Speaker 1: You know, I've spent many hours with children who've gotten
Speaker 1: involved with drugs. They start your age even younger.
Speaker 2: In March of nineteen eighty three, at the behest of
Speaker 2: a sixth grader named Arnold Jackson, First Lady Nancy Reagan
Speaker 2: visited a classroom at New York City's PS four h
Speaker 2: six to talk about drugs.
Speaker 1: And they're all tragic stories of kids with great potential
Speaker 1: whose lives were ruined.
Speaker 2: But this New York City classroom was actually on a
Speaker 2: Los Angeles soundstage, and Arnold Jackson was a character played
Speaker 2: by actor Gary Coleman.
Speaker 3: Who children about Missus Rady's.
Speaker 1: Well, I happened to be here in New York and
Speaker 1: I saw that story about you in the paper, Arnold.
Speaker 1: You know I'm very concerned about drug abuse, especially among
Speaker 1: the young.
Speaker 2: Missus Reagan was taping an episode of the popular NBC
Speaker 2: sitcom Different Strokes to promote her Just Say No anti
Speaker 2: drug campaign.
Speaker 4: In the plot the series, regular Arnold actor Gary Coleman
Speaker 4: gets some help from Missus Reagan in his own effort
Speaker 4: to curb drug abuse among students.
Speaker 2: Do you remember when the Nancy Reagan Different Strokes episode aired?
Speaker 5: Yes, absolutely, because it was a big deal.
Speaker 6: I mean, it was definitely like, this is something that
Speaker 6: we have to talk about.
Speaker 2: This is Jessica Shawl. She hosts the pop Culture Spotlight
Speaker 2: on Serious Exam Radio, and it's written about television for decades.
Speaker 5: I mean, I'm gen X.
Speaker 6: The fact that my parents even knew I existed was
Speaker 6: like a minor miracle, you know. So the fact that
Speaker 6: adults were going on our shows, they weren't going on
Speaker 6: the news, they were going on our shows to reach
Speaker 6: us felt different and kind of.
Speaker 2: Special, very special. Over thirty two million people watched The
Speaker 2: First Lady that night. Do you remember what your reaction
Speaker 2: to it was.
Speaker 6: I'm sure that I took it kind of earnestly as
Speaker 6: a child, because we weren't cynical like children are now.
Speaker 6: Let's say, in like the twenty twenties. I think in
Speaker 6: the eighties there was a little bit more of like, oh,
Speaker 6: I need to listen to the First Lady and what
Speaker 6: she has to say.
Speaker 2: This is Reagan.
Speaker 3: I guess there's something I should say. I've tried drugs
Speaker 3: a few times.
Speaker 5: Thank you.
Speaker 1: That took as much courage as it did for Arnold
Speaker 1: to write a story.
Speaker 2: This feels like the prototypical very special episode.
Speaker 5: Yes, I mean absolutely.
Speaker 2: The very special episode a mainstay of nineteen eighties and
Speaker 2: early nineteen nineties television. It often came with a warning
Speaker 2: to parents that the ordinarily hermetically sealed off world of
Speaker 2: your favorite family friendly series was about to get injected
Speaker 2: with a dose of the real world. Tuesday, Very Special.
Speaker 7: Fullhouse, We're starting a special two part show on a
Speaker 7: very sensitive and important subject.
Speaker 2: You figured we'd talk to.
Speaker 8: You kids and your parents two about smits kind of
Speaker 8: hard to talk about.
Speaker 2: The laughs would still be there, just more muted. It
Speaker 2: could get awkward.
Speaker 5: Well, I get eight present that I'm doing pretty good.
Speaker 2: This was the sitcom itself in an in between state,
Speaker 2: experiencing its own well growing pains.
Speaker 5: What happened to his second chance?
Speaker 2: But never fear. The main characters would remain safe and unchanged,
Speaker 2: and in the end, all would be back to normal.
Speaker 2: It just might take more than one episode.
Speaker 6: The resolution is a big part of it, and it
Speaker 6: might not be resolved in twenty two minutes because it's
Speaker 6: a big issue. It's a big issue, so it might
Speaker 6: take two whole episodes, which is really enough to unpack.
Speaker 6: Let's see AIDS molestation drug use, drug use.
Speaker 2: They made headlines and big ratings until they were no
Speaker 2: longer special, just cliched. And then the very special episode
Speaker 2: was dropped from the schedule. I mean, who needs lessons
Speaker 2: when you have Seinfeld.
Speaker 6: And just saying basically, there are going to be no
Speaker 6: very special episodes. That is the very thing that we
Speaker 6: will never do. I mean, what was the quote, no
Speaker 6: hugging nor.
Speaker 2: Learning, No hugging nor learning from CBS Sunday Morning and
Speaker 2: iHeart I'm Morocca and this is a very special episode
Speaker 2: of mobituaries. This moment, the death of the very special episode.
Speaker 2: Can you speculate on what was the very first very
Speaker 2: special episode? I would speculate that it is a Norman
Speaker 2: Lear show. That's Jessica Shaw again. I also would have
Speaker 2: guessed that the very special episode began with the late
Speaker 2: Norman Lear. But we found something even earlier than the
Speaker 2: Norman Lear era. It is the February thirteenth, nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: season three episode of Leave It to Beaver, Yes, Leave
Speaker 2: It to Beaver, and the episode was described as follows. Andy,
Speaker 2: a neighborhood drunk, is hired to paint the house and
Speaker 2: Beaver unwittingly gives him some brandy, which you know I
Speaker 2: had to say at the time must have been like,
Speaker 2: WHOA what is this?
