, and it started making a comeback in the early 2000s with the rise of digital projection, culminating with the massive success of James Cameron's Avatar in 2009. So when we who were alive at the time look back, the 1980s, if we're being honest, probably didn't produce a lot of cinematic masterpieces, but it was an important chapter in the ongoing experiment to make movies more immersive. Those of you out there, do you remember going to see movies in 3D in the early 80s? Or are there 3D films in the time since that I forgot? Like I said, Freddy's Dead was 1991. But I figure with the cyclical nature of nostalgia, probably sometime in the 2040s, 3D will come back around. We'll have those foolish glasses again. This week in history, we are going back 110 years ago to March 27th, 1915 and the quarantine of the infamous typhoid Mary. This is an interesting story of a life of isolation and controversy. In the early 20th century, a woman named Mary Mallon became infamous as the first identified asymptomatic carrier of typhoid fever in the United States. Mary Mallon was born September 23rd, 1869 in Cookstown in Ireland. Like many Irish citizens at the time, she immigrated to the United States in search of better opportunities, arriving in 1883 when she was about 14 years old. But this segment is not so much about Mary Mallon's life before. It's about how she became a carrier of typhoid. Typhoid fever is caused by the bacterium Salmonella typhi, which spreads through contaminated food and water, primarily thriving in poor sanitary conditions, It causes high fever, weakness, stomach pain, constipation or diarrhea, and a rash in some cases. At the time, there was limited understanding of the transmission of typhoid. Mary Mallon, she was a unique case because she was a healthy carrier of typhoid fever. She was someone who harbored the bacteria but showed no symptoms. It's believed that she contracted the disease in her early childhood in Ireland, where poor sanitation and contaminated water were common. The bacteria likely settled in her gallbladder, allowing her to shed the pathogen through her stool without feeling sick herself. In the United States, Mary Mallon became a cook, so with that her job involved handling food, which made her an ideal vector for transmitting the disease. This meant that when she failed to properly wash her hands or use contaminated utensils, typhoid bacteria was transferred to the food she prepared. Mary's connection to the outbreaks of typhoid fever began to unravel in 1906 when wealthy banker Charles Warren's family rented a summer home in Oyster Bay, Long Island. Over the summer, six of the 11 people in the household caught typhoid fever. Warren's landlord, then hired George Soper to investigate, and his research eventually led him to Mary Mallon. In 1907, she was quarantined for the first time, confined to Riverside Hospital on North Brother Island, a small island in the East River in New York. She was held there for three years before being released in 1910 after agreeing not to work as a cook. After several years of hardship, she changed her name to Mary Brown and quietly returned to cooking despite public health risk. In 1915, a major typhoid outbreak occurred at Sloan Maternity Hospital in Manhattan, infecting 25 people, resulting in two deaths, and again investigations led to Mary Mallon using the alias Mary Brown. She was arrested and sent back to North Brother Island where she remained for the rest of her life. 23 years in quarantine. She lived in a small cottage provided by the health department and reportedly lived a quiet life with a little bit of freedom on the confines of the hospital grounds. To her death, Mary Mallon insisted she was not responsible for spreading typhoid and believed that she had been unfairly persecuted. Upon her death on November 11th, 1938 at the age of 69, an autopsy was performed on Mary Mallon, confirming that her gallbladder did in fact still harbor live Salmonella typhi bacteria. And Mary Mallon, aka Typhoid Mary, was quarantined for the second time for the rest of her natural life 110 years ago this week in history. Oh, the only thing contagious is this funky beat for the new time capsule. This week we're going back 27 years ago to March 27th, 1998. What was going on in the world of pop culture back then? Well, let's find out. The number one song was Gettin' Jiggy With It by Will Smith. This was off of his album Big Willie Style. It spent three weeks at number one and won a Grammy for Best Rap Solo Performance. This was Will Smith's return to music after getting really deep into acting and his first album shedding the Fresh Prince nickname, although he did collaborate with DJ Jazzy Jeff on a few songs on Big Willie style. The number one movie was Titanic. And you could get into the theater with a ticket costing $4.59. One of the highest grossing movies of all time. One of the most decorated, critically acclaimed. A romantic adventure historical film starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet as star-crossed lovers on the ill-fated Titanic ship. The effects in this movie are incredible. The shipwreck scenes. The movie is 3 hours and 15 minutes long, so if you've never seen it, just be prepared for that. The film had a budget of $200 million and has raked in more than $2.3 billion. So you spend money to make money. The number one TV