The value of art can't be listed, measured, graded, or ranked... and we need to stop pretending it can be

This might or might not be the greatest movie of all time. That's up to you to decide.

The New York Times recently released its list of the 100 greatest television shows of the 21st century. In case you haven't read it yet, here's a spoiler: it's pointless, meaningless horse manure. Judging by my social media feed the last couple of days, people seem to have forgotten that. There is a widespread delusion that The New York Times is somehow "in charge" of which shows are important or worth watching. 

Reality check: It isn't. You are. You, the person reading this article now, get to decide which are the greatest TV shows of this century. The ones you watch, the ones you like, the ones that mean something to you—those are the greatest. Never ever lose sight of that. The New York Times doesn't know diddly. They can't. It's unknowable. You can only know which shows you think are the greatest; you don't get to decide for anyone else.

There's a British film magazine called Sight and Sound published by the BFI since 1952. Every ten years, they release a list of the greatest films of all time. In the most recent one from 2022, the winner was Chantal Akerman's deliberately slow and methodical art film Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975). Many disagreed with this choice, and they expressed their anger in various articles and videos. Bizarrely, their wrath was largely aimed at Akerman's film, as if the movie had arrogantly elected itself the greatest of all time. Instead, the haters should have been angry with a stupid system that dupes us into thinking that the Sight and Sound poll is somehow meaningful. It's not. It's just the fancy version of an internet listicle. 

Podcast Tuesday: "Upstairs, Downstairs" or "Encyclopedia Blues"

Debra Jo Rupp, Marion Ross, and Kurtwood Smith on That '70s Show.

Happy Days (1974-1984) was part of a nostalgia cycle that started in the late 1960s and kept going well into the 1980s, leaving numerous TV shows, movies, stage musicals, and albums in its wake. When Happy Days finally breathed its last in the summer of 1984, you'd think the cycle was truly over, too. Nope. Not even close. Robert Zemeckis' Back to the Future (1985) showed that there was plenty of juice left in that particular turnip. Stand by Me (1986) and Dirty Dancing (1987) proved it was no fluke. With The Wonder Years (1988-1993), nostalgia returned to television. By then, the bygone era being wistfully evoked was the late 1960s.

And so it continued. One of the big trends of the 1990s was nostalgia for the 1970s, though the nostalgia for that decade was about half-sincere and half-sarcastic. The pinnacle of this phenomenon was Fox's rambunctious comedy That '70s Show (1998-2006). Much more so than The Wonder Years—which was a thoughtful, occasionally weighty series—That '70s Show was the obvious spiritual successor to Happy Days. Like Happy Days, it followed a group of average Midwestern teenagers through various social, romantic, scholastic, and domestic adventures. Both shows were even set in Wisconsin and both shows existed largely to entertain rather than educate or enlighten.

During its initial run, Happy Days acknowledged its sitcom roots by welcoming classic guest stars like Danny Thomas, Elinor Donahue, Harriet Nelson, and Jane Wyatt. That '70s Show did something very similar by casting Marion Ross from Happy Days as Bernice, the demanding mother of patriarch Red Forman (Kurtwood Smith). In the November 1998 episode "Sunday, Bloody Sunday," Bernice has a longstanding grudge against Red's wife Kitty (Debra Jo Rupp), and it's up to Red and Kitty's son Eric (Topher Grace) to keep the peace. Or try to.

This week on These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast, we discuss That '70s Show and Marion Ross' participation therein. We review "Sunday, Bloody Sunday" and talk about how our feelings toward That '70s Show have evolved over the years. We invite you to join us.

A weird, forgotten chapter of 'Simpsons' history has been rediscovered

The Simpsons consult a family therapist in this forgotten 1989 cartoon.

By the time cartoonist Matt Groening unleased The Simpsons on an unwitting world in 1987—it debuted as a segment on Fox's live-action sketch comedy The Tracey Ullman Show—the era of the theatrical animated short was long over. Movie audiences of the 1930s, '40s, and '50s were accustomed to getting cartoons before features, and studios like Disney, MGM, and Warner Bros. famously produced them by the hundreds. Characters like Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Bugs Bunny, and Tom & Jerry thrived in this medium for decades. This was an era we now call the Golden Age of Animation.