Speaker 9: Let me ask you something. Beaver is your father? Would
Speaker 9: he have a little bit of whiskey?
Speaker 2: Hero? I'd never seen this before.
Speaker 5: First of all, A plus research.
Speaker 2: And it's it's so kind of surprising to see Jerry
Speaker 2: Mathers as the Beaver or kind of interacting with this
Speaker 2: alcoholic house painter.
Speaker 10: Once Michael Billy set my father bottle, it was all
Speaker 10: that buttonhead brandiant.
Speaker 9: Well, that's about what I'm talking about Beaver.
Speaker 2: Of course, Beaver's parents find out and reprimand him, But
Speaker 2: big brother Wally makes the point that Beaver didn't know
Speaker 2: Andy had a problem. After all, Ward and June Cleaver
Speaker 2: hadn't told the boys.
Speaker 7: You and Mom shouldn't be scared to tell us things.
Speaker 7: Somebody's got to tell a guy about all the bad.
Speaker 2: Junk in the world. He's somehow like the writer's kind
Speaker 2: of saying, please, please, let us tell stories that have
Speaker 2: a little bit more grit, that are a little bit
Speaker 2: more complex.
Speaker 6: It also feels like the entire premise of a very
Speaker 6: special episode is built on that one line.
Speaker 2: Yes, as Wally Cleaver put it. Somebody's got to tell
Speaker 2: a guy about all the bad junk in the world.
Speaker 2: Ten years later, another family sitcom dared to do just that.
Speaker 10: Bhy This is Elizabeth Montgomery Welcome to be Witch Next
Speaker 10: on ABC. Tonight's show was created in the true spirit
Speaker 10: of Christmas.
Speaker 2: On Christmas Eve nineteen seventy, with silent night playing underneath.
Speaker 2: Elizabeth Montgomery, who played good Witch Samantha Stevens on Bewitched,
Speaker 2: spoke directly to viewers ahead of an episode entitled Sisters
Speaker 2: at Heart.
Speaker 10: My friends at Oscar Meyern Company, and I feel it
Speaker 10: is a very special Bewitched, conceived in the image of
Speaker 10: innocence and filled with truth.
Speaker 2: That's right. She even called the episode very special. That's
Speaker 2: because the usual bad things that happened on Bewitched involved
Speaker 2: spells gone awry, but in this instance, magic was used
Speaker 2: to shine a light on racism.
Speaker 3: You've grown the part he said that we shall be colors,
Speaker 3: so we couldn't be sisters.
Speaker 2: She's a big jump. That's daughter Tabitha, who is white
Speaker 2: and also a witch. Her new friend, Lisa is black.
Speaker 2: Tabitha ends up using witchcraft so she and Lisa can
Speaker 2: look more alike. She first turns Lisa white, then turns
Speaker 2: herself black, then turns the both of them polka dot. Additionally,
Speaker 2: Samantha puts a spell on her husband's racist client. He
Speaker 2: starts to see everyone, including himself, as black, and by
Speaker 2: the end of the episode, he's learned his lesson. I
Speaker 2: discovered something about myself. I found out I'm a racist.
Speaker 2: A racist.
Speaker 11: Oh not the obvious, out in the open type of racist.
Speaker 4: Not me.
Speaker 11: No, I was a sneaky racist. I was so sneaky
Speaker 11: I didn't even know it myself.
Speaker 2: Quick side note this episode was co written by a
Speaker 2: classroom of black students at Jefferson High School in Los Angeles,
Speaker 2: making it even more special. But the Beaver and Bewitched
Speaker 2: episodes were very much exceptions to the rule. The sitcoms
Speaker 2: of the nineteen sixties were happily stuck in their own
Speaker 2: fantasy world, completely divorced from the reality of the times.
Speaker 2: Did divorce even come up? In our season two episode
Speaker 2: on Television's Rural Purge, we talked about the country themed
Speaker 2: shows that dominated the airwaves that decade, especially at CBS
Speaker 2: on the Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres. There were no
Speaker 2: anti war protests, no racism, since there were rarely black
Speaker 2: characters or political assassinations. And how's this for a metaphor.
Speaker 2: Petticoat Junction was a show centered around the spur of
Speaker 2: a railroad that basically went nowhere.
Speaker 9: Come ride the little train that is rolling down the
Speaker 9: tracks to the junk show.
Speaker 6: Yeah, where's Norman? Lare was like, Oh, we're going somewhere right.
Speaker 2: Right, This train is actually going to a real place.
Speaker 2: My name is Norman Lear.
Speaker 4: Norman Lear has changed the face of television. Until nineteen
Speaker 4: seventy one, he was a very successful, if largely unheralded
Speaker 4: producer writer in Hollywood, but then he burst upon the
Speaker 4: public consciousness when he took on bigotry with his All
Speaker 4: in the Family.
Speaker 2: All in the Family starred Carol O'Connor as Archie Bunker,
Speaker 2: a man who longed for yesteryear, pigheaded and yes, bigoted,
Speaker 2: but also surprisingly likable. Every episode was special. The series
Speaker 2: regularly addressed racism, sexism, anti semitism. It featured one of
Speaker 2: the very first gay characters on television, and don't matter
Speaker 2: the topic, Archie Bunker didn't hold back.
Speaker 7: His proud Roger is as queer as a four dollar
Speaker 7: bill and he knows.
Speaker 3: It's not only cruel, Daddy.
Speaker 5: That's an outright line.
Speaker 4: Hello, something, Archie.