show was the 70th Annual Academy Awards. Big winners included Jack Nicholson for Best Actor, Robin Williams Best Supporting Actor, Helen Hunt as Best Actress, Kim Basinger as Best Supporting Actress, and the aforementioned Titanic as Best Picture. And if you were around back then, March 27th, 1998, maybe you're looking for a fun new technological innovation to waste money on, well, I got something for you. Did you know there was a special camera for Game Boy? Oh yes, there was at Toys R Us. It looks like a very primitive webcam that you could link to your Game Boy. You could shoot photos, save up to 30 of them, even edit them on your Game Boy. Oh, but this comes with a catch if you didn't know. The Game Boy itself is $49.99. The Game Boy camera itself is also $49.99. And if you wanted to print out any of the photos you took with your Game Boy, that would cost you $59.99. with special Game Boy printer paper costing $9.99. That brings the total to $169.96, or about $331 when adjusted for inflation to 2025. So how badly do you want to be able to take pictures with your Game Boy? That wraps up another Time Capsule, another This Week in History. Now let's jump into a brand new top five and look at some of the best made-for-TV movies ever, starting now. This segment was a lot of research. When it came to made-for-TV movies, I really didn't know where to start besides just looking up every one that's ever been made. I don't think the made-for-TV movie is as big of a thing now in the 2020s. I don't even think it's been a big thing in the 21st century. I think the made-for-TV movies now are more of the made-for-streaming movies, ones that are exclusive to Netflix or Hulu or something like that. But back in my day, as the old man says, made-for-TV movies were a big deal in the 70s, 80s, even into the 90s. And I figured I would give you all some homework with some made for TV movies that you should go and see. As I was doing my research, there were some made for TV movies I found that ended up being released in theaters afterwards. So I had to do my best to make sure that I stuck to ones that were just made for TV. As with many of these top five lists, there are some honorable mentions and they are in no particular order. I'll do my best to kind of fly through the honorable mentions while giving you a little bit of info. So let's get to sharing, shall we? Honorable mentions for best made-for-TV movies include The Jericho Mile. This movie's from 1979 and is about an inmate at Folsom Prison who discovers that he can run a mile in less than four minutes. Another honorable mention is An American Christmas Carol. This movie is from 1979. It's a loose adaptation of the Charles Dickens Christmas Carol. And it also broke actor Henry Winkler out of his typecasting as the Fonz from Happy Days. Another honorable mention is I Know My First Name is Stephen. This is from 1989. It's technically a two-part miniseries, but come on. It's about a kid who was kidnapped and survived his ordeal for seven years. and is based on a true story. Another honorable mention is Special Bulletin. This is from 1983, with a TV reporter and cameraman being taken hostage by terrorists who are threatening to detonate a nuke off the coast of South Carolina. And the final honorable mention is Helter Skelter. This is also a miniseries. It's from 1976, based on the crimes of Charles Manson and his family. This was one where they showed it in some countries in theaters with additional footage, which included a lot of nudity. But those were the honorable mentions. Do you remember watching any of those films as you were growing up in the 70s, 80s? One thing I'm not sure of, and maybe those of you out there that have more information might know, but do you remember made-for-TV movies getting a lot of reruns? To me, it seems like a made-for-TV movie got released in whatever year, they might show it once or twice, and then that was it. Anyway, let's get into the actual top five best made-for-TV movies, starting with number one, Duel. This movie is from 1971. It is the debut film of Steven Spielberg. It's an action thriller about an electronics salesman driving along a long stretch of kind of rural highway. And this old oil tanker driven by someone that you never see antagonizes him. And it gets more and more dangerous throughout the film. It starred Dennis Weaver as the electronics salesman. It's 89% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. It's amazing to think of Steven Spielberg, the legendary director, that his start was a made-for-TV movie. But if you watch it, you can see some of the Spielberg tendencies in it. It's sort of like the unseen driver of the truck is kind of a stand-in for the shark in Jaws. Number two is It. Yes, granted, I know this is another miniseries, but it was made for TV. It's from 1990. It stars Tim Curry as the evil Pennywise the Clown. A lot of you out there know the It movies that came out in the last 10 years. This, again, it's based on the Stephen King book. It's every bit psychological horror as the movies in theaters. Far less graphic because it was made for TV. You'll find debates online. as which versions of It were scarier, the 1990 version or the 2017 film. Debate is all well and good, but you can like both versions. There's no law that says that. Number three is The Day After. This is from 1983, and it traumatized