But animation was commonplace on television by the 1960s. Ex-MGM animators Joseph Hanna and William Barbera proved that cheap, made-for-TV 'toons could be successful, and other producers followed suit. People who wanted to see cartoons could do so at home whenever they wanted, so movie studios phased out their animated shorts over the course of that turbulent decade. From the 1970s on, theatrical cartoons were parceled out only as occasional treats, usually in conjunction with children's films. That's the way it still is today. If you see a Pixar feature, for example, you expect a short cartoon first. But you won't get one with most live-action movies.

Podcast Tuesday: "Your Kids Caught You Smoking and They Said No Way"

Tom Bosley and Marion Ross in Let's Call it Quits.

Along with the many, many laws and rules we have to follow in our daily lives, we are also given innumerable warnings about our health and safety. Don't do drugs. Get eight hours of sleep. Brush your teeth. Eat your vegetables. Look both ways before you cross the street. Since human beings are typically averse to being bossed around, I think there is a strong temptation to ignore all of this stuff. To hell with them! I'll do what I want! And I sympathize with that.

But there are some warnings I wish we would have heeded sooner as a society. It certainly would have been better, for instance, if we'd all given up on smoking as soon as the Surgeon General's report came out in 1964. But we didn't. We kept right on smoking for decades, and it led to a lot of needless suffering and death. Only now, in the 21st century, are cigarettes starting to lose their grip on us. (Of course, they're only being replaced by vape pens, but, you know... baby steps.)

Over the years, there were many attempts to get Americans to kick the habit. In 1974, the American Cancer Society produced a half-hour, sitcom-like film called Let's Call it Quits starring Tom Bosley and Marion Ross of Happy Days and filmed on the set of The Brady Bunch. This week on These Days Are Ours, we talk about that film and our feelings on smoking in general. Please do join us. And don't smoke.

Podcast Tuesday: "We Have Nothing To Fear But OH MY GOD WHAT IS THAT THING OVER THERE?"

Erin Moran in Galaxy of Terror (1981).

The actors on long-running sitcoms can get antsy sometimes. Playing the same character every week, year after year. Same jokes, same stories. It gets old after a while. Worse yet, the public gets the idea that playing this one character is all you can do. There is no surer career-killer than being typecast in a sitcom role. And so, TV actors tend to glom onto whatever movie offers come their way. Anything to prove they have a little range.

During his seven-season run on Happy Days, for instance, Ron Howard appeared in Eat My Dust (1976), The Shootist (1976), and More American Graffiti (1979) as well as the made-for-TV movies Huckleberry Finn (1975) and I'm a Fool (1977). He also directed the made-for-TV movie Cotton Candy (1978) and the feature film Grand Theft Auto (1977). Meanwhile, Ron's costar Henry Winkler stayed for all 11 seasons of Happy Days but still managed to find some extracurricular acting work, like the movies Heroes (1977) and The One and Only (1978), plus the made-for-TV movie An American Christmas Carol (1979).

But what of young Erin Moran, who played Joanie Cunningham on Happy Days? People may think that this sitcom and its spinoff Joanie Loves Chachi were the only major projects Erin ever worked on. But her resume is more diverse than that. For instance, between the eighth and ninth seasons of the show in 1981, Erin acted in a sci-fi thriller called Galaxy of Terror produced by Roger Corman, who had previously produced both Grand Theft Auto and Eat My Dust.

As you may have already guessed by now, we are reviewing Galaxy of Terror on this week's installment of These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast. Hit the play button down there to learn more.

The enduring, plain jane beauty of "Johnny Angel"

Shelley Fabares croons "Johnny Angel" on The Donna Reed Show.

Actress Shelley Fabares, who died on August 22 at the age of 82, never considered herself much of a singer, despite the fact that she scored a #1 hit single in America. In interviews, she talked about how the producers of The Donna Reed Show (1958-1966) strongarmed both her and costar Paul Petersen into recording pop singles. The makers of the sitcom were apparently eager to replicate the multimedia success of Ricky Nelson from The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet and made it clear that, if Shelley didn't comply, she'd be written out of the show. And so, in late 1961, she became a reluctant pop star. Shelley recalled being extremely nervous to step into an actual recording studio, surrounded by talented professional musicians, but she somehow got through it.