Speaker 12: Just because a guy is sensitive and he's an intellectual
Speaker 12: and he wears glasses, you make him out of I.
Speaker 13: Never said a guy who wears glasses as a quia.
Speaker 7: A guy who wears glasses is a four eyes.
Speaker 9: A guy who was a fag is a quia.
Speaker 2: So I have to say, and it might be a
Speaker 2: super unpopular opinion. I'm glad they use that word that
Speaker 2: they use that slur, because that's part of what made
Speaker 2: the show so real.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they didn't shy away from anything.
Speaker 6: Isn't it so interesting that that scene could not air
Speaker 6: in twenty twenty three?
Speaker 2: Right right? The big reveal near the end of that
Speaker 2: episode is that the person Archie thought was gay is
Speaker 2: in fact straight, while a pal he had assumed to
Speaker 2: be straight is actually gay. Huge numbers of people were
Speaker 2: being introduced to things they were not familiar with. Maybe
Speaker 2: they didn't even think they knew a gay person.
Speaker 6: Yeah, absolutely, I imagine that was eye opening to them.
Speaker 2: Another Milestone episode from nineteen seventy seven was about Archie's
Speaker 2: wife Edith, fending off a rapist. It was a two
Speaker 2: parter called Edith's fiftieth birthday, and I remember being talked
Speaker 2: about in hushed tones. I didn't have to be told
Speaker 2: that it wasn't for kids. What are you going to do?
Speaker 2: You ain't taken off?
Speaker 5: You're close, are you? Yeah?
Speaker 9: Then I'm going to take yours off.
Speaker 5: Wouldn't you like a cup of coffeees?
Speaker 2: Norman Lear became the biggest TV producer of the decade,
Speaker 2: helping to create an entire universe of sitcoms and.
Speaker 7: Then there's mod.
Speaker 2: On the most famous episode of Maud, the title character,
Speaker 2: a feminist plate by b Arthur, became unexpectedly pregnant and
Speaker 2: had to decide whether she'd carried the child's term.
Speaker 11: Mother.
Speaker 14: Listen to me, it's a simple operation now, But when
Speaker 14: you were growing up, it was illegal and it was
Speaker 14: dangerous and it was sinister, and you've never gotten over that.
Speaker 5: Now you tell me that's not true.
Speaker 11: It's not true, and you're right, I've never gotten note.
Speaker 2: Maud had the abortion. Lear was also the force behind
Speaker 2: some of the first sitcoms centered around black characters, including
Speaker 2: Good Times.
Speaker 3: You Couldn't help but notice all those bruises on Penny's.
Speaker 2: Back, a nineteen seventy seven episode featured a young Janet
Speaker 2: Jackson playing the victim of child's abuse.
Speaker 5: Oh those pennies at the awkward age. She's always falling down?
Speaker 9: Isn't that true?
Speaker 14: Dear?
Speaker 5: Didn't you fall down?
Speaker 3: Ah? One time I fell out of the tree and
Speaker 3: I landed on my pussy cat and a squished them.
Speaker 11: And Pussycat sure leads a tough life.
Speaker 13: What TV shows are certainly a good way to talk
Speaker 13: about these issues and call people's attention to them in
Speaker 13: a way that they may not be considering it.
Speaker 2: That's Norman lear from a conversation I had with him
Speaker 2: back in twenty fifteen for CBS Sunday Morning.
Speaker 13: Most people in their own emotionally crowded lives hear about
Speaker 13: these things, visit it in a short conversation, but their
Speaker 13: minds are not really there. So I think speaking about
Speaker 13: it in a comedy where they were even getting laughs
Speaker 13: about it can only be a good thing.
Speaker 2: If you control them in with a story. At least
Speaker 2: you can maybe get them to then talk about it at.
Speaker 13: Home in the next conversation they're familiar with it and
Speaker 13: perhaps a little bit more ready to embrace.
Speaker 2: Norman told me that even decades later, he heard from
Speaker 2: viewers about the impact of his shows.
Speaker 13: It's so touching. And we watched it as a family.
Speaker 13: We don't watch anything as a family now, and we
Speaker 13: talked about Archie and we talked about the subject matter.
Speaker 13: And the one thing that I think the show accomplished
Speaker 13: that I can count on because I've heard it through
Speaker 13: all the years, was that there are big words to me.
Speaker 13: We talked to the show and we.
Speaker 6: Talked think about the things that Norman Lear was able
Speaker 6: to get away with, quote unquote, get away with talking about.
Speaker 6: And he was so powerful at that point that I
Speaker 6: have to imagine that there were I mean, there was
Speaker 6: that whole standards and practices department at every network that
Speaker 6: there must have been people who pushed back against certain things,
Speaker 6: lines that he wanted to do, or maybe maybe topics.
Speaker 2: There was indeed pushback to many viewers shows like Norman
Speaker 2: Lear's were too candid. Additionally, there was outrage over the
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy four Linda Blair made for TV movie Born Innocent,
Speaker 2: which included graphic sexual violence and aired at eight PM
Speaker 2: when many children were watching TV. The networks went on defense.
Speaker 15: The period from seven to nine PM is known in
Speaker 15: television as the family viewing period.
Speaker 4: A period during which parents and children are supposed to
Speaker 4: be able to sit together and watch television without being
Speaker 4: made to feel uncomfortable or so the networks to find
Speaker 4: the family owner.
