Tag Archives: 1960s

‘The Patty Duke Show’ (Season 1): A light, perfectly pitched time capsule back to a sweeter time

So…in a sure sign of continuing mental and emotional regression, I decided the other night to accessorize a drunk by watching a little cable…only to foggily re-discover we haven’t had cable in years (my first clue? No suitcase-sized box on top of a TV not made to support an envelope). I had been reminiscing about how much I had enjoyed those early years of cable and the rise of specialty channels catering to narrowcasting desires, and I thought: “Why not watch a little Nick at Nite?”

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Classic Educational Shorts (Volume 6: Troubled Teens): Back to school with Drunk TV

Now that I’m ambulatory enough to ride one of those motorized carts at the store (you can bet your ass I run into people and their carts on purpose―they never say shit to the “handicapped”), I noticed the other day that Walmart has school supplies loaded up and ready to go for all the little bastards heading back to s-cruel. And for the first time in over 30 years, I don’t have to buy any of it.

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All-Time Time-Wastin’ Champ: I’ve finished NBC’s soap, ‘The Doctors’!

After years and years of false starts, I’ve finally achieved another worthless TV-watching milestone: I’ve made it through The Doctors, the NBC daytime serial that ran for 20 years, and won the first Emmy for Best Show Daytime (1972).

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‘Mister Ed’ (Season 5): The solid laughs continue – an impressive feat!

A solid season of laughs for this beloved sitcom’s penultimate season, with a handful of classic moments. A few years back, Shout! Factory released Mister Ed: The Complete Fifth Season, a four-disc, 26-episode collection that gathered together the CBS sitcom’s last full schedule of shows for the 1964-1965 season. Simply put: hefty laughs throughout most of the episodes here…and that’s saying something for a high-concept fantasy/sitcom that should have burnt out long, long before this point.

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‘Gentle Ben’ (Season 1): Sweet, simple, expertly-done family television

When you’re knock knock knockin’ on heaven’s door, you can bet your ass you don’t watch challenging TV while you’re trying to make it through the night—you want familiarity. You want plots you can follow. You want some nice scenery. You want to see a bear eat a kid.

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‘Dennis the Menace’ (Season 4): Dennis is an older menace in boomer sitcom’s final season

Sooo looooooooooong, Dennis…and not a moment too soon.

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‘The Lawrence Welk Show’: Classic episodes are a glimpse into a past that has vanished

You can take the boy out of the bubbles…but not the bubbles out of the boy.

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‘Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom’: Thrilling & educational, Marlon Perkins paves way for ecology & conservation

Hey―we care about the planet here at the DrunkTV HQ. But we don’t wear diapers and tampons about it, that’s all. We don’t want to get taxed for it, or eat ground-up bugs so cows won’t fart, or drive an electric lawn mower instead of a kick-ass V-8. We like the Earth…we’re just not pussies about it. That’s why we like ultimate outdoor chad Marlin Perkins and his Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom series.

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‘Bonanza’ (Season 2): Popular Western picks up steam, gallops into Top 20

The Cartwrights ride into Season Two!

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The Ernie Kovacs Collection: Highly-imitated, TV auteur’s classic moments still hilarious today

When the most talked-about, written-about TV programming these days is a probably-closeted entertainer (rather badly) enacting an utterly phony, NDA-mandated “relationship” with a sports figure so everyone can make more money from the rubes who buy this shit…it’s time to descend into the DVD vaults and pull out something that entertains. That actually matters.

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‘Mister Ed’ (Season 4): Despite cast changes, sitcom returns to form in funny season

“Bless you, buddy boy; that’s why I love you: you think like a dumb animal.”

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‘Bonanza’ (Season 1): Epic Western ropes viewers’ hearts in first of 14 seasons

Bonanza, the single most successful television series of the 1960s (and, at 13 1/2 seasons, second only to Gunsmoke for network TV’s longest-running Western), created and produced by David Dortort and starring Lorne Greene, Pernell Roberts, Dan Blocker, and Michael Landon, has been lovingly and painstakingly restored and remastered for CBS’s and Paramount’s fabulous DVD boxed set, Bonanza: The Official Complete Series. The hefty set—112 discs in four chunky volumes—was executive produced by Andrew J. Klyde, and his results are spectacular: all 431 full-length episodes have been digitally remastered (including the problematic Season 2 transfers previously released) from the original 35mm color film camera negatives, complete with original music…and with a ridiculous amount of incredibly rare, fascinating bonus material included on this set. It’s an astonishing work of television preservation.

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‘Dennis the Menace’ (Season 3): With Mr. Wilson’s sudden exit, who will replace him?

“We sure are going to miss good ol’ Mr. Wilson.”

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Classic Educational Shorts (Volume 5: Rules for School): Pencils down, class, we’re watching a film.

I lived this stuff…and I believed all of it.

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‘Ripcord’ (Season 1): Stuck on a mountaintop? These men can help

Hey…where do we pull the chute on this entire new world, man?

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‘I Dream of Jeannie’ (Season 1): Classic sitcom will always please its Master – the audience

When are they coming for I Dream of Jeannie? I mean…the word “master” is thrown out at least ten times an episode by that scantily-clad genie slave Jeannie. Hasn’t this by now aroused the ire of some pajama-clad soy latte-drinking non-binary “pop culture author” who needs their “they/them” tantrum to be noticed today on Twitter? Isn’t a reckoning coming for this racist/sexist sitcom, and for all those who participated in it and who watch it today? Can’t someone please cancel 90-year-old Barbara Eden before it’s goddamn too late?

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‘My Three Sons’ (Season 1): A remarkably complex, innovative American sitcom

Escape is the only option today, I fear (if you’re lucky enough to be able to escape, I should add). So if you’re going to retreat, you should go somewhere extraordinary.

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‘The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson’: Unflappable, supremely confident, with laser-precision timing

Just a minor administrative note before the review: Drunk TV has a new official mascot for the foreseeable future. Enjoy!

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