THE TELEPHEMERA YEARS: 1988, part 5

Written By:

Alan Boon

Ah, telephemera… those shows whose stay with us was tantalisingly brief, snatched away before their time, and sometimes with good cause. They hit the schedules alongside established shows, hoping for a long run, but it’s not always to be, and for every Street Hawk there’s two Manimals. But here at STARBURST we celebrate their existence and mourn their departure, drilling down into the new season’s entertainment with equal opportunities square eyes… these are The Telephemera Years!

1988-89

It was tough time for anything that wasn’t a sitcom in the 1988-89 ratings, with thirty-minute yuckfests filling nine of the top eleven spots, several of them newcomers gatecrashing a party that had been going on for a number of years since the mid-1980s action show slump. Although his terrible sweaters are now far from the worse thing about him, Bill Cosby and his family ruled the roost, although fresh competition from the more blue-collar Roseanne was ready to push it close for the number one slot. The Cosby Show was one of six NBC sitcoms in that top eleven, the rest of the slots filled by Roseanne’s ABC compadres Who’s the Boss? and Anything But Love, with CBS supplying the only non-comedy shows in the list, the ever-dependable 60 Minutes and Murder, She Wrote.

The turn away from hour-long crime and action shows saw Moonlighting, Simon & Simon, The Equalizer, and Miami Vice all enter their final seasons as Fall 1988 rolled around, with the rebooted Twilight Zone and whatever the Hell Highway to Heaven was also coming to an end. In their places, there was fresh hope from Midnight Caller, Father Dowling Mysteries, and time travel show with a difference Quantum Leap, a rare genre arrival on a schedule all but shorn of such fare, although the furries still had ALF and Beauty & the Beast to keep them satisfied. Those were all shows that were aimed at adults: what about those that targeted their toy-hungry offspring? This is the story of four of 1998’s new kids’ shows…

Superman (CBS): It’s fairly doubtful that many of us had – or will have – an animated series produced for our fiftieth birthdays, but then it’s even more unlikely that Superman is reading this. Created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster in 1938, and published continuously ever since by DC Comics, the last son of Krypton was the first superhero to reach his golden milestone, an anniversary celebrated with no small amount of publicity. To cash in on the buzz, Ruby-Spears Productions partnered with DC to produce a new Superman animated show, his first since 1968’s The Batman/Superman Hour, although the Man of Steel played a big part in several incarnations the Super Friends between 1973 and 1985.

Ruby-Spears hired Marv Wolfman to develop the show, reportedly impressed by work he’d done for a Superman parody on The Garbage Pail Kids, unaware that he’d been writing superhero comic books for twenty years, including a run writing Superman in Action Comics. Wolfman produced a series bible that skewed close to the 1978 movie incarnation of the character, aided by character designs from comic book veteran Gil Kane; the legendary Jack Kirby also worked on the show, his final work for Ruby-Spears after a decade at the company.

Over John Williams’s classic theme, each episode began with the narration from the 1952 syndicated live-action Adventures of Superman show, re-dubbed by Super Powers narrator Bill Woodson, before the week’s adventure unfolded. Across the series, Lex Luthor was a recurring menace, but there were also appearances by comic book villains General Zod, The Prankster, Shadow Thief, and Syrene, as well as newly created threats Bonechill, Catpain Wildsharkk, Cybron, Dr Morpheus, and Starrok. Essential elements of the Superman universe such as Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, and the Daily Planet also featured, as well as deeper dives STAR Labs, Suicide Slum, and Inspector Henderson, a character who first appeared in The Adventures of Superman radio show that ran from 1940 to 1951.

After the main segment of the show, The Superman Family Album took the last few minutes, bringing some important moments from Superman/Clark Kent’s early life, beginning with his discovery by Ma and Pa Kent and moving through his infancy, adolescence, first date with Lana Lang, graduation from high school, and the move to Metropolis. The segments were the idea of CBS vice-president of children’s programming Judy Price, who was initially dead set against bringing a superhero show into her Saturday morning line-up but was overruled by her bosses.

Overcoming some issues with CBS standards and practices, Wolfman and company brought a faithful version of the Man of Steel to screen, something others have struggled with before and since. Despite that, the show struggled in the ratings, not helped by an early slot in the CBS schedule when a younger audience preferred Winnie the Pooh or Gummi Bears on the other channels. This, coupled with high-licensing fees and the passing of the anniversary that sparked the revival, saw the show’s cancellation at the end of a thirteen-episode first season.