a whole lot of people. The film is about a nuclear exchange between the U.S. and Soviet Union with the characters being based around small towns in Kansas and Missouri. It stars Steve Guttenberg, Jo Beth Williams, John Lithgow. During its initial broadcast, more than 100 million people in the U.S. watched this movie. And at that time, it was the seventh highest rated non-sports show ever in the country. The movie was highly influential on then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan and his views on nuclear armament, nuclear war. With the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty from 1987 between the U.S. and Russia and Mikhail Gorbachev, Reagan pointing a direct line to the day after movie as influential on it. Number four is The Boy in the Plastic Bubble. This is a romantic drama from 1976 starring John Travolta as the boy in the bubble. It's based on a true story of a boy with severe immune deficiencies who has to live in this germ-free environment. I never saw this movie when it was on TV, but I do remember the Seinfeld episode with the bubble boy who wants to meet Jerry, but instead he gets George and they get in a fight and George pops his bubble. That episode is not the highly emotional drama that the Boy in the Plastic Bubble movie is. And finally, number five on the list of best ever made-for-TV movies is Sybil. This is from 1976. It's a two-part film starring Sally Field as a woman with multiple personalities. The film won four primetime Emmys, including Sally Field Best Actress Award. The movie's based on a book from 1973, which is based on a real person named Sybil Dorsett. My memories of this film don't have to do with the film itself, but the name Sybil. When I was a kid, probably five, six years old, we had a cat named Sybil that was psychotic. Maybe family who's listening can clue me in, but I don't remember how we got Sybil. I just remember being terrified of her, that she was very claw-happy. And being a five, six-year-old kid, you're not that much bigger than a cat. Well, you are, but not compared to when you're fully grown. So a hissing, sharp-clawed, angry cat is not something you like. And I don't know if the cat was named Sybil already, or if because she was psychotic, we named her Sybil. I also don't remember what happened to that cat. I'm assuming if she was clawing up me and my sister that she was brought to the pound. So that's my connection to the made-for-TV movie Sybil is a psychotic cat I had as a child. So there you go. Some of the best made-for-TV movies ever. How many of those did you see, including the honorable mentions? I've seen three of the ten, and it was the first three of the top five. Duel, It, and The Day After. We go from some of the best TV movies to some of the worst TV shows of the 1970s. None of these are recommended for you to watch. All of these TV shows I'm about to talk about should come with a warning label. Please do not watch. This was a fun list to come up with as far as worst TV shows of the 1970s. A lot of these shows had a certain number of episodes they were scheduled for, and most of them did not make it to that number. There's a lot of unaired content in these shows. Way back in episode 89 of the podcast, I did a top five segment on fastest canceled TV shows. Basically shows that were canceled after like one or two episodes. None of these shows in this segment were in that top five, so it's all fresh. But boy, oh boy, I found 10 TV shows that aren't even good enough to be found in the bargain bin in some gas station in the middle of nowhere. So let's let the laughs begin. The first show is called A.E.S. Hudson Street. This is a sitcom from 1978 sitcom, meaning it's supposed to be funny. It was on from March to April of 1978, five whole episodes. It follows the antics of the staff at a rundown ambulance emergency service hospital on Hudson Street in Manhattan. In a bad harbinger of things to come for this show, the pilot aired in July 1977, and it starred F. Murray Abraham, who's an Academy Award-winning actor, And when it came time to film the actual show, he wasn't there anymore. It's like he knew it was going to be a bomb and he said, nah, I don't want to be involved in that junk. So it was canceled after five episodes. And then, as if people didn't learn, in 1991, they made a remake of this show just called Stat. It lasted longer, but it was six episodes instead of five. I wonder if we're due for another remake of AES Hudson Street or STAT. They'll just call it Cancel After Five Episodes. The next on this list of worst TV shows of the 70s is called Assignment Vienna. Assignment Vienna. This is a drama series from 1972. This starred Robert Conrad as Jake Webster as the man undercover tracking spies in Vienna. This show lasted a whopping eight episodes, and probably its biggest claim to fame besides being terrible and canceled after eight episodes is that it had Leslie Nielsen as a guest star in one episode. When trying to research this show, there's very little detail for any of these eight episodes. Although I was able to find that Paul Stanley directed one of the episodes, but then I found it was not the singer from Kiss. Anyway, we move on from a drama fail to one that I had to laugh at because all of the info I could find about it was just how terrible it was. It's a show called Big Seamus Little Seamus.

