What are you watching right now?

[Cavaliere (moderator emeritus)]

Criminal Minds: "Amplification"

[The Baron]

Tonight I will be ignoring election results and instead watching three MST3K episodes:  "Gamera vs. Zigra" (Joel), "Gorgo" (Mike) and "Reptilicus" (Jonah).

[Richard Willis]

If your DVR is still recording episodes it could be recording from two different channels that are rerunning different seasons of the show. I've seen this happen on other TV series.

Jeff of Earth-J said:

THE LONE RANGER: I am finally through season three. Clayton Moore is my favorite LR, but after watching 44 John Hart episodes in a row, it's going to be strange going back. (Oddly, my recordings leap ahead to season 4, episode 35; I don't know why I didn't get the first 34 episodes of season 4.)

[Jeff of Earth-J]

"If your DVR is still recording episodes it could be recording from two different channels that are rerunning different seasons of the show."

That is exactly what's happening with Bonanza. Right now I'm recording season 7 episodes and season 14 episodes from two different channels. But my Lone Ranger episodes have been frozen in amber for weeks now. 

EDIT: I just checked with Tracy and she says  we're not recording them anymore.

[JD DeLuzio]

We finally started watchingThe Boys. We're halfway through Season One, and really liking it. I was concerned that my wife, who sometimes can be put off by stronger content and language, might not like it, but she's into it. Fine programming, though not for all tastes.

[ClarkKent_DC]

We're watching another season of Black Love, the OWN network documentary show that talks to married couples about, well, being married, We find it very soothing, because it's very affirming of marriage and it's interesting and cheering to see happy people who are clearly in love with each other (mostly*), and who tell of life's challenges. Like one couple who are wearing complementary outfits; the wife is in a bright canary yellow sweatshirt with a huge bright blue bow in her hair, and the husband wearing the same color blue shirt and same color yellow knit cap. And they aren't kids; they've been married 11 years.

(* I say "mostly" because there are a couple of couples who say things that make you wonder if they're built for the long haul.)

One loving pair in the first season met in college. The husband was a football star who got injured and couldn't sleep lying down; he could only sleep sitting up on the couch. So his then-girlfriend rigged a way for him to sleep sitting up -- and also slept next to him, sitting up. (When I heard that, I fell in love with her.)

So far this season has been a little light on the celebrity testimonials, but we did have our friend Dulé Hill  from The West Wing and his lovely wife Jazmyn Simon, whom he met when he guest-starred on several episodes of Ballers.

They soon fell in love, they got married, they got pregnant, but she had a problem pregnancy. Some mothers have bouts of morning sickness, but she had some bizarro malady that meant she had morning sickness ALL day, EVERY day, for the ENTIRE DURATION OF HER PREGNANCY! Medicine helped only a little, and didn't stop it. Worse, Hill said, with this malady, there's usually a point where it stops. For Simon, that mark came ... and went ... and nothing changed. It didn't stop until she delivered her beautiful baby boy, Levi Dulé Hill.

[Jeff of Earth-J]

Now that "The Map Show" is on hiatus for another four years, we returned to...

BONANZA: We just finished season two for the "second" time. When we started, we had recorded about half of the season one episodes and half of the season two episodes. Byt the time we "finished" season two for the first time, we had a new batch of season one episodes, and by the time we finished watching those, we had more of season two's. Now we've finished season two for a "second" time.

We're about ready to make a big leap... across all of seasons 3-6 (except one episode). We been recording any "new" episodes broadcast since August, but have yet to fill that gap. I know Pernell roberts leaves the show at some point, but I'm not 100% certain when that it. Guess I'll find out soon. We've got a pretty solid block of seasons 7-14 so, if our mood holds, we'll likely be watching Bonanza fort some time to come.

[Commander Benson]

Jeff of Earth-J said:

I know Pernell Roberts leaves the show at some point, but I'm not 100% certain when that is. Guess I'll find out soon.

Roberts left Bonanza after its sixth season and, for me, the show went downhill after that.

One of my favourite anecdotes about Roberts' departure---I can't remember where I heard or read it; perhaps from Roberts himself on a talk show---involves the fact that he was constantly questioned about his decision.  To the point that, whenever he attended a party, the first thing he'd do after walking in the door was make a loud announcement to the gathering, "No, I am not sorry I left Bonanza!"

[Jeff of Earth-J]

According to the excellent tome Written Out of Television (recommended to me by you, some time ago), Roberts left Bonanza after the 1964/1965 season, but I wasn't certain whether that was the fifth or the sixth, so thanks for nailing that down. I know you to be as knowledgeable about vintage TV as you are about Silver Age comic books, so perhaps you could answer a question for me. I know from Written Out of Television that the three flashback episodes dealing with Ben Carwright's three wives are titled "Elizabeth, My Love," "Inger My Love" and "Marie My Love" (plus I've seen two of the three years ago), but none of my recent recordings have picked up any of those three episodes. Could you pin-point them by season for me? 