Speaker 2: Which meant that in nineteen seventy five, shows like All
Speaker 2: in the Family, which had been airing at eight pm Eastern,
Speaker 2: had to move to later in the evening. Let's All Sing,
Speaker 2: the nineteen seventy five version of those were the day
Speaker 2: the cast recorded a parody of their opening number, mocking
Speaker 2: the Family Hour concept and celebrating what their later time
Speaker 2: slot would allow them to talk about.
Speaker 9: Seeing Congers.
Speaker 15: Robert Can Propose to Build.
Speaker 2: In court, Lear and other writers and producers challenged the
Speaker 2: Family Hour. The court ruled that the Family Hour concept
Speaker 2: was a violation of the First Amendment, but it also
Speaker 2: said it had no authority to dictate how the network's
Speaker 2: programmed We Can Show.
Speaker 15: My Pregnancy and John Boy Can Have b D.
Speaker 7: Plus a quick ves sent.
Speaker 2: After nine o'clock. The Family Hour wasn't going away anytime soon.
Speaker 2: On the other side of the break the nineteen eighties
Speaker 2: and the heyday of the Very Special Episode.
Speaker 6: It was one of those things like can we just
Speaker 6: farm out parenting to this show. Yes, cool, We're super
Speaker 6: happy with that.
Speaker 7: Hello, I'm Conrad Vain Tonight on Different Strokes, we're starting
Speaker 7: a special two part show on a very sensitive and
Speaker 7: important subject.
Speaker 2: Different Strokes was one of the biggest hit sitcoms of
Speaker 2: the early nineteen eighties, airing at eight pm Eastern on Saturdays,
Speaker 2: prying family time. So in February nineteen eighty three, when
Speaker 2: Conrad Bain, who played the wealthy adoptive father of Arnold
Speaker 2: and Willis Jackson, spoke directly to viewers before the episode,
Speaker 2: you knew it was serious.
Speaker 7: Now we urge families, children and parents alike to watch
Speaker 7: both of these informative episodes and then to discuss the
Speaker 7: problem presented, which is of deep concern to all of us.
Speaker 5: He's saying, this is what we're going to show you. Parents, children,
Speaker 5: sit down and discuss.
Speaker 2: This is how America we do very special episodes. Okay,
Speaker 2: So this episode was about stranger danger and pedophiles. It's
Speaker 2: Arnold and his friend Dudley, and they become friends with
Speaker 2: the owner of a local bicycle shop, mister Wharton.
Speaker 11: You know, guys, you can just have an awful lot
Speaker 11: of fun with your close office.
Speaker 10: Les's of course you live at the North Pole, going
Speaker 10: to freeze your tush off?
Speaker 6: What kind of fun?
Speaker 2: Well, for instance, as Skinny Dippit, mister Hohrton gives the
Speaker 2: kids wine, which is later discovered by Conrad Bain's character.
Speaker 2: Here Arnold explains what happened.
Speaker 3: Well, while I was there with Dudley, he gave us
Speaker 3: some pizza and wine.
Speaker 7: What else went on there?
Speaker 5: He showed us some pictures.
Speaker 3: Everybody was naked naked, and he showed us some kinky cartoons.
Speaker 2: What do you mean by kinky?
Speaker 5: Well, you told.
Speaker 3: Me about the birds and bees, but that's nothing compared
Speaker 3: to what those mice were doing.
Speaker 5: Who was laughing? Who is laughing?
Speaker 7: Here?
Speaker 2: I know? I think part of the awkwardness is that
Speaker 2: Carrie Coleman was such a star and they couldn't resist
Speaker 2: having him show his comedic chops, and here it is jarring.
Speaker 5: I wonder if.
Speaker 6: Maybe it's more jarring, and if they fell more compelled
Speaker 6: to make sure the laughs were there. Because the audience
Speaker 6: of Different Strokes was a younger audience as opposed to
Speaker 6: the leer shows. Those were smart, smart shows, and those
Speaker 6: were smart enough that adults were watching they weren't sort
Speaker 6: of here I'm going to spoonfeed us had come to
Speaker 6: a child.
Speaker 2: That's Jessica Shaw again, and she's right. This was a
Speaker 2: younger audience, and this episode did have an impact. Newspapers
Speaker 2: reported the arrest of at least one suspected child molester
Speaker 2: in Indiana after a young boy recognized and reported predatory
Speaker 2: behavior in an adult. Now it's important to note that
Speaker 2: the term very special episode was never actually used by programmers.
Speaker 2: It just sort of became a joke later, so there's
Speaker 2: no strict definition. I think of it as any episode
Speaker 2: of a family show where quote unquote sensitive subject matter
Speaker 2: was discussed, whether or not there was an actual warning
Speaker 2: from Conrad Bain and probably no show had more very
Speaker 2: special episodes than different strokes. They covered kidnapping, bulimia, drinking,
Speaker 2: and just one month after that Stranger Danger episode came
Speaker 2: the Nancy Reagan Just Say No episode. The Reagan era
Speaker 2: became the golden age of very special episodes, and sometimes
Speaker 2: at the direction of Washington itself. In the case of drugs,
Speaker 2: the White House wanted to get the just say no
Speaker 2: message out to as many kids as possible. Congress was
Speaker 2: also applying pressure Chuck Schumer, than a New York House
Speaker 2: Rep co wrote a letter asking networks to devise an
Speaker 2: intensified campaign of public service announcements and instructive programs. Author
Speaker 2: Philip Sepanski makes the case that the networks were eager
Speaker 2: to comply. This was a period of deregulation when the
Speaker 2: networks stood to get even richer. They wanted to show
Speaker 2: that they could be responsible programmers without the old rules
Speaker 2: that forced them to be. So it was a win
Speaker 2: win for the government and the networks. Plus, kids learned
Speaker 2: something while their parents theoretically received guidance on how to explain,
Speaker 2: as Wally Cleefer put it, all the bad junk in
Speaker 2: the world. Here's an elegant transition AIDS. It's the eighties,
Speaker 2: so this is right when AIDS emerges, obviously as a
Speaker 2: major crisis, and there were very special episodes about it.
