Redartz: Hello everyone, ready for another exercise in friendly group debate? Well, Tuesday means it's time to "follow the leader", so momentarily I will step aside and allow you to set the stage.
But first, here's another extra conversation starter. This past few weeks my wife and I have been part of the vast multitude tuning in to the final episodes of "Game of Thrones". In this current world of countless entertainment choices, a 'big event' that attracts a majority of followers is a rare thing. Back in our Bronze age, with only a few television choices, limited access to alternatives made for frequent 'water cooler' experiences shared by almost everyone. These 'big events' served to unite people otherwise divided by such barriers as politics and religion . And they serve as touchstones, years later, for those of the participating generations. Soooo, what are some of the 'big events' that you remember witnessing? Are they doomed to disappear from popular culture? Share your thoughts on shared pop culture; and with your impending topic , we'll enjoy another 'twofer'...
18 comments:
Hope I'm not stepping on anyone's toes or breaking with some kind of protocol, but I actually like your topic Red - and second it. Let's talk about those shared cultural experiences of yore.
Here's one I think many of recall: the last episode of M*A*S*H. It seemed like everyone watched it, everyone was talking about it the next day, and everyone seemed very sad about the whole thing. I remember in the bus on the way to school the next day, one kid sitting in the back seat was plaintively whistling the theme song, which eventually led to a girl angrily telling him to knock it off, because she was depressed enough as it is.
I assumed today's topic would be the AVENGERS: ENDGAME movie...never assume anything!
Red, your mention of "big events" made me think of M*A*S*H just like Edo - but not quite like Edo. I remember watching the BBC news back in 1983 which featured a report on the final episode of M*A*S*H and they said that 80 million Americans had watched the final episode.
Interesting fact: "THEME FROM M*A*S*H (SUICIDE IS PAINLESS)" was No.1 in the UK singles chart for 3 weeks in 1980.
I've never seen GAME OF THRONES but I did recently download the second (and final) season of a BBC comedy called FLEABAG which has been getting huge amounts of attention and praise. I rarely watch TV nowadays but I felt I had to watch this series just to see what all the fuss was about :D
I think the last MASH episode is the best example I'd be able to come up with.
On a smaller scale, Twin Peaks made a big splash, particularly the first season. The season 2 premiere got a lot of excitement, but then interest quickly died off. The second season reveal of who killed Laura Palmer was an exciting moment for me and my friends but I think by then it had lost its moment in the sun for the wider audience (although apparently a lot of people had technical difficulties viewing the reveal episode, and it caused a bit of outrage).
Other events popping to mind are the Roots miniseries, although I was so young I remember watching it more than I remember the ripples it was having in the culture.
And in the opposite vein, no one in my family watched the nuclear war tv movie, The Day After, but it seemed like it was getting a lot of news coverage and a few kids at school were talking about it.
Oh yeah! Also the 'V' miniseries, a nice cheesy 80s touchstone. A lot of people were talking about that, mostly the goofy effect of showing that newborn baby with a fork tongue.
-david p.
I'd rather hold off on the Endgame discussion until I actually see it...
David P., re: Roots. Yeah, that was a big deal; I think my older sister and brother even had to watch it for school - I was only 8 at the time, and only watched bits of it before being sent to bed by my parents. Even so, I remember how names liked Kunta Kinte and Chicken George almost became household words for a time.
And yeah, The Day After was another big event. I did watch it, and remember the next day in school one of my teachers jokingly commenting that the panel discussion about the show aired right afterward (which included Carl Sagan and Henry Kissinger) actually scared him more than the actual movie.
On the subject of ROOTS: just last Saturday I was listening to a documentary on the radio about how ROOTS and HOLOCAUST had affected black and Jewish people in Britain back in the late '70s.
I remember THE DAY AFTER too but in the UK we had our own nuclear war drama called THREADS, broadcast in 1984. It was extremely grim, as I recall, with no optimistic ending.
KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park.
Nuff said,
Doug
Yep, ROOTS, HOLOCAUST, and THE DAY AFTER are three of the big ones that sprung to mind for me as well. A televised news event that topped them all, though, would have to be Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon. (Which was a long-after-bedtime event for me-- so being awakened and taken downstairs to see it made it even more memorable---).
But news-events- with the where-were-you-when? aspect-- might be a discussion for another time, perhaps?
Haven't watched a second of GoT meself, either-- but man,it is a dominant topic among my several friend circles. I think it's kinda remarkable in this era of splintered viewing options and a VAST abundance of available content, that one show could still draw such a vast body of viewers, y'know?