As I mentioned above, I just made my way through the John Hart episodes of The Lone Ranger. Speaking of Written Out of Television, John Hart is quoted as saying, "The guy producing it [The Lone Ranger] in those days was Jack Chertok and he was probably one of the cheapest guys who ever worked in Hollywood. Clayton Moore had done quite a few Lone Rangers and I'm sure they had somedispute with him. Probably he wanted to get paid." That comment gave me a chuckle.

Incidentally, I went to see Clayton Moore twice (at two different locations in two days) when he was wearing sunglasses instead of a mask and billing himself as "The Man Who Portrayed the Lone Ranger" as opposed to "The Lone Ranger". (I'm sure you remember the details of that court injunction.) He suggested a boycott of the 1981 film The Legend of the Lone Ranger, and I'm proud to say I've seen it to this day. Anyway, I asked him about the circumstances under which John Hart replaced him for two seasons. I wince now at having put him on the spot over something that was really none of my business, but I was young and genuinely curious. (He answered the question, but didn't provide details.)

[Tracy of Moon-T]

[Jeff of Earth-J]

Thanks, Tracy.

Just like The Fonz!

(That's from back when my friends called me "Jefro.")

EDIT of above post: "I'm proud to say I've not seen it to this day."

[Commander Benson]

Jeff of Earth-J said:

I know you to be as knowledgeable about vintage TV as you are about Silver Age comic books, so perhaps you could answer a question for me. I know from Written Out of Television that the three flashback episodes dealing with Ben Carwright's three wives are titled "Elizabeth, My Love," "Inger My Love" and "Marie My Love" (plus I've seen two of the three years ago), but none of my recent recordings have picked up any of those three episodes. Could you pin-point them by season for me? 

With pleasure, my friend, and thank you for the kind words.

"Elizabeth, My Love" aired in season two, on 27 May 1961.  At the end of the episode, Elizabeth Cartwright (played by Geraldine Brooks) dies after giving birth to Adam.

"Inger, My Love" aired in season three, on 15 April 1962.  It may surprise you that Inger Cartwright (played by Inga Swenson) does not die at the end of the episode.  She is the only of Ben Cartwright's three wives to make a second appearance.  That comes in "Journey Remembered", airing in season five, on 10 November 1963.  This is the episode that depicts her death.

"Marie, My Love" aired in season four, on 10 February 1963.  We do not see Marie Cartwright (played by Felicia Farr) die at the end of the episode, but we are told in the non-flashback portion that she was killed at the Ponderosa when she was thrown by a horse.

Hope this helps.

[ClarkKent_DC]

Continuing in the "in sickness and in health" vein, Black Love departed from its usual format of dropping in on four to six couples per episode to focus on one. These two were high school sweethearts, college sweethearts, grad school sweethearts. One day, they flew to Los Angeles for the guy's brother's wedding ... and he got on the airplane loudspeaker during the safety instructions and proposed. And when they arrived, the now-fianceé was surprised to be picked up in a limousine. That's because they weren't going to a wedding -- that was just a ruse -- but to an engagement party! The now-fiancé had arranged for both sets of parents and families to be there, and they had a grand time. (When I heard that, I almost fell in love with him.) They had a lovely engagement, a lovely wedding, a lovely marriage, a lovely pregnancy ...

... and the baby died during delivery. Hearing them tell how they coped with that was riveting.

The next two "Special Episodes" dealt with life under COVID-19. They looked at five couples who had varying experiences. In one couple, the wife got it, and suffered through all the symptoms, including constricted breathing so bad she felt like she was going to die. With another couple, the husband got it.

In another story, the couple didn't have it, but struggled around all the travel restrictions. The husband is a pro athlete in an international soccer league, and they lived in Wuhan, China (!), but left just before it broke out there ... and went to Malaysia (!) but left just before it broke out there, and hit a couple more countries. At one point, the husband was in the Czech Republic and the wife was in the United States, and different countries started closing their borders to travelers, so she resolved to go to him, and got stranded in Germany. The Czech Republic wasn't accepting travelers from Germany or from any of the other places she could connect to, so she wound up flying to London to stay with her brother and sister-in-law and she was apart from her husband for three agonizing weeks.

The husband in one other couple didn't get COVID-19; he got prostate cancer, and it was really aggressive. The problem there was that his doctor was afraid he might get exposed to COVID in the hospital because of the staff treating COVID patients. Worse, he couldn't schedule surgery at his preferred hospital because it wasn't deemed emergency surgery; it was categorized as "elective." He and his wife resolved to slip out of Washington, D.C. and go to Philadelphia, but it worked out that his mother-in-law knew somebody who knew the top urologist at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, which is only the greatest hospital in the whole entire world.

And the fourth couple lives in Detroit. The husband is a firefighter and the wife is a police officer, so they see COVID everywhere they go. But it swept through their household, and took a devastating toll on their 5-year-old daughter. This was early on, when the doctors didn't know as much as we know now. The doctors diagnosed the girl with strep throat and gave her antibiotics and fever reducers, and kept waiting and seeing if the symptoms went away. They didn't, so the doctors tried more things that also didn't work, because they weren't looking for COVID. Things developed into migraine headaches, and then swelling on the brain, and then infections in the brain matter, and then nerve damage, and then brain damage. Ultimately, the child didn't make it.

Here's hoping next episode is a little cheerier ...