Speaker 5: Now but Nancy Reagan, I can tell you that much.
Speaker 2: Let's go into Mister Belvidere, a show that I must
Speaker 2: confess I never saw until now.
Speaker 11: That's Belvidere, Lynn Belvidere, Queen.
Speaker 2: That's a girl's name. Mister Belvidere is a British butler
Speaker 2: who works for the Owens family in suburban Pittsburgh. Here
Speaker 2: he is greeting a friend of youngest child, Wesley.
Speaker 6: Everyone you remember, where's his friend? Danny?
Speaker 14: Oh?
Speaker 6: Oh, Danny?
Speaker 9: Hi a champ? How's it going well?
Speaker 5: I get eight.
Speaker 2: President that I'm doing pretty good? Okay. So it's very direct.
Speaker 6: And I also think at that point, look at what
Speaker 6: was going on in the White House. No one was
Speaker 6: talking about AIDS, so you can bet that families weren't
Speaker 6: talking about it either.
Speaker 2: It's true President Reagan didn't even mention AIDS in public
Speaker 2: until nineteen eighty five, four years into the epidemic.
Speaker 6: Just having a conversation about this is usually when you
Speaker 6: think about what was going on in real life with
Speaker 6: Ryan White.
Speaker 2: Ryan White was a hemophiliac teenager from Kocomo, Indiana, who
Speaker 2: contracted AIDS through a blood transfusion and was banned from
Speaker 2: attending school.
Speaker 15: It's a story we're hearing more and more often, a
Speaker 15: story marked by school boycotts and lawsuits and students like
Speaker 15: Ryan White manned from school because they have AIDS. Now,
Speaker 15: I think that such a serious issue is not the
Speaker 15: stuff of which situation comedies are made. Were but don't
Speaker 15: tell them, folks, who work on Mister Belvidere.
Speaker 2: This episode aired in January of nineteen eighty six, and
Speaker 2: for a network television family show, it was pretty radical.
Speaker 2: For the writers, it was personal. They were inspired not
Speaker 2: only by the case of Ryan White, but also by
Speaker 2: their very own talent manager's loss. Her three year old
Speaker 2: son had died from AIDS after a blood transfusion. In
Speaker 2: the episode's final scene, Wesley stands up for Danny, who
Speaker 2: was not allowed to participate in a school pageant.
Speaker 3: Is Daniel and Neion. He was supposed to play linkon
Speaker 3: but he couldn't because he's got AIDS.
Speaker 2: Hey, oh, what are you doing out here?
Speaker 4: Dennis?
Speaker 2: Get away from him?
Speaker 10: Hey, what's now with you people?
Speaker 2: He's not going to hurt you.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry. He feels bad enough forgot everybody trying to
Speaker 3: make him feel worse.
Speaker 6: I have to say, like I was getting a little emotional.
Speaker 6: I felt a little burd in my nose watching that
Speaker 6: scene because adults were horrible, and you hear them in
Speaker 6: the audience saying get away from him, and then you
Speaker 6: hear this next generation saying no, you're being a nightmare
Speaker 6: and you're being a bigot.
Speaker 5: And there's something powerful about that.
Speaker 2: And I should point out that the actor who played
Speaker 2: the boy with aids is today a trans woman journalist
Speaker 2: at Axios and is very very proud of that episode
Speaker 2: and great that episode did.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think it is powerful and also not to
Speaker 6: be underestimated how much parenting was farmed out to network television.
Speaker 2: The drama of very special episodes went done right required
Speaker 2: more nuanced performances. The best example maybe the nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: four Uncle Ned episode of Family Ties. In this scene,
Speaker 2: the lead character of Alex P. Keaton played by Michael J. Fox,
Speaker 2: encounters his alcoholic uncle Ned in the kitchen in the
Speaker 2: middle of the night. You'll probably recognize the voice, so
Speaker 2: the actor playing Uncle Ned.
Speaker 9: Oh oh, oh oh, here we go.
Speaker 2: Now it may not be million time, but it is
Speaker 2: vanilla time. Looking at you, kid. Now, remember, don't drive
Speaker 2: and bake.
Speaker 5: I don't believe this. You'd just strike a whole bottle
Speaker 5: of vanilla extract.
Speaker 2: And so who is it? Very famous actor.
Speaker 6: Tom Hanks as Uncle Ned in like, by the way,
Speaker 6: the tightest jeans ever.
Speaker 2: Wow, those are tight. Well, first of all, maybe I
Speaker 2: should know this does vanilla extract have alcohol?
Speaker 5: I think it does?
Speaker 2: Oh it does? Okay, you know, when I first saw
Speaker 2: this a couple of years ago, many years after it aired,
Speaker 2: I thought, oh, I'm going to watch something really, really laughable.
Speaker 2: But of course Tom Hanks is so good that he
Speaker 2: pulls it off.
Speaker 6: Yes, absolutely, I mean that line, don't drive in bake.
Speaker 5: It's a good come line.
Speaker 6: But yeah, he's so good, and he's so funny, and
Speaker 6: he's so charming.
Speaker 5: This storyline feels organic.
