Elie's Expositions

A bereaved father blogging for catharsis... and for distraction. Accordingly, you'll see a diverse set of topics and posts here, from the affecting to the analytical to the absurd. Something for everyone, but all, at the core, meeting a personal need.


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Thursday, November 01, 2007

TV Trivia Thursday

and he's tellin' me more and more
about some useless information
supposed to fire my imagination"
- Rolling Stones, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"

I'm still gathering my thoughts and sifting through my feelings about last weekend's retreat for bereaved parents, and will likely be sharing more in a day or so. Meanwhile, though, I have a new, rather lighter blog-feature to inaugurate today, as sort of a follow-on to the Musical Monday quizzes alternately hosted by Soccer Dad and myself.

Introducing TV Trivia Thursday, a chance for the world to see whether anyone else has as much "useless information" rattling around in their brainpan as I do.

These mini-quizzes will consist of 7-10 TV-related trivia questions, some original, some researched. As with my musical selections for the Monday quiz, the shows of my childhood and adolescence - i.e., mid 60s thru early 8os - will predominate, but by no means will that be a firm restriction.

Without further ado, here's today's quiz. Have fun!

1) Name at least two shows that had beginning and ending themes with different lyrics.

2) Well before the modern trend towards breaking the "fourth-wall", these two stars of a 70s sitcom literally "met their maker", in a clever cameo by the author of the original work on which the show was based. Name the show and characters, and for extra credit, the "creator" they encountered.

3) This was the last television show produced by Mel Brooks, a commercial failure but still remembered fondly by those few of us who watched it.

4) Only once in television history (AFAIK) was a new, never before broadcast scene added to an episode when it was re-shown in a summer rerun. As a hint, the added scene related to an upcoming spinoff of the show. Name the original and spinoff series.

5) This actor first appeared on a popular series in a one-time guest shot, but so stole the show that he was soon brought in to replace one of the leads, playing an entirely different role. Name the show and actor.

6) Which two shows were famously revealed, in their respective last episodes, to be entirely fictitious - i.e., none of the previous several seasons' worth of events ever really "happened"?

7) Which sitcom birth so captivated the nation that it knocked a presidential inauguration off the headlines the next day?

8) What show and episode featured television's first interracial kiss?

9) Name at least two of the three men who flunked their auditions to star in "The Monkees", only to later achieve musical fame on their own.

14 Comments:

At 11/1/07, 7:11 PM, Blogger Elder of Ziyon said...

Offhand:
1) The Flintstones and Gilligan's Island. Happy Days as well (at least in its initial version with Rock Around the Clock as its theme.)

3) When Things Were Rotten.

6) Newhart and St. Elsewhere.

8) Star Trek but sorry, I am not so much of a Trekkie that I remember the name of the episode. And it wasn't consensual, anyway :)

Here's one for you: What other TV show featured Bob Denver with a motley crew of lost people who exactly corresponded to the castaways on Gilligan's Island?

 
At 11/1/07, 7:35 PM, Blogger Elder of Ziyon said...

I just thought of another:

Name two spinoffs whose timeframes were decades after the original show.

 
At 11/1/07, 9:17 PM, Blogger Elie said...

EoZ: Thanks for playing and for the extra questions!

What other TV show featured Bob Denver with a motley crew of lost people who exactly corresponded to the castaways on Gilligan's Island?
"The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis", Denver's character was called "Kookie" I believe

Name two spinoffs whose timeframes were decades after the original show.
Mork and Mindy is one, spun off from Happy Days, AfterMASH is the other, spun off from MASH.

 
At 11/1/07, 9:18 PM, Blogger Elie said...

Oops, for the last one I meant to say "Trapper John, MD", not "AfterMASH", whose timeframe of course was immediately after MASH's.

 
At 11/1/07, 10:14 PM, Blogger Elder of Ziyon said...

You are correct with the second one, but the first one is much more obscure than that.

Answer here.

 
At 11/2/07, 2:49 AM, Blogger Yitzchak Goodman said...

The Beverly Hillbillies had a same-melody, different-lyrics
ending theme.

Stephen Stills was one of the failed Monkee aspirants.

 
At 11/2/07, 8:09 AM, Blogger Elie said...