Shelley's big musical moment.

The song she recorded, a winsome ballad called "Johnny Angel," debuted on February 1, 1962 during a fourth season episode of The Donna Reed Show called "Donna's Prima Donna." The public's response was simply overwhelming. By April 1962, "Johnny Angel" was the most popular song in America. Shelley was still no singer, and her music career was not sustainable for long. While she had a few more charting singles, including a direct sequel to "Johnny Angel," Shelley largely stuck to acting for the rest of her life. Later in her career, she was a regular on the popular ABC sitcom Coach, which ran from 1989 to 1997. Shelley Fabares' musical legacy is largely limited to this one song: two minutes and 19 seconds of audio cotton candy. 

As for The Donna Reed Show, it lasted four more seasons and eventually became a staple of syndicated reruns. I'm sure many people of my generation, born well after the original run of the show, became familiar with Donna Reed because of its frequent airings on Nickelodeon and Nick at Nite. What distinguishes this series is that it has nothing to distinguish it. Unlike The Honeymooners and I Love Lucy, it is not built around a wild comedian with an over-the-top personality. It doesn't tap into "kid logic" the way Leave it to Beaver and Dennis the Menace do. It doesn't even have an unusual family structure, like My Three Sons or The Brady Bunch. Nope, it's just an unadorned, straight-down-the-line sitcom about a nuclear family in mid-20th-century America. This is exactly the kind of blandly wholesome show that inspired Gary Ross' film Pleasantville (1998).

Los Cos: The original 'Fat Albert' special from 1969 has resurfaced!

Fat Albert bursts onto the screen in 1969.

A Cosby album.

Long before his name became associated with the drugging and raping of women, comedian Bill Cosby (born 1937) was known as a purveyor of warm, relatable humor about the day-to-day foibles of mid-20th-century American life. Leaning heavily on anecdotes from his own experiences, he talked about such subjects as sports, driving, childhood, marriage, parenthood, etc. in that friendly, conversational cadence of his. During a time of tremendous racial strife in this country, Cosby's act transcended color lines and appealed to a broad spectrum of the public.

In the 1960s, Cosby emerged as one of the top stand-up comics in America, headlining at nightclubs and appearing frequently on talk shows and variety shows. He also released a series of well-received comedy albums, starting with Bill Cosby is a Very Funny Fellow... Right! (1963). Meanwhile, his acting career took off with his groundbreaking dramatic role on I Spy (1965-1968). In short, Bill Cosby was big but nowhere near as big as he'd one day become. Ironically, his next major step forward came from looking backward.

In his act, Cosby frequently talked about his youth, growing up poor in North Philadelphia in the 1940s and '50s. He would regale his audiences with stories about his rambunctious childhood buddies, including Dumb Donald, Old Weird Harold, and the jubilant but massively overweight Fat Albert, the latter of whom was known for his catchphrase: "Hey, hey, hey!" Soon, thanks to these standup routines, several of which wound up immortalized on LPs, all of America was familiar with Bill Cosby's childhood.

Podcast Tuesday: "Father and Child Reunion"

In 1994, Henry Winkler was once again ready for his closeup.

There's such a thing as playing a character too well. When Jim Parsons—now and forever associated with his nerdy Sheldon Cooper character from The Big Bang Theory—hosted Saturday Night Live in 2014, he sang a song called "I'm Not That Guy," an ode to actors like himself who have been hopelessly typecast in sitcom roles. The lyrics reference Jaleel White from Family Matters, Jason Alexander from Seinfeld, and Henry Winkler from Happy Days. As Parson puts it: "Henry Winkler as the Fonz/The epitome of cool/But in real life, he was a nice Jewish boy who went to Yale Drama School."