Speaker 2: Towards the end of the episode, a drunk uncle Ned
Speaker 2: blows a job interview and Alex tries to remind him
Speaker 2: of his successful past. Then, in a pretty shocking scene,
Speaker 2: Ned backhands his nephew across the face. Hey give me,
Speaker 2: leave me alone.
Speaker 5: Give me lave me alone. What the hell are you, Joyce?
Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 9: I'm sorry.
Speaker 11: Sorry.
Speaker 2: The Keaton family gives Ned an ultimatum, call AA or
Speaker 2: get out. Ned calls AA, and we never see him again.
Speaker 2: Like all Very Special episodes, everything is resolved five years later.
Speaker 2: A nineteen eighty nine episode of Growing Pains addressed drinking
Speaker 2: and driving, younger sister Carol finds out her boyfriend Sandy
Speaker 2: was in a car accident. Sandy is played by another
Speaker 2: soon to be famous actor.
Speaker 5: What happened last night?
Speaker 8: Well, this big tree ran right out in front of me,
Speaker 8: and I'm gonna be charged with drunk driving.
Speaker 14: I don't understand.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's not like we had that much to drink.
Speaker 9: I know.
Speaker 8: I mean there's been plenty of times I put away
Speaker 8: a lot more than that.
Speaker 5: Nothing happened.
Speaker 9: I guess I just ran out of luck last.
Speaker 5: Night, Are you kidding?
Speaker 10: I mean, when you think of what could have happened,
Speaker 10: you were really lucky.
Speaker 2: And so that is Chacy Gold who plays the daughter Carol,
Speaker 2: who's an honor student, so she's usually you know, goody
Speaker 2: two shoes, I guess. And that's her boyfriend, played by
Speaker 2: Matthew Perry. Right, so it takes on a whole other
Speaker 2: layer of sadness. Let's see how it resolves.
Speaker 9: Carol Sandy just died. Oh my god, he said just
Speaker 9: a few minutes.
Speaker 6: Michael Seer, that is the second joke that I have
Speaker 6: ever heard.
Speaker 5: I'm never gonna forgive you.
Speaker 2: Now. I went earlier and I looked this is obviously
Speaker 2: on scientific but I looked at comments on YouTube. There's
Speaker 2: no snark. There are all these comments about how powerful
Speaker 2: this episode was and what a difference.
Speaker 9: It made what happened to his second chance, what I
Speaker 9: happened to his second chance?
Speaker 6: Yeah, and this is one of the episodes that people
Speaker 6: look to and they say, oh, this stopped me, or
Speaker 6: this allowed me to talk to my kid about drunk driving,
Speaker 6: or this stopped me from having a drink before getting
Speaker 6: behind a wheel.
Speaker 5: And I have to say, just the very idea of.
Speaker 6: What happened to his second chance is so profound, and
Speaker 6: it's so simple.
Speaker 5: It's nothing.
Speaker 6: It's one line, you know, and it says everything you
Speaker 6: want to say, as opposed to some of these other
Speaker 6: very special episodes that are like, well, you know, there's
Speaker 6: so much verbiage there.
Speaker 2: Jeez. That's such a great point because this seems to
Speaker 2: me like the kind of thing a parent tries to
Speaker 2: impress on a child, and it's really hard to get
Speaker 2: a child to accept that there's not always a second chance.
Speaker 6: Yes, because kids think they're invincible. And so when you
Speaker 6: hear another kid almost being like I don't understand, it
Speaker 6: goes right there and it's so understandable and relatable.
Speaker 2: You were saying a lot of these very special episodes
Speaker 2: were doing parenting for parents, but here something that a
Speaker 2: parent would say to a child is actually dramatized pretty effectively.
Speaker 6: And better in some ways. I think there were conversations
Speaker 6: that parents should have had with children. I have two kids,
Speaker 6: two teenagers now, and there are things that they will
Speaker 6: learn in a way that they will listen to more.
Speaker 6: Their ears will open more if they hear it from
Speaker 6: someone their age, if they hear it, you know, coming
Speaker 6: from culture rather than from their mother.
Speaker 5: And this is one of those examples.
Speaker 2: By the way, you interviewed Matthew Perry, right.
Speaker 6: I did for his memoir, and then watching this watching
Speaker 6: him play someone who's using alcohol and then who dies,
Speaker 6: I don't know, it kind.
Speaker 2: Of takes your breath away a little, and you know,
Speaker 2: people keep saying it. But in that earlier scene he
Speaker 2: is really good.
Speaker 5: I mean, he was a good actor.
Speaker 6: He could deliver a line, he had great timing, and
Speaker 6: in that moment you can see that he had the
Speaker 6: potential to play a little bit of drama too.
Speaker 2: Now, a lot of the shows we've been talking about
Speaker 2: featured suburban white families, but in the eighties and nineties,
Speaker 2: many millions of viewers were watching black families on the
Speaker 2: Cosby show, Family Matters and The Fresh Prince of bel Air.
Speaker 12: Now this is the story all about him. Well, I'd
Speaker 12: got twins ferns upside down and I'd like to take
Speaker 12: a manager said, right then, I'll tell you how it
Speaker 12: became the prince of a town called bell Air.
Speaker 2: Okay, so this is a very special episode from The
Speaker 2: Fresh Prince of bel Air. It aired in nineteen ninety. Okay,
Speaker 2: so over thirty years ago. Will Smith's character and his
Speaker 2: cousin Carlton the wonderful Alfonso Rovero driving in a fancy
Speaker 2: car to Palm Springs and getting stopped by a cop
Speaker 2: vehicle registration. Please just a second, But the thing is, officer,
Speaker 2: this isn't my car.
