Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Brake Out The Jiffy Pop!






It's time for a new segment on Trustar Vibrations. We will be bringing some great television shows from the past. So warm up the set, grab your Jiffy Pop, tip back the Barc-A-Lounger and get ready for some Tee Vee!
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First up what is almost unanamously know as one of the worst American TV shows in history, My Mother The Car. It does deserve to be seen. Hey, everything else is only going to get better!
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Wiki says:
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My Mother The Car is an American television situation comedy which aired for a single season on NBC between September 14, 1965 and September 6, 1966. Thirty episodes were produced in all, produced by United Artists Television.
Critics and adult viewers generally panned the show, often savagely. In 2002, TV Guide proclaimed it to be the second-worst of all time, just behind The Jerry Springer Show. In 2009 the O'Reilly Factor voted it the worst TV show of all time, with Jerry Springer second.

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Synopsis:
The show follows the exploits of attorney David Crabtree (played by Jerry Van Dyke), who, while shopping at a used car lot for a station wagon to serve as a second family car, instead purchases a dilapidated 1928 "Porter" touring car. Crabtree heard the car call his name in a woman's voice which turned out to be that of his deceased mother, Gladys (voiced by Ann Sothern). The car, a valuable antique, is a reincarnation of his mother who talks (only to Crabtree, of course) through the car's radio. The dial light flashed in sequence with "Mother's" voice. In an effort to get his family to accept the old, tired car, Crabtree brings it to a custom body shop for a full restoration, which in turn brings it to the attention of a rather shifty car collector.
For the rest of the series, Crabtree is pursued by the avaricious Captain Manzini (Avery Schreiber), who is determined to acquire the valuable automobile from Crabtree. In a running gag characterizing his shifty nature, Manzini (who resembles a 1920s silent film villain) always mispronounces Crabtree's name when speaking to him. "Now, then, Crabapple..." "That's Crabtree." "Whatever."
Others in the cast included Maggie Pierce as wife Barbara and Cindy Eilbacher (the sister of Lisa Eilbacher) and Randy Whipple as the kids, Cindy and Randy.
My Mother the Car belonged to the genre of "wacky" TV sitcoms popular at the time that featured supernatural characters and cartoonish situations, such as Bewitched and My Favorite Martian, but it failed and for many years afterward was widely ridiculed as the quintessential "worst show of all time," though many competitors have vied for that title since then. It did not help that the highly respected Dick Van Dyke Show, starring Jerry's brother, was still on the air at the time on another network. It might also be argued that the show was somewhat ahead of its time (Knight Rider, a more-successful 1980s action program, also uses the talking car concept). Audience demographics was an emerging science in the mid-1960s. My Mother the Car was a hit with younger viewers, but no one at the time knew just how to exploit the youth market with a live-action sitcom.
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