It's true that, when Happy Days was cancelled in 1984, the news hit Henry Winkler very hard. He was so well-known as Fonzie that he didn't think the public would ever accept him as another character. And so, after the eleventh and final season of Happy Days wrapped, Henry walked away from acting for about a decade. He reinvented himself as a director and producer, jobs that kept him in showbiz but off-camera. All that Yale acting training down the drain.

But in 1994, Henry decided the time was right to come back to acting in a big way, taking the lead role in a Fox sitcom called Monty. Sensing it would have been disastrous to play a character even remotely similar to Fonzie, Winkler portrayed someone who was almost the complete opposite: an uptight conservative talk show host named Monty Richardson. The sitcom depicts Monty's professional life (where his coworkers barely tolerate him) and his home life (where his wife and children barely tolerate him). At the heart of the show is Monty's conflict with his liberal, college-age son Greg (pre-Friends David Schwimmer), newly engaged to even-more-liberal Geena (China Kantner). 

Obviously, Monty was a major change in direction for Henry Winkler. But was it a good one? That's what we're trying to determine on this week's installment of These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast. You can find out what we thought by clicking the play button below.

1970s Hardee's commercials were beautifully chaotic

Gilbert Giddyup (left) and Speedy McGreedy shill for Hardee's.

Hardee's was not part of my childhood, at least not to any great extent. The restaurant chain had only a marginal presence in mid-Michigan in the 1970s and 1980s, lagging behind McDonald's and Burger King, plus KFC, Wendy's, Arby's, Taco Bell, and numerous others. I can only remember going to Hardee's with my family on a handful of occasions in my youth. A trip there was decidedly out of the ordinary. A big deal, you might say.

I cannot even recall seeing a single TV commercial for Hardee's when I was growing up. While I was very familiar with the antics of Ronald McDonald, Grimace, and the Hamburglar, I was denied the animated adventures of such Hardee's mascots as Gilbert Giddyup, Speedy McGreedy, and Supermouth. Were these Hardee's characters part of your childhood? Did you dream about them the way I used to dream of the residents of McDonaldland? 

Podcast Tuesday: "Sixty-Three Years Cool"

You're never too old to be cool. Or are you?

             

On Happy Days, Arthur "The Fonz" Fonzarelli (Henry Winkler) stubbornly clung to the music and fashions of the 1950s, well into the 1960s. The sitcom takes place over about a decade, but Fonzie is often hesitant to update his style to match the times. There are a couple of episodes of the show that deal with this, namely "Who Gives a Hootenanny?" from Season 10 and "The Spirit is Willing" from Season 11. In the former, Fonzie learns to cope with the fact that folk music is replacing good old-fashioned rock & roll; in the latter, he has a terrifying vision of what could happen to him if he doesn't stop living in the past.

Presumably, Fonzie had to deal with the social and cultural upheaval of the 1960s, '70s, and beyond. Even during the 11 seasons of Happy Days, he undergoes massive personal changes. At the beginning of the sitcom, his life revolves around motorcycles and "chicks," and he's only a few years (months?) removed from being a gang member and getting into rumbles in the back alleys of Milwaukee. By the end of the show, he is a professional educator, a local business owner, and an adoptive father. And he doesn't get into fights anymore. At least not as much.

But suppose our favorite mechanic had refused to change. Ever. Suppose he kept being the same juvenile delinquent punk he'd been in the 1950s because those were the greatest years of his life. In 2001, radio host Tom Scharpling and musician Jon Wurster gave us a worst-case scenario of how this might play out when they performed their legendary sketch "The Gorch" on The Best Show on WFMU. In this segment, Scharpling warily interviews a 63-year-old man from York, PA named Roland "The Gorch" Gorchnick (played by Wurster), who claims to be the real-life inspiration for Fonzie. Over the course of a half hour, this combative gentleman reveals himself to be a pathologically violent, antisocial human being.

This week on These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast, we finally get around to talking about "The Gorch." This is an episode I've wanted to do for years. I really hope you enjoy it.

P.S. While editing this episode, I realized that The Gorch's memories are strikingly similar to those of American Splendor comics writer Harvey Pekar (1939-2010), who grew up on the mean streets of Cleveland in the 1950s. In one story, Pekar even names a thug who, like The Gorch, fought with chains! 