Speaker 8: Get out of the car, Carlon what he's gonna tell
Speaker 8: us to get out of the car?
Speaker 5: You watch too much TV?
Speaker 2: Will get out of the car, officer.
Speaker 3: Honestly, I don't see the need to get.
Speaker 2: Out of the car now. Okay. So then they're basically
Speaker 2: booked into a precinct and then they're released, and then
Speaker 2: there's this discussion which is really interesting between the Will
Speaker 2: and Carlton characters. Were attained for a few hours.
Speaker 8: Dad planned things up, and we were released.
Speaker 9: The system works.
Speaker 8: I hope you like that system because you want to
Speaker 8: be seeing a whole lot of during your lifetime, not if.
Speaker 2: I bring a map.
Speaker 8: You just don't get it, do you. No map is
Speaker 8: going to save you. Neither's your glee club or your
Speaker 8: fancy bel air address or who your daddy is, because
Speaker 8: when you're driving in a nice car in a strange neighborhood,
Speaker 8: none of that matters.
Speaker 9: They only see one thing.
Speaker 6: Just the fact that this is still happening. And you know,
Speaker 6: could have beared last week and people would have said, oh,
Speaker 6: this is so timely, is its own tragedy. But it's
Speaker 6: so fascinating that scene and how the writers go right there.
Speaker 5: It really is.
Speaker 2: And part of what's also interesting, And look, there's a
Speaker 2: kind of subtlety of sophistication happening between those two characters.
Speaker 2: Right they don't introduce a white bagot character who has
Speaker 2: the conversation with Will. Will and his cousin who's also black,
Speaker 2: are having this disagreement over it, and somehow it seems
Speaker 2: to have more impact that way.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no, I agree. I think it's a really interesting scene.
Speaker 2: A conversation between two black characters about racism. The Very
Speaker 2: Special episode had come a long way since the groundbreaking
Speaker 2: Bewitched episode of twenty years before. But by the end
Speaker 2: of the nineteen nineties, the very special episode was dead.
Speaker 2: What killed it?
Speaker 6: I think audiences became kind of too hip to what
Speaker 6: was going on.
Speaker 2: That's next, Jesse.
Speaker 9: Those pills are dangerous.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it was, sois geometry.
Speaker 2: You told me you were going to stop taking them.
Speaker 9: I need them to stay awake and study.
Speaker 2: Okay, this is saved by the Bell. This is an
Speaker 2: episode about caffeine pills. It's sort of like when people
Speaker 2: don't want to say Kleenex, they say facial tissue. They
Speaker 2: didn't want to use the brand name Nodos here, right,
Speaker 2: so instead they're talking about caffeine pills.
Speaker 5: Anything would be okay. I just need one of these pills.
Speaker 2: And so this is Elizabeth Berkeley's carearacter Jesse, and she's
Speaker 2: turned to caffeine pills to keep up with her studies
Speaker 2: and her new singing group, which is called Hot Sunday.
Speaker 2: I mean, you really are taking drugs.
Speaker 3: You need them, say, Jessee, you can't sing the night
Speaker 3: you cat.
Speaker 5: I'm so excited.
Speaker 2: I'm so excited scared. Well, first of all, do you
Speaker 2: think they had to pay for the rights? Did she
Speaker 2: sing enough of the Pointer Sister song that they had
Speaker 2: to pay for it.
Speaker 6: I hope, so they should be paying for something. It's
Speaker 6: super subtle. I love when she's like digging around.
Speaker 5: She's like pails pills.
Speaker 6: It's no one ever acted that way about nosing their
Speaker 6: lives exactly.
Speaker 2: I was a Jolt Cola person if I needed to
Speaker 2: finish a paper, but I don't remember getting that excited.
Speaker 2: To be fair, producers had originally wanted the substance Jesse
Speaker 2: was taking to be speed, but the network wouldn't allow it.
Speaker 2: The nineteen ninety caffeine pills episode of Saved by the
Speaker 2: Bell was so memorable it was parodied twenty five years
Speaker 2: later on Family Guy.
Speaker 12: You actually are taking drugs, Stuet, give me those the contact.
Speaker 5: I need them to sing.
Speaker 6: I'm so excited, I'm so excited, so scared.
Speaker 5: Screech is going to stab someone on Christmas.
Speaker 2: But even by nineteen ninety four, when the movie Reality
Speaker 2: Bites came out, the very notion that a sitcom bore
Speaker 2: any meaningful resemblance to real life was sadly by gone.
Speaker 9: I just don't.
Speaker 2: Understand why things just can't go back to normal.
Speaker 9: At the end of the half hour, like on The
Speaker 9: Brady Bunch or something.
Speaker 2: Well, because mister Brady died of aides and for most
Speaker 2: kids growing up in the late nineties and early two
Speaker 2: thousand's family, our TV seemed alien.
Speaker 6: First of all, the idea that your parents would sanction
Speaker 6: your TV watching was donzo, forget about it. I'm watching
Speaker 6: the show I want to watch for me. You don't
Speaker 6: need to know what I'm watching. And so that stamp
Speaker 6: of parental approval of like, we're going to have a
Speaker 6: conversation that adults are going to spoon feed to you
Speaker 6: kind of in your language, but kind of not, there
Speaker 6: was a generation of kids who are like, no, we
Speaker 6: don't do that anymore.
Speaker 2: Right, I don't need to be introduced to this topic
Speaker 2: on my favorite sitcom?