Speaker 03:

It's

Speaker 04:

a detective drama that lasted two whole episodes in 1979. It starred Brian Dennehy, as in the dad from Tommy Boy. So Brian Dennehy is Arnie Sutter, a house detective at the Ansonia Hotel in Atlantic City. And he and his 13-year-old son, Max, solve crimes based around gambling. Two whole episodes and it got canceled. I'm researching. I can't figure out why the hell it was called Big Seamus, Little Seamus. It must be the nicknames of the dad and kid, I guess. This plot of this show again brings me back to the South Park episode where they make fun of Family Guy, saying that it's just manatees taking random balls and putting them in order to create these random plots. I'm pretty sure that the people that pitched all of these shows were really enthused by them. Man, can you imagine Big Seamus, Little Seamus, and they're all excited and it's canceled after two episodes? The next failure of the 70s was a show called Blanksy's Beauties. This is a sitcom from 1977, and it's actually a spinoff of Happy Days. It starred Nancy Walker as Nancy Blansky. Howard Cunningham from Happy Days, his cousin. Nancy Walker is a Vegas showbiz vet that is running a house full of Vegas showgirls. Despite being a Happy Days spinoff and created by Gary Marshall, it was a bomb that only lasted 13 episodes from February through June of 1977. The show tried to be a crossover with Happy Days, including characters Scott Baio and Pat Morita being on it, but they didn't get any of the main stars, so I think that's partially why it failed. Speaking of famous shows with crossovers that failed in the 70s, what about the Brady Bunch Variety Hour? 🎵

Speaker 01:

The Brady Bunch Hour.

Speaker 04:

Starring Florence Henderson and Robert Reed. The premise of this show is the Brady Bunch family is chosen to have a variety show. So it's supposed to be almost like reality TV, except they're all characters. The show lasted one season and nine episodes between 1976 and 77, and they did, you know, songs and skits. But the show's probably most well-known for the fake Jan. Actress Eve Plum did not return to be Jan Brady, so they had a fake one. This was made fun of on The Simpsons when The Simpsons had a variety show and Lisa was not part of it, so they had fake Lisa. For as popular of a show as The Brady Bunch was, it's kind of surprising that this didn't last longer. I don't know if people were confused, thinking it was going to be another type of sitcom and not a variety show with songs. It's almost like they should have just had the actors just be themselves. The next failed 70s TV show is one called In the Beginning.