Podcast Tuesday: "The Most (To Say the Least)"

Donny Most just wants you to listen to some songs, okay?

"Strike while the iron is hot." 

That's the saying, right? You've gotta take advantage of opportunities, especially financial ones, when they come along. If you wait too long, they could disappear. As a wise man named Jerry Reed once said (or half-sang), "When you're hot, you're hot. And when you're not, you're not." But what does that mean if you're an actor on a top-rated TV sitcom? Sure, the iron is hot, but how exactly do you strike it? What do you strike it with? Do you try to get a movie deal? Endorse a chain of frozen yogurt places? Start a chain of frozen yogurt places?

These were the questions facing Donny Most in 1976. A showbiz lifer who'd been performing since childhood, he was suddenly mega-famous due to his portrayal of jokester Ralph Malph on Happy Days. This was as hot as the iron was ever going to get, and Donny struck it. Specifically, he signed a deal with United Artists and recorded a mix of golden oldies and relatively recent tracks for the label. The resulting LP, cleverly titled Donny Most, was not exactly a chartbuster in its day but gained something of a following among Happy Days fans and was even reissued on CD some years ago. 

But is the darned thing even listenable to modern ears? That's what my cohost and I try to find out this week on These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast. We were both familiar with one track, the boldly-titled "Rock is Dead," but what about the other nine? I hope you will accompany us on this strange musical journey.

Podcast Tuesday: "Little Movie 'Bout Leo and Loree"

Don Most and Linda Purl in Leo and Loree (1980).

Doing a podcast about Happy Days involves many hours of writing, research, and editing, but the actual recording of a typical episode is a mere blip. Every other Sunday, my cohost and I spend about an hour or so chatting over Zoom. This gets edited down to about 30-40 minutes of usable audio, to which I will then add various clips from movies, TV shows, and pop records. These Days Are Ours is a show that is largely made in editing, each episode pieced together from lots of little scraps.

These nearly ruined the show.

Recording is, by far, my favorite part of the process. It just goes by so quickly that it feels like a barely-remembered dream. At least, it usually does. But something strange happened when it was time to record our review of Leo and Loree (1980), a romantic comedy starring Donny Most and Linda Purl as young Hollywood hopefuls. I had chosen this movie as a topic for review, so I felt responsible for this particular installment of the podcast. The onus was on me to make this one work.

I'd woken up a couple of hours before we were set to record. My sinuses were acting up that day, so I took some allergy medicine. For some reason, the little pink pills kicked in especially hard and started messing with my head. Maybe it was because I hadn't eaten anything. By the time we were supposed to record, I was dizzy and drowsy and barely coherent. I couldn't talk about a Don Most movie for an entire hour in this condition! What was I going to do?

Fortunately, I have very little to say in the first few minutes of our show. I just have to say my name and the title of the movie or TV show we're reviewing, then my cohost launches into a detailed plot summary. This always gives me about 5-10 minutes where I'm off-mic. So to combat the effects of the allergy medicine, I just started drinking anything caffeinated I could find. When it was time for me to speak, I was keyed-up and nervous. The caffeine and the allergy medicine interacted oddly, and I struggled mightily to stay on topic and express myself in a coherent way.

I knew this episode was going to be a mess to edit, and it was. Hopefully, though, you won't even be able to tell because I've cut all of my unexpected, weirdly-timed pauses and rambling, meaningless sentences out of the finished product. Just know that, as you listen to this installment of our podcast, one of the hosts is fighting the battle of his life just to keep from babbling like an idiot or falling asleep.

Podcast Tuesday: "You Wanna Get Jobs? Come On! Let's Get Jobs!"

Michael Keaton and Jim Belushi in the pilot for Working Stiffs.

What is it that makes one sitcom a hit and another one a flop? Why do some shows live on in reruns for decades while others simply evaporate from the prime time schedule without a trace? No one really knows. If there were a formula for this stuff, someone would have figured it out a long time ago and we'd have nothing but hits. And, as we all know, television history is littered with the corpses of unsuccessful programs.