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and just the entire tone of sitcoms changed.
Speaker 2: If there was any one sitcom that marked the death
Speaker 2: knell for the very special episode.
Speaker 6: Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld would come along saying basically,
Speaker 6: there are going to be no very special episodes.
Speaker 5: That is the very thing that we will never do.
Speaker 2: I mean, what was the quote, no hugging, no learning,
Speaker 2: No hugging no learning, right, So Seinfeld is a series
Speaker 2: was a stand against everything that the very Special episode
Speaker 2: stood for.
Speaker 6: Yeah, there will be zero issues, and even in the
Speaker 6: show within the show, that show was also about nothing.
Speaker 5: Well, what's the show about?
Speaker 9: It's about nothing?
Speaker 2: No story?
Speaker 9: Forget the story.
Speaker 2: You gotta have a story?
Speaker 9: Who says you gotta have a story. Remember when we
Speaker 9: were waiting for that table in that Chinese restaurant that time?
Speaker 9: That could be a TV show?
Speaker 2: How many levels of smart?
Speaker 6: I mean, it's just it's so so great and thank god,
Speaker 6: I mean truly, can you imagine if they tried to
Speaker 6: tackle an issue.
Speaker 2: Of course, plenty of new series did take on topics
Speaker 2: that were new to sitcoms, but instead of these being
Speaker 2: handled by ancillary characters in one off episodes, they became
Speaker 2: part of the fabric of the series itself. Take Will
Speaker 2: and Grace, what decades earlier might have been a very
Speaker 2: special episode about an out gay man living with his
Speaker 2: straight female best friend, became an entire series. On the show,
Speaker 2: Blackish creator Kennya Barris wove into the comedy issues as
Speaker 2: serious as police brutality and the use of the N word.
Speaker 2: Not surprisingly, he cited Norman Lear as a major influence.
Speaker 6: Yeah or even a show like My Crazy Ex Girlfriend,
Speaker 6: I mean talking about mental health.
Speaker 5: Forget it.
Speaker 6: I mean, can you imagine it's sitcom in the eighties
Speaker 6: talking about mental health.
Speaker 2: No, that wouldn't happen today. The term very special episode
Speaker 2: is so by gone. It's quaint, used almost endearingly here
Speaker 2: on the ABC sitcom Abbot Elementary.
Speaker 14: Okay, if you guys are finished with this very special episode.
Speaker 2: The very special episode could be pretty corny. And let's
Speaker 2: face it, there's only so much any kind of sitcom
Speaker 2: can do to a us some real world problems. When
Speaker 2: Quinta Brunson, the creator and star of Abbott Elementary, was
Speaker 2: asked by fans to consider a school shooting storyline, she
Speaker 2: suggested they use that energy to demand more from lawmakers.
Speaker 2: And yet there's also something to be said about a
Speaker 2: time when families were more likely to watch together and
Speaker 2: maybe even learned together. As Norman Lear told me about
Speaker 2: that time, we talked. We looked at the show and
Speaker 2: we talked. He's right. We may have laughed, we may
Speaker 2: have disagreed, we may have cringed, but at least we talked.
Speaker 2: With the exception of the Jesse Saved by the Bell,
Speaker 2: Caffeine pil freak out. I found myself looking at a
Speaker 2: lot of these scenes and I don't know, being kind
Speaker 2: of moved by them, Like the good times that mister
Speaker 2: Belvidere grows hands.
Speaker 6: I mean, yeah, and Tracy Gold is really good in
Speaker 6: that scene. I agree with you there intense and they're
Speaker 6: dealing with complex and profound feeling.
Speaker 2: In the best way that they can in the format.
Speaker 5: Yes, and in a way that somehow works.
Speaker 2: And of course not almost it comes had very special episodes.
Speaker 2: There was never a very special episode of Three's Company, right, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean what would that have been about? Like about
Speaker 2: rent Control?
Speaker 6: I feel like something could have happened with the roper.
Speaker 6: That was a very special episode waiting to happen.
Speaker 2: A Mumoo accident, for sure.
Speaker 6: It was flammable and the house burned down. Right, let's
Speaker 6: explore homelesses.
Speaker 2: I certainly hope you enjoyed this Mobituary. May I ask
Speaker 2: you to please rate and review our podcast. You can
Speaker 2: also follow Mobituaries on Facebook and Instagram, and you can
Speaker 2: follow me on the social media platform formerly known as
Speaker 2: Twitter at Morocca. Here are all new episodes of Mobituaries
Speaker 2: every Wednesday. Wherever you get your podcasts and check out
Speaker 2: Mobituaries Eight Lives Worth Reliving, the New York Times best
Speaker 2: selling book, now available in paperback and audiobook. It includes
Speaker 2: plenty of stories not in the podcast. This episode of
Speaker 2: Mobituaries was produced by Liz Sanchez. Our team of producers
Speaker 2: also includes Zoe Culkin and me Moroka, with engineering by
Speaker 2: Josh Han. Our theme music is written by Daniel Hart.
Speaker 2: Our archival producer is Jamie Benson. Mobituary's production company is
Speaker 2: neon Hammedia. Indispensable support from Alan Pang and everyone at
Speaker 2: CBS News Radio Special thanks to Steve Razis, Rand Morrison,
Speaker 2: and Alberto Romina, as well as the authors of the book,
Speaker 2: Very special episodes televising industrial and social change. Executive producers
Speaker 2: for Mobituaries include Megan Marcus, Jonathan Hirsch, and Morocca. The
Speaker 2: series is created by Yours Truly