The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley (NBC): Martin Short created Ed Grimley when he joined the improv comedy troupe Second City in Toronto, first performing the character as an unnamed parent in a school sketch. A hyperactive man-child with an ever-growing cowlick and an obsession with popular culture (and particularly Wheel of Fortune host Pat Sajak), Grimley soon became a part of SCTV‘s second season in 1982, debuting the character in a skit titled “The Nutty Lab Assistant.” In 1984, Short moved to Saturday Night Live, taking Grimley with him, and he appeared as the character in a Showtime special, Martin Short: Concert for the North Americas.

Short soon found success in Hollywood, starring as a reluctant hero in The Three Amigos alongside Steve Martin and Chevy Chase, and as a hypochondriac grocery clerk in Innerspace, and this inspired Hanna-Barbera to propose an animated series featuring his most famous character. Smurfs and Snorks producer Freddy Monnickendam oversaw the development of the show and he put together a writing team that included Short’s brother Michael, a Second City alumnus himself.

Titled The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley, the beef of the show saw Short voice Grimley in a series of mishaps that usually saw a mundane situation quickly turn into an outlandish one, such as episode one’s escalation from looking after his cousin’s horse-drawn handsome cab to riding the horse in a race, or an attempt to fix a leaky water heater wending with him stranded on a desert island and meeting an Amy Earheart analogue. Along with the Ed Grimley segments, Short also voiced one half of The Amazing Gustav Brothers, whose practical science lessons often went very wrong. The other Gustav brother was voiced by veteran comic actor Jonathan Winters (who also voiced Grimley’s landlord, Leo Freebus and had filled the role of Papa Smurf for Monnickendam), joining a cast that also included future Star Trek: Deep Space Nine crewman René Auberjonois, the ubiquitous Frank Welker, and Second City’s Andrea Martin, Catherine O’Hara, and Dave Thomas. Joe Flaherty, another ex-SCTVer, also appeared as Count Floyd, Grimley’s favourite television host, presenting a live-action scary story segment.

The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley debuted on September 10^th 1988, paired with 2 Hip 4 TV, an hour-long variety show set in a bowling alley and hosted by Colin Quinn and Ahmet Zappa, which included musical performances by cool young bands, part of an attempt to hold onto the Saturday morning audience as it aged. Thirteen episodes were produced but the mix of juvenile humour and enough nods for an older audience wasn’t enough to earn a second series, although that was at least six episodes more than 2 Hip 4 TV. Ed Grimley next showed up, in live-action form, in another Martin Short stand-up special on HBO, later marrying Miss Piggy on an episode of Muppets Tonight and appearing to die on an episode of Saturday Night Live, although guardian angel Chevy Chase brought him back to life and he continues to pop up here and there.

C.O.P.S. (syndication): Aware that their cash-cow GI Joe and Transformers action figure lines were beginning to wane after their mid-1980s peak, toy giant Hasbro were constantly searching for the next big thing, introducing Air Raiders, Army Ants, Battle Beasts, Inhumanoids, and Visionaries in a short period of time, all with varying levels of success but no real longevity. For its new line for 1988, Hasbro turned to Bart Sears, a recent graduate of the Joe Kubert School of Cartooning and Graphic Art, who had been working for the company in toy design, package art, and producing mini-comics that were given away free with action figures to explain the lore of their universes. Clearly inspired by the success of RoboCop (which had been the number one film at the box office on its opening weekend), Sears designed a range of characters for the C.O.P.S. N Crooks series with a tagline of “fighting crime in a future time” that would not only be realised in action figure form, but also receive the customary accompanying syndicated cartoon (and a comic book from DC Comics).

C.O.P.S. stood for the Central Organisation of Police Specialists, tasked with protecting Empire City from the C.R.O.O.K.S. (thankfully not given a backronym), gangsters led by the scheming Brandon “Big Boss” Babel. The C.O.P.S. are under the command of Baldwin P Vess, aka Bulletproof, an FBI Special Agent given a pair of cybernetic legs after a car crash caused by Big Boss left him hospitalised. Bulletproof recruits a cadre of from across the US, including tough Chicago cop Rex “Bowser” Pointer, former Texas sheriff Walker “Sundown” Calhoun, Susie “Mirage” Young from the San Francisco PD, and local second-in-command, PJ “Long Arm” O’Malley. The entire C.O.P.S. team is outfitted with hi-tech equipment to take the battle to the C.R.O.O.K.S., themselves augmented by inventions created by Big Boss’s chief scientist, Dr Badvibes.