Even with the best of planning, each new TV show is a gamble. You start with a premise that seems workable and could generate lots of compelling stories. Then you hire actors you think will connect with the audience, and you assemble a production team that can create a quality show while meeting strict deadlines. Once that's all in place, it's up to the marketing department to create promotions that will ignite the public's imagination and drive traffic to the show. Something could go wrong at any stage in this process, and it could be enough to sink the entire enterprise.

This week on These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast, we're covering the pilot for an extremely short-lived sitcom from 1979 called Working Stiffs. It was co-created by Happy Days showrunner Bob Brunner and tells the story of two bumbling brothers who convince their uncle to give them jobs as janitors in a Chicago office building. The brothers are played by two actors who went on to fame and fortune: Jim Belushi and Michael Keaton. The production team includes many sitcom veterans with long, successful careers in television. And CBS gave the show an enthusiastic promotional push. Working Stiffs was canceled after four weeks.

What went wrong? That's what we'll try to figure out as we review the show's pilot episode. Please do join us by clicking on the play button below.

Podcast Tuesday: "The Marshall-Belson Experiments"

Will Hutchins and Sandy Baron on Hey, Landlord!

One of the strangest major studio movies of the '90s was Gus Van Sant's Psycho (1998), an extremely literal remake of the 1960 Alfred Hitchcock classic of the same name. If you've ever seen Van Sant's film, you know that it is a curiously empty, uninvolving experience. The actors are self-conscious and ill-at-ease, and scene after scene falls flat. But why doesn't it work? Van Sant's actors, including Vince Vaughn and Anne Heche, are faithfully reenacting the original. The cast and crew are certainly talented enough. Shouldn't it be just as good? There must be some intangible element that is missing from the remake.

A classic episode.

This phenomenon can work in reverse, too, when a remake outshines its predecessor. I'll give you an example. One of the most famous episodes of Garry Marshall's Laverne & Shirley is "Guinea Pigs" (original airdate: January 18, 1977), in which the title characters participate in kooky medical experiments in order to earn some money to attend a fancy cocktail party. The problem is, the girls are so zonked-out from the experiments (Laverne has been deprived of regular sleep, Shirley of normal food) that they struggle mightily to make it through the party once they get there. Like Hitchcock's Psycho, "Guinea Pigs" is considered a classic in its field.

What I didn't know until recently is that the plot of "Guinea Pigs" is recycled from a previous Garry Marshall sitcom, Hey, Landlord!, which ran from 1966 to 1967. This earlier show revolves around two roommates, Woody (Will Hutchins) and Chuck (Sandy Baron), sharing a bachelor pad in a New York brownstone. In "Testing... One, Two," the boys agree to take part in some medical experiments so they can have the money to rent tuxedos for a neighbor's photography exhibition. You can probably guess how it turns out. It's the same story that worked so well on Laverne & Shirley, but I'll bet you've never heard of, let alone seen, "Testing...One, Two." Why is that?

This week on These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast, my cohost and I review the Hey, Landlord! episode and try to deconstruct why this series never caught on. We'd be most appreciative if you would join us. The podcast is available right here:

Podcast Tuesday: "The Young People of Today, Am I Right?"

Tom Bosley voices Harry Boyle (center), a harried suburban dad on Love, American Style.

There are two basic types of classic sitcom dads: the grouchy, cantankerous ones who yell at their kids and the calm, reasonable ones who say things like, "Gosh, I'm very disappointed in you." In the early days of TV, most sitcoms had the second type. Witness such series as The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (1952-1966), Leave it to Beaver (1957-1963), My Three Sons (1960-1972), and Father Knows Best (1954-1960), all of which had even-tempered patriarchs. Danny Thomas started to change that with Make Room for Daddy (1953-1964), and by the 1970s, we were finally ready for Archie Bunker (Carroll O'Connor) on All in the Family (1971-1979).

Meanwhile, over in the world of animation, Hanna-Barbera shows like The Flintstones (1960-1966) and The Jetsons (1962-1963). were allowed to have agitated, grousing husbands and fathers. You could say that Fred Flintstone and George Jetson made the world safe for Harry Boyle, an overworked, overstressed suburbanite voiced by Tom Bosley on Hanna-Barbera's syndicated series, Wait Till Your Father Gets Home (1972-1974).