Speaker 02:

This

Speaker 04:

was a sitcom created by Norman Lear who made All in the Family. It came out in 1978 and details the relationship between a stuffy priest and a liberal that run a Baltimore mission. Nine episodes were filmed of this show. It was canceled after five, and no one knows where the other four went. It's sort of like Blanksy's Beauties, where a famed director like Gary Marshall, who did Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley, has a bomb. This one, it's Norman Lear, all in the family, the Jeffersons, Maude. But I guess he couldn't make a stuffy priest funny. I guess the show tried to touch on some of the taboo subjects of the 70s, much like All in the Family did, but it just didn't resonate with people. It must stink to be told, yeah, we're going to film nine episodes, and then after five, they're like, yeah, we hate you. Because you never know. Episode seven or eight of In the Beginning could have been the one that broke them through, but we'll never know now. Next up is a show called Gemini Man. Did any of you watch Gemini Man? This has nothing to do with astrology. It's a drama show from 1976, and it had a leg up. It's based on a legendary book by H.G. Wells. It's about a man who's a secret agent, and he has a watch that can make him invisible, but if he stays invisible for more than 15 minutes, he remains invisible forever. The two-hour pilot aired in May 1976, with the show kicking off proper that September. There were 11 total episodes, but the show was canceled in the U.S. after five. Low ratings and high costs for the show were the main reasons. Interestingly, despite the show bombing in the U.S., all 11 episodes aired over in England and it was somewhat greater success, including a record album and a hardcover book based on the show. So Gemini Man in England is kind of like David Hasselhoff's popularity in Germany. Hey, you never know where you're popular. I know with this podcast, second to the U.S. in popularity for the show is Singapore. I never would have guessed that. We move on, though, to another spinoff fail of the 70s. That is Grady.

Speaker 03:

You

Speaker 04:

know who Grady was? He was Fred Sanford's friend on Sanford and Son. If you've never heard of Grady from that show, there's a reason why this show failed. You take like the fourth or fifth most popular side character on a show and try to create something based on them. It's usually not going to work. I think Frasier is kind of the exception to the rule where you had Frasier Crane on Cheers who was down the list of popular characters, but somehow he worked and his show became almost as popular as Cheers was. Not so with Grady. So Grady, the character, leaves Sanford and Son in 1975 to move in with his daughter and the show lasts 10 episodes and Grady was soon back on Sanford and Son. It's almost like the Cleveland show with Family Guy where Cleveland left for his own show and then that show didn't make it. It lasted four seasons, I think, but he still ended up back on Family Guy. So Grady failed because nobody cared about him having his own show. This next show failed because of the huge, huge costs of it. And that was Super Train. Super Train. This was a sci-fi action series about the story of passengers on a nuclear-powered high-speed train. The show was on for nine episodes in 1979. Like I said, it's the production costs. In 1979, NBC paid $10 million for three trains to be made. That translates to nearly $44 million when adjusted for inflation to 2025. So that's already putting them behind the eight ball with this show. It would have had to have been the biggest rating success possible to mitigate those costs. It was ranked one of the worst shows of all time by TV Guide. And even when the show was out, the reviews were predicting it to be canceled within 13 weeks. And it did. It was canceled within nine. I think I saved the best for last here, though. This is one of those the definition of lost media. The last show is called McGurk, A Dog's Life.

Speaker 00:

I woke up this morning. I guess it was the usual time. I don't know for sure. I can't tell time. I'm a dog.

Speaker 01:

In a dog's life, actors in dog suits barked one-liners at each other, and commented on society, relationships, and politics from a canine perspective.

