What “classic” or otherwise noteworthy television event did you see as it actually unfolded?
I know the Challenger incident will come up as will plenty of sports-related responses, I’m thinking though, more along the lines of something…. different.
Here are two I can think of.
Literally decades ago, (we’re talking early to mid-70’s) I remember watching The Dating Game and Andy Kauffman appeared as one of the contestants and he did his “Foreign Man” bit (later to become Taxi’s Latka Gravas character). He stayed in character of course and gave bizarre but hilarious answers to the questions asked. It was the strangest thing. Then when Taxi first aired, my brother and I immediately recognized Kauffman as the guy who appeared on that Dating Game episode. Oddly enough, on the Biography type shows about Kauffman’s life, I never see any mention of his appearance on the game show.
Number 2. I remember seeing the “Lost” Seinfeld episode in which the gang gets caught up in a traffic jam caused by the Puerto Rican Day Parade in New York City (or something like that). In this episode, Kramer at one point sets fire to the Puerto Rican flag and I knew right away that they would catch hell for this. They did -and the episode (to my knowledge) has never aired again. The show also featured a funny bit where George, Jerry, and Kramer all use the bathroom in some strange building but have to assume a whacky character name and accent in order to pretend not to know one another. I’d like to see that episode again just for that bit.
For the Seinfeld one, I remember that. Wasn’t it the one where Jerry cut someone off in traffic and had to make that embarrassed gesture to show he was sorry for what he did?
I’m trying to think of something to contribute and the 100,000 hours of television watching I did growing up is all going blank on me right now. Can’t think of a single memorable incident. Which, in itself, is scary enough.
I saw the Lost Seinfeld episode as well. I loved the parts where George tried to lose the laser pointer beam that was stuck on his forehead.
I watched Mike Tyson bite off part of Evander Holifield’s (that’s who it was, right?) ear in July 1997.
Other than those, I don’t have any memorable events. Does seeing last episodes of shows count? 'Cause I saw the last episode of Cheers when it aired, back in 1992.
I didn’t see Andy Kaufman as “Foreign Man,” but I do remember seeing Paul Reubens as the Pee Wee Herman character on “The Dating Game.” At the time (1978-1982ish), I didn’t know who Pee Wee or Paul Reubens was–but the character was unforgettable. He became popular not too many years after that. I do remember one of his answers (although I don’t remember the exact question, so I’m having to back in to it):
“Bachelor #2, what is interesing about your clothing?”
(Pee Wee)
"I’ve got three pairs of socks that are all the same color!!!
(I did, however, see Andy Kaufman the night everything went haywire on “Fridays.”)
I remember at some music awards program, Lou Rawls was performing “You’ll Never Find Another Love Like Mine,” and in the middle of it, he started coughing. That went on for a few seconds, and when he finally got it under control, he picked up right where everybody else was (back singers and musicians had kept on playing as if there hadn’t been a problem).
Dick Clark had a live variety program in the late 70s or early 80s in which one of the guests was a person who was going to do a Houdini-style escape: chained inside a phone-booth sorta tank of water. When he didn’t emerge after a certain amount of time (60 seconds or so), they pulled the curtains up, thinking that he was drowning–but no, he wasn’t he was still fiddling with the locks on his wrists, and he motioned for them to drop the curtains again.
I remember watching the classic GLOW women’s wrestling program (created by David McClane (sp?) who has since resurrected it as WOW) the night that Suzy Spirit’s elbow was dislocated–IRL! It was a freakish ring accident, she was on the mat rolling backwards (to get behind one of the Headhunters), and the Headhunter happened to be standing on her hand. Her body was moving one way, but her arm was unable to follow, resulting in the dislocation. You could clearly see the protrusion caused by the bone pushing against the skin–they kept showing it over and over. And you knew something was wrong because when it happened, all action in the ring suddenly ceased, and she was on the mat clearly crying and holding her dislocated elbow with her other hand.
I didn’t see the fight, but I switched on ESPN just after the fight. I mean “just after” because some of my neighbors had ordered the fight, and I heard one of them saying “You mean it’s over?” So, I went to ESPN to see the breaking news. Although they had not broadcast the fight, they did have their people there for commentary.
Anyway, ESPN cut to “their guys” at the fight, and there they were, all three or four of them together, with the absolute most stunned, shell-shocked looks on their faces. As if written across their collective faces was one big WTF?