As it happens, the pilot episode for Wait aired as a segment on ABC's comedy anthology Love, American Style (1969-1974). Yes, this was the same place where the Happy Days pilot had aired back in 1971! This week on These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast, my cohost and I give our opinions on that pilot. Click below to hear our take on "Love and the Old-Fashioned Father."

Podcast Tuesday: "The Genie and the Weenie"

David Hartman and Barbara Eden in The Feminist and the Fuzz.

Three-hundred episodes. It must mean something, but what? Hell if I know. When my cohost and I started These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast in 2018, I didn't even know if we'd make it though all 11 seasons of the sitcom. Well, we did... and then some. After we reviewed all 255 episodes of the original series (1974-1984), we covered its animated spinoff, The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang (1980-1981), and all the feature films directed by the show's creator, Garry Marshall. 

Lately, we've been exploring the vast world of Happy Days-adjacent media, i.e. projects involving the cast and crew of the show. Since many of these fine folks had long, varied careers in show business, we can never run out of material to cover. My first pick for this phase of the podcast was The Money Tree (1971), an educational film starring Anson Williams. This week, we get my cohost's first pick: an extremely of-its-time made-for-TV movie called The Feminist and the Fuzz, directed by Jerry Paris. The plot concerns a liberated San Francisco doctor (Barbara Eden) who, through wacky circumstances, ends up sharing an apartment with a chauvinist cop (David Hartman). 

Will these two mismatched roomies find love against all odds? There are literally only two ways to find out: either watch the movie yourself or listen to our review of it. I know which one I'd pick.

Podcast Tuesday: "Potsie Weber, Wanted Fugitive"

Margaret Willock and Anson Williams in The Money Tree.

I have surprisingly fond memories of corny, old-fashioned educational or "classroom" movies. My father was a high school teacher—his subjects were history and economics—during the primitive, pre-VCR days when you actually needed a projector and a screen to show a movie in class. I remember accompanying him several times to the Flint Public Library to procure these precious film reels that came in heavy, gray boxes that you needed to secure with luggage straps. For some reason, I found all of this to be unbearably exciting.

It was even better when one of my own teachers at Springview Elementary would show a movie in class. Again, I grew up in the movie projector era, before TVs strapped to wheeled carts became ubiquitous. What a thrill to hear that noisy projector whirring away as the images flickered on the screen. I think I liked the Disney nature movies best, but I generally enjoyed them all, even the really bad ones. It was a wonderful, much-needed break from the tedium of the school day.

This week on These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast, we turn our attentions to a somewhat forgotten 1971 educational film called The Money Tree starring Anson "Potsie" Williams in one of his earliest roles. He plays a young married man who gets into major debt by renting furniture and buying a new Ford Mustang on credit. And he drags his poor wife (Margaret Willock) down with him. What did we learn from this film? Well, you can find out below.

So I was on TV, talking about Happy Days...

Adding some necessary labels to TV We Love.

It used to mean something to be on television, especially national television. When I was a kid, there were only three major networks (CBS, NBC, and ABC), plus PBS and a handful of independent stations that didn't always come in clearly. And that was your home entertainment, apart from books, magazines, newspapers, etc. The internet was still far in the future. There was no such thing as "streaming." Even cable and VCRs were but distant lights on the horizon back then. And so, my family and I would gather around the television set in our shag-carpeted, wood-paneled basement and watch shows like Alice, Fantasy Island, The Wonderful World of Disney, and Happy Days. Mainstream fare, in other words.

Many decades hence, long after television became irrelevant, I finally made it onto the boob tube. On Monday, November 10, 2025, my episode of the documentary series TV We Love aired on the CW. Had I not been on the show, I never would have heard of it. But I was, so I did. What can I say? It was still exciting to see myself on the screen, talking about Happy Days. My sister's family watched. Some of my internet pals and high school classmates tuned in. I tried to get some of my coworkers to watch, but I soon realized they had no idea what the CW even was.