Speaker 04:

This show is from 1979. It stars Barney Martin, who was Jerry's dad on Seinfeld. And he's a anthropomorphic dog, or more specifically, a human in a dog costume. And it's the life of this dog. This show was only a half-hour pilot, aired on June 15th, 1979. It was shown once and then never seen again. The idea was from Norman Lear, again, All in the Family. His idea was to tackle some of these controversial issues like on All in the Family, but from a dog's point of view. This show failed so badly that it was Norman Lear's last ever TV concept. So McGurk, A Dog's Life, killed the TV career of Norman Lear. You can find very poor quality clips, but the full pilot episode is nowhere to be found. It's probably burned and thrown in the trash right after it aired. So there you go. Some of the worst TV show fails of the 1970s. Were any of these on your list? Did you watch them? Or any of these, I name them and make fun of them, and you're saying, wait, I liked Big Seamus, Little Seamus, or Grady. Or did you see McGurk, A Dog's Life? That seems to have aired once and just vanished forever with good reason. In the future, I'll definitely do other TV show fails from different decades, so don't worry, I'm not picking on the 70s. But until next week, that's going to wrap up episode 188 of the In My Footsteps podcast. Thank you all so much for tuning in, hopefully for making it to the end. I hope I have given you your full dose of nostalgia you need for the week. I always find fun things to talk about from the good old days past. Next week on episode 189, I am bringing back Blink and You'll Miss It Retro. This will be the fourth one. We're going to look at some household items that came and went in a flash. I'm also going to have a special this week in history as we look at one of the cruel April Fool's jokes from New England. I do not want to spoil it. You can do your own research if you can't wait till next week. If you enjoy my work, my content, you can become a subscriber on Patreon for $5 a month. It gets you access to the bonus monthly podcast episodes. Now the remastered without a map live streams. And I'm always looking for new content to put up there for my paying customers. If becoming a member isn't feasible right now, you can always check out the free content. There's an ever-growing free tier for those of you to try before you buy. Or of course, you could buy me a coffee. All the links are in the description of the podcast, including a lot of links to my other content, YouTube channel, the Initial Impressions 2.0 blog. some of my books. You can visit my homepage, ChristopherSetterlin.com, links to all nine of my books. Hopefully within the next month or so, the In My Footsteps podcast website will be up. Right now, it's a lot of finishing up details, getting every link I've ever shared up there so you can check them out, getting all of the cover art for every episode up there, I am by no means a web designer. I am by no means a graphic designer. So for me, trying to do it on my own takes a lot more time because I'm trying to do it right. I don't want my website to be out there looking like a five-year-old's crayon drawings where you're like, boy, I feel so bad for him. He tried. Happy birthdays this week to my cousin Ryan and my uncle Frank. I hope all of you out there are enjoying the first full week of spring. I hope the weather where you are is better than on Cape Cod. The first month of spring for us here is really what I say. I'm not joking when I say it's 45, cloudy, foggy, drizzly. And then it's like late April. Suddenly someone remembers it's spring. And then it's upper 50s, 60, sunny. Me, I'm an outdoor cat. I love being outside in nature. I do lots of podcast walks, which is why I recommend it to you listening. Take the podcast outside. I keep them just under an hour, which is perfect for a walk. But however you listen to the podcast, wherever you listen to it, it's all good as long as you listen and enjoy, and I'll keep pumping out the content. I will keep you posted in the coming weeks and months as to where you can find my film debut. It will be streaming. I don't know about anything in theaters as far as local showings go and such, but I do know you will be able to see it and you will hear about it from me. And who knows? Maybe you'll hear about more acting gigs besides me acting like a fool. Actual real ones. So let's wrap this show up So we can all get outside and enjoy that weather. Remember, in this life, don't walk in anyone else's footsteps. Create your own path and enjoy every moment you can on this journey we call life. Because you never know what tomorrow brings. This has been the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund. You already knew that. And I'll talk to you all again soon.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Christopher Setterlund

Host