And I also mixed up "Kookie" from "77 Sunset Strip" with Denver's character from "Dobie Gillis", Maynard G. Krebs. Aah, all those beatniks look alike!

 
At 11/2/07, 8:58 AM, Blogger Soccer Dad said...

EoZ is no Trekkie for sure.
8) Plato's Stepchildren
And there's a 3rd answer to EoZ's question: ST:TNG. (Of course the show was broadcast a few decades after the original.) Clearly he didn't live in his parents' basement long enough. :-)

2) I thought may be related to 3. One of the Merry Men was accused of betraying the others and was told, "Prepare to meet you maker," to which he responded "I didn't do it Mel."

6) It may not have been a whole series but a whole season of Dallas was explained away as a dream.

and Elie, I know that you know the answer to this but (related to 9) What did Michael Nesmith's mother invent?

 
At 11/2/07, 9:41 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

SD: On #3, I remember that line too but that wasn't wahat I was thinking of. (They didn't actually meet Mel)

9: Liquid paper. Always thought that was an Urban Legend, but Snopes confirms it's true!

 
At 11/2/07, 9:55 AM, Blogger Elder of Ziyon said...

LOL@Soccer Dad!

I suppose you can also add "The New Leave it to Beaver" as well. But I would personally define a "spinoff" as a show that starts while the original is still on the air; ST:TNG is probably a "sequel" (and Enterprise, which like most post-1990 TV shows I have never seen, was a "prequel.")

Hence, "The Jeffersons" is a spinoff, "Archie Bunker's Place" is a sequel.

 
At 11/2/07, 9:57 AM, Blogger Soccer Dad said...

No legend. With the royalties she earned, he started a (liberal, naturally!) think tank of sorts. There was a WSJ article about it a few years ago.

This is great.

And one other thing, related to 2. JM Barrie (Peter Pan) was a very good friend of Arthur Conan Doyle and wrote a couple of spoofs of Sherlock Holmes. One has Holmes going to Doyle and arguing with him and Doyle threatening to write him out of existence (or something like that.)

 
At 11/2/07, 12:37 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Sitcom birth? Could you be harking back to the birth of Little Ricky Ricardo/Desi Arnaz, Jr.?

 
At 11/4/07, 12:27 PM, Blogger Elie said...

Thanks for the great response to this new feature! Guess that's a motivator to keep it going.

Answers to items 1, 3, 6, and 8 were fully supplied - here are the rest:

2) The show was "The Odd Couple", on the episode where Oscar was moonlighting as a theatre critic (with Felix's clandestine help of course)! One evening outside the theatre, they met none other than Neil "Doc" Simon, author of "The Odd Couple" play. Felix asked for Simon's autograph, and Simon walked off with his pen!

4) The show and spinoff are Happy Days and Mork and Mindy. The story is: When Robin Williams originally did his famous guest-shot on Happy Days as wacky alien "Mork from Ork", the entire event was clearly shown to be a dream of Richie's. However, the character was apparently so popular that the network decided to build a new show around him, so when that episode was re-run that summer, they added a new tag. In this scene, Mork was shown speaking to his liason "Orson" (as he would later do in every episode of M&M) and stating that he was successful in making the earthlings believe his appearence was a dream, and that he was ready for his next mission, some 20 years later in time.

5) Harry Morgan first appeared on MASH in the 3rd season, during the original cast's stint, playing crazed General Bartford Hamilton Steele. His memorable performance so impressed the show's producers that he was hired to join the regular cast as Colonel Sherman Potter, replacing Colonel Henry Blake who was killed off at the end of season 3.

7) Correct Celia, it was the TV birth of Ricky and Lucy's Ricardo's son Little Ricky on "I Love Lucy", broadcast January 19, 1953, coincidently the same day Lucille Ball actually gave birth as well. These linked TV/real-world events took the lead headline the next morning in most papers, over the inaguration of President Eisenhower.

9) Stephen Stills was one, the other two were Paul Williams (pop star / award-winning songwriter) and Danny Hutton (Three Dog Night).

 
At 11/4/07, 8:05 PM, Blogger Jack Steiner said...

This was fun. I'd like to see it continue.

 

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