Did you watch? If not, I have some good news: my entire episode is available for free right here. Enjoy! And if you want to know how I got involved in this project and what making the documentary was like, you can find out here.

Where is the 'Krapopolis' discourse?

The cast of the animated series Krapopolis.

The Fox animated series Krapopolis is currently in its third season. It has already been renewed for two more. Fifty episodes have already aired. The show's creator, Dan Harmon, is the man behind the cult classic NBC series Community and the co-creator of the pop culture juggernaut Rick & Morty. The voice cast includes Richard Ayoade and Matt Berry of The IT Crowd, as well as Hannah Waddingham of Ted Lasso. Numerous famous comedians and character actors have lent their voices to the show as well.

Fox has not been bashful in its promotion of Krapopolis, which currently airs in the 9:00 EST Sunday night timeslot as part of the Animation Domination block alongside such hits as The Simpsons and Bob's Burgers. The animation budget is obviously robust, and the stories are often quite ambitious, referencing both ancient history and Greek mythology while commenting slyly on the foibles of modern times.

So why is no one talking about this show?

Seemingly every aspect of The Simpsons has been scrutinized, parodied, analyzed, criticized, and recontextualized over the course of the last few decades. Similar attention has been paid to South Park, King of the Hill, Bob's Burgers, Beavis & Butt-head, and many other so-called "adult animation" shows. This genre tends to attract obsessives with strong opinions. But it's rare that I see anyone online discussing Krapopolis. Where are the video essays? Where are the think pieces? Where is the fan art? Where are the memes? Where are the tweets?

There should be plenty to discuss here. Krapopolis is set in Ancient Greece and centers around a family that contains gods, humans, and monsters. (Yes, all three in one family.) These characters have a lot to deal with, since they're always fighting among themselves and fending off attacks (often supernatural ones) from outsiders. And if that's not enough, the family is also attempting to get civilization off the ground and govern the first-ever city, despite the general public not understanding what a city is, what civilization is, or how government even works. Big things happen every week on Krapopolis. The characters embark upon quests, go to battle, cast spells, etc. Just this season, a major power shift has occurred within the family, with neurotic human Tyrannis (Ayoade) ceding the crown to his jovial, hard-partying father, Shlub (Berry), a combination centaur and manticore. And, again, this is all presented as satirical commentary on the modern world.

Somehow, despite its prominence on the Fox schedule, Krapopolis has managed to remain functionally invisible since it premiered in 2023. I think this is the first time I've written about it, and I've seen nearly every episode. That's the weirdest thing about this show. I generally find myself indifferent to it—not bored or irritated, necessarily, just strangely unmoved. In the abstract, I can appreciate the cleverness of the writing, but I can't honestly say the show has ever provoked me to genuine laughter. I'll never find myself thinking back on some joke from Krapopolis and snickering with delight.

My guess is that the rest of the world is as indifferent to the show as I am. And so, Krapopolis exists in an airless, soundless comedic vacuum. Fox will continue to produce and air episodes of it. The public will continue not to care. And the cycle will continue for, what, eight or nine more seasons? It's like this show is a "blockbuster" movie that plays to empty houses but continues to get sequels that no one asked for. I'm starting to suspect this entire enterprise is some sort of money laundering scheme or tax writeoff.

Am I wrong? Do you have strong opinions, positive or negative, about Krapopolis? Let me know.

Update regarding that 'Happy Days' documentary that I'm in!

Some promotional artwork for TV We Love.

In case you don't follow me on any of my social media accounts, I have some exciting news about the Happy Days documentary that includes an interview with me. The show will air on the CW on Monday, November 10, 2025 at 8:00 EST and 7:00 CST! The title of the series has changed from TV That Changed the World to TV We Love, and it has switched networks from CBS to the CW. That's showbiz, I guess. I'm just happy that it's finally going to air, and I hope you will watch it.

In the meantime, TV We Love will air every Monday night on the CW for the next eight weeks. The show premiered tonight with a look at I Love Lucy. Future episodes will cover Dynasty, Cheers, The Love Boat, The Brady Bunch, and more.