Developed for TV by veteran scripter Bruce Shelly, the C.O.P.S. animated show – both the cartoon and the comic book dropped the “N Crooks” part of the name – was produced by DIC Animation City, who outsourced to Canadian studio Atkinson Film-Arts, best known for The Raccoons series of cartoons. It debuted in syndication on September 19^th 1988 with the first of sixty-five episodes that began in media res, the battle between the C.O.P.S. and C.R.O.O.K.S. already underway. It wasn’t until a two-parter seven weeks later that the origin story was told, although – as with most syndicated shows – the episodes were designed to be shown in any order.

With each episode accompanied by a moral message imparted by one of the cast, the daily episodes aired through to December 1990. Re-runs continued afterwards and in 1993 it was re-titled Cyber C.O.P.S. and aired on CBS, with a USA Network showing it under its original title in 1995. Fifteen issues of the comic book and two series of action figures were eventually produced, but the toy line was not the hit Hasbro were looking for and the search for a new GI Joe went on.

Hey Vern, It’s Ernest! (CBS): Coming up through local theatre in Kentucky and Tennessee, Jim Varney made his first steps towards TV fame when he joined the cast of the Pop! Goes the Country, a weekly syndicated variety show that was filmed at Nashville’s Opryland, where Varney was a cast member. Further appearances on The Johnny Cash Show led to a part in the TV version of Operation Petticoat as Seaman “Doom & Gloom” Broom and various characters in the catastrophe that was the Pink Lady variety show on NBC during the Summer of 1980. Returning to Nashville, Varney was hired by advertising agency Carden & Cherry, with whom he created the rubber-faced, fast-talking, Southern-accented Ernest P Worrell, first appearing in a commercial to advertise the appearance of the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders at a Bowling Green, Kentucky, amusement park.

Ernest became very popular, very quickly, appearing in campaigns for Coca-Cola, Chex, and Taco John’s, and Carden & Cherry founders John R Cherry III and Coke Sams received several offers from national companies wanting to use the character. Varney also created several other characters, mostly Ernest’s family and friends (including the unseen Vern) but also loud military man Sgt Glory. Seeing further potential in the characters, a direct-to-video special – Knowhutimean? Hey Vern, It’s My Family Album – was released in 1983, and two years later Ernest appeared in the film Dr Otto and the Riddle of the Gloom Beam.

Varney continued to make commercials and personal appearances as Ernest, and the reaction to the character when he was introduced at the Indianapolis 500 so impressed Disney executives Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg that they contacted Carden & Cherry with an offer to back an Ernest movie. Varney was initially reluctant, fearing that he’d be typecast as Ernest when he had wider ambitions, but filming began in Tennessee in September 1986, with a script written by Cherry and Sams, although Varney improvised much of his own dialogue. Ernest Goes to Camp made almost seven times its $3.5 million budget and a sequel – Ernest Saves Christmas – was immediately put into production, the first movie to be filmed at the Disney-MGM Studios in Orlando, Florida.

The Ernest character was particularly popular with children and a Saturday morning TV show seemed an obvious next step. Selling the show to CBS, Cherry’s Emshell Producer’s Group partnered with DIC Animation City to produce Hey Vern, It’s Ernest!, a live-action showcase for Varney’s characters that also used much of the cast of the various Ernest productions over the years, including Bill Byrge, Debi Derryberry, and Gailard Sartain. A zany sketch show, thirteen episodes were produced, earning Varney a Daytime Emmy, but there was no second season in the offing. Instead, it was back to movies, with another seven Ernest features released between 1990 and Varney’s untimely death from lung cancer in 1998. Despite playing Jed Clampett in the 1993 movie revival of The Beverly Hillbillies, and voicing Slinky Dog in the first two Toy Story movies, Varney never did escape his finest creation.

Next time on Titans of Telephemera: Aaron Spelling wasn’t just the Dynasty man!

Check out our other Telephemera articles:

The Telephemera Years: pre-1965 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1965 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1966 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1967 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1968 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1969 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1970 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1971 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1973 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1974 (part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)