Well, I know this is in the same vein with the Challenger disaster, but I remember the night I was flipping channels between innings of the Braves game and happened upon an interesting discussion on CNN as to what was going on with O.J. Simpson. He had just failed to make a court appearance that morning as I recall.
A few minutes went by and I flipped back to the game. Three outs later, I flipped back to catch more of the discussion and found myself trapped in what at first I thought was the most boring Ford Bronco commercial ever.
I was watching the coverage on MSNBC the night Princess Diana’s car crashed and remember them cutting to a phone call of a reporter outside the emergency room in France. As the guy was talking to Brian Williams the French doctor came out and made a statement that Diana had just died and as the reporter translated it into English he started sobbing and Williams just went completely pale as he repeated the news. That was so creepy.
Similar to the Norm MacDonald one, I was watching the Dennis Miller show (the network version that ended up being shoved in the 2AM time slot in most areas) and they came back from a commercial and he hadn’t realised it and was sitting behind his desk cracking jokes with some of the crew or something, then turned to the producer and said “What’s the deal, Marty? Are we on fuckin’ vacation or something?” Whoopsie! That got quite a big laugh too.
OK. I watched the Apollo moon landing live in 1969! I was fourteen, and my younger sisters and I were spending the week at my grandparents because my folks were in Colorado(July 20 is their anniversary)…I remember thinking about how my grandfather, born in 1900, went from horse and buggy to the moon in one lifetime. But although I watched the TV I didn’t “see” it because I was so worked up that the images literally didn’t translate into pictures for me. I kept thinking “Where is it, where is it?” Then I went outside(it was clear here in Topeka, Kansas) and looking up at the moon and thinking that there were PEOPLE up there!!
I saw Sinead O’Connor rip up a picture of the Pope on SNL. And that was a Knick play-off game that stupid OJ interrupted.
“Shoot yourself already!” I remember yelling at the T.V.
P.S., was I the only one who thought of that scene in Blazing Saddles while watching that whole white Bronco thing? The one in which Cleavon Little holds a gun up to his head and tells the townspeople “I’ll shoot the nigga!”
I saw Sinead O’ Connor rip up the picture of the pope on SNL.
The one that still sticks in my mind is when Joe Theismann broke his leg during a Monday Night Football game. I was watching the game and when it first happened, you couldn’t tell exactly what had happened, just that something bad had happened.
Then some director at ABC sports found the angle that showed his leg snapping and played it, repeatedly.
I was watching the local NBC affiliate do on-the-scene coverage of a severe thunderstorm that was in the area. The announcer guy was talking when there was a big flash on the screen. Lightning struck the ground a few feet away from him. The camera guy was ok, but the announcer was out cold on the ground. He recovered fine.
While watching one of those World’s Most Incredible Video-type shows that are often on, they showed the footage.
Just remembered another one…besides a lot of the ones that were already mentioned…
Last September I was wacthing ESPN’s coverage of the Yankees-Red Sox game when Ryan Thompson sent a line drive back to the mound that hit Bryce Florie right in the face. It was pretty gruesome, with an awful amount of blood. No newscast replays showed any of the subsequent damage, just the moment of impact and then a cutaway. It’s quite different when you see it live, just like it was watching that Monday Night game with Joe Theismann.
My mother remembers watching a cute Marine and a little kid cleaning up on some television game show in the late 1950s. Two years later, everyone knew the guy–it was John Glenn.
My step-mother remembers watching an episode of The Newlywed Game and laughing at the introduction, where one woman was introduced as having reserved her wedding date six months before she met her husband. That was my real Mom, on the show with my Dad, now married to my step-mother.
Re: The Dating Game, I saw Pee-Wee on that show several times. Didn’t he go up against a moustache-less Tom Selleck once?
Hey, Dire, I’ve got one just for you! I was at Camden Yards, sitting just inside the third base OB tower, when Cal Ripken smashed his 400th homer. I was standing up to get a beer at the time. The ball came whizzing in so fast you could hear it, and it went right through some poor bastard’s hands and smashed him square in the nose, about ten feet in front of me. The guy shot blood over two aisles and about a dozen standing people. Worse, it bounced so hard off his face that it was caught by a guy standing about fifteen or more feet away. He ran away with the ball.
I’ve always wondered what that looke like on television.
I saw the SNL that Charlene Tilton hosted, where Charlie Rocket said “I want to know who the fuck did it” during the closing farewell. Tilton was sitting in his lap and she jumped off and gasped after he did that.