HB
@Colin Jones, HOLOCAUST was actually a very big deal for us in Germany. It aired march 1979, I was 14 years old and the whole family was watching it. My parents grew up under the NAZI regime, born 1924 and 1926. It helped us to talk about that time period and started an open discussion in German society about that period. It acutally influenced Germany's policies, as it was referenced in a parlament discussion about abolishing the limitation period for murder.
... and of course I am watching Game of Thrones now :)
Great points all. I remember that the end of that M.A.S.H. episode had been leaked to the Enquirer(?) before the show aired so it was a bit anti-climactic. But I also remember the episode which occurred a bit earlier where Hawkeye called an ROK officer a "Son of a bitch," which was the first time, I believe, that such language had ever aired on a big three channel. Quite the uproar!
Twin Peaks was also quite the phenomenon among the few who really loved it. I remember watching it in the dark with some of my fraternity brothers, and particularly the scene when Audrey twisted the cherry stalk into a knot with her tongue. The whole room went wild, screaming "Marry her!"
The Day After was also really big, but I think that Threads had a big reveal at the end with a horrifying childbirth. I never saw that, but years later I had a bartender working his way through college to a degree in nuclear physics to explain to me why everyone in the show gets sick in their stomachs and their hair falls out from radiation (spoiler: the cells of the gut and which produce hair grow at a fast rate and are most vulnerable to radiation).
And I just re-watched both Roots and the sequel a few months ago. Striking how it stands the test of time.
Great topic!
Edo- thanks for your support! I didn't intend to totally set the stage today, but everyone's comments are great!
Regarding "The Day After"- I was working as a delivery driver when that aired. I remember all that next morning, on the highway between Indianapolis and Cincinnati, nervously watching the horizon for a mushroom cloud.
Another event, less major than what you've all mentioned so far: the last episode of " Mary Tyler Moore". Still smile with melancholy recalling the cast's group hug as they left.
HB- love your "news event" idea. Look for that discussion soon!
Yeah, last episode of MASH was the first thing that came to my mind; I don't remember watching Roots but I'm sure my parents watched it, along with a lot of the other famous mini-series of the time (Thorn Birds, Shogun, Holocaust, etc.); I did see the Day After ... scared the hell out of me.
For the younger generation the last episode of Seinfeld was pretty hyped at the time; I'm not sure if it was quite as big a deal as MASH, but it was along similar lines.
I've read all the Song of Ice and Fire books, but after watching the first season of the show, I'm not really itching to see any more.
Oh- one last thought on this topic: Who Shot J.R.--? Sure, a lot more trite, but I feel like it rather captivated a large segment of TV-watching folks at the time.
And I suppose the grand-daddy of all of these glued-to-the-set events would've been just a smidge before most of our memory-walls: The Beatles first appearance on the Ed Sullivan show-- yeah? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah?? (Hahahahahaaa!)
HB
Who shot JR was a big one.
Travis Morgan
I agree with all the epic shows and mini-series' everyone has brought up.
On the lighter side, I recall all my friends and myself hyped for the Six Million Dollar Man episodes where he meets Bigfoot, and the ones with the Venus Death Probe.
Also the Incredible Hulk pilot. We tore that apart for weeks!
In the summer of 1980, it seemed as if everybody and his brother was talking about Who Shot J.R.
On a talk show, Alan King grumbled that there was more publicity about who shot J.R. than about who shot Vernon Jordan.
I remember the hype about the series finales of M*A*S*H and Seinfeld, but I don't recall my acquaintances really constantly harping on it.
The final episode of The Fugitive in the mid-1960s was huge at the time. Series finales are common now, but were rare back then.
TC-- wow, I just looked up THE FUGITIVE. Granted, there were LOTS less televisions/viewers in '67, but still-- it was aired in a very atypical late-summer slot (when viewership was historically low), and an astonishing 72% of homes with televisions were tuned in to it! That's more than the Beatles appearance on the Sullivan show, in fact-- hoo! It also means that tons of folks who never watched the series itself still tuned in for the final episode.
A couple of sources cite this as being the first time a series actually had a for-sure finale-- but I'm not sure that's accurate. (LEAVE IT TO BEAVER wrapped up with a so-long trip down memory lane, IIRC--)
It certainly did live on for decades as a reference point for us Boomers, though, didn't it?
HB
Who Shot JR was huge here too. I was totally uninterested in the first two seasons of DALLAS when they were originally broadcast but over the summer of 1980 the BBC repeated those two seasons, one episode every day, culminating in the shooting of JR. I started watching the re-runs and soon became completely hooked!! The build-up to the revelation even featured on the BBC's nightly news - but they probably had an ulterior motive...it was the BBC who broadcast DALLAS, not their commercial rival ITV :D
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