I was watching old Newhart shows. The one thing I noticed in rewatching these is that they killed the character of Harley off. The character played by actor Jeff Doucette.
In the beginning of the last season. Joanna mention “poor Harley isn’t around anymore.” The next episode George says, “We had it at Harley’s Wake” (referring to food) and then the next episode Stephanie says she took the Harley Memorial Road.
I was wondering if anyone else had noticed something about a TV show till you watched it in reruns. I said, “small things,” but it can be anything really
Elaine and her “hot and heavy” jazz musician boyfriend in Seinfeld. I had seen the episode in its first run and a ton of times in reruns, but never realized that the reason he was having trouble playing his trumpet at the end was because he had gone down on Elaine minutes before (and quite vigorously apparently).
I just thought he was tired from having plain old sex.
The little things I notice are really little things. For example in a crime drama a sexpot type bad girl had a beauty spot on her right cheek in all scenes except one in the middle of the show and the beauty spot was on her left cheek. Mentioning these things would drive one old girlfriend to anger. My spouse of 25 years prefers to point out two or three others that I had missed.
I spotted Chelsea, from Two and Half men playing a different role earlier in the series while watching reruns. When I looked on IMDB, it turns out Chelsea was her forth role on the show.
Staying more on point to the OP, about a year ago or so I started watching Friends every night when I noticed that if you watch the 11:00pm episode they go in order (which I’d imagine is true for any series in syndication). Anyways, I started in somewhere around the middle of the 8th season or so. After the finale, the pilot aired the next day and I noticed something…Monica was all over Chandler. By ‘all over’ I mean things like sitting in the same chair as him or cuddling up against him at the coffee shop. Watching every episode I noticed that well before there was anything between them (in Paris) there was definitely a spark there.
Now, Monica was rather handsy with everyone, including Ross, and I assume the writers/producers were trying to set it up so they could write it in later in the series, but abandon it if they chose not to go that route. Either way, it’s one of those things that makes watching the re-runs fun and I give the writers credit for putting that much forethought into that relationship.
I thought it was kind of funny but not very surprising to notice when I was watching I Dream Of Jeannie that considering the fact that even though she’s a hot babe wearing a bikini she’s very rarely sexy. I also noticed that people are offering each other drinks all the time in the old Bewitched and no one ever refuses, I wonder what teetotalers did back then?.
I quite often will be watching a rerun then notice someone playing a small or guest role in an episode I’ve seen many times before, and suddenly realize, “hey it’s so and so who’s now actually quite famous”.
One such example, in some old Cosby Show reruns, Theo has a friend played by Adam Sandler. When the show was first on, no one would’ve known who Adam Sandler was except maybe Mr. and Mrs. Sandler.
There is an episode of A Different World with Dean Cain of Lois & Clark. His character is part of a group of kids from a rival college that come and do racist things to Dwayne Wayne and friends. Cracked me up the first time I noticed it! (Of course, the last season of that show brought us Jada Pinkett not-yet-Smith also).
A&E used to show episodes of ‘Nero Wolfe’, and after you watch enough of them, you notice the same group of actors show up in every show, sometimes playing two characters in one show. I found out there was indeed a group of about 20 actors the producers felt “got” the look and feel of the show and were used over and over.
Being 30, I’ve only ever watched it in reruns, but after watching 4 or 5 seasons of Alfred Hitchcock Presents in a short amount of time I noticed the exact same thing. That is, each episode seemed to have about 4 or 5 actors in it and typically 1 or 2 of them seemed to be from a pool of (I’d guess) about 20. I kinda liked it. After a while I got to know them and it kinda felt like going to watch a play every night.
This question came up in the etiquette columns now and then. Teetotalers and alcoholics were advised as to what to ask for, and how to get a drink that looked like a cocktail, usually ginger ale or seltzer water with some sort of garnish on it. A lot of hosts INSISTED that their guests drink alcohol, apparently, and wouldn’t take no for an answer.
I remember watching (or listening to, don’t remember) a talk show where someone was on talking about teaching kids to drink. Not in a bad way, mind you. But parents talking about their high school kids, going to parties, off to college soon. These parents, knowing their kids are going to start drinking soon would rather they taught them how to drink, how to handle their alcohol, what the effects are etc, instead of learning it for the first time at a prom party or in the basement of a frat house. It also takes some of the taboo away from it and makes it a bit less exciting when you’ve already done a bit of (responsible) drinking with mom.
Anyways, one of the things these parents taught their kids was if they didn’t want to drink, or if they had enough was to switch to ‘virgin’ drinks like you mentioned. It shuts people up if think you’re drinking.
I didn’t drink at all in college. Not for any real reason other then I didn’t like the taste of beer or booze. No amount of pressure was going to get me to drink so it really didn’t matter, however, I did get the shit pestered out of me and if I wasn’t drinking for some reason other then not liking the taste, the pressure probably would have gotten the best of me. Hell, there were a few times when I would hold a friends empty beer at a party just so people would stop asking me why I wasn’t drinking.
I have noticed after watching re-runs of “Seinfeld”, “Will & Grace”, “Friends” and probably other NYC based sitcoms that all their city street scenes are shot on the same set. There’s one street with a bunch of “New York-y” store-fronts, and the set designers just redress them. At one end of the set, the street makes a sharp curve (that’s utterly unlike any street anywhere in Manhattan, where all these shows take place.)
Product placements always seem to stick out more prominently in re-runs than they do in original broadcasts ISTM. Especially “Krispy Kreme” donut placements. Virtually every late 90s show had characters prominently holding a “Krispy Kreme” bag or box at some time or other.
Same thing with “Dragnet”, at least in the late 1960s revival and probably in the early 1950s original.
In “Moonlighting” when it was shown on network series (usually one episode every third week since it took so long to make one), there was sometimes talk about working on the “Anselmo case”, which I didn’t notice until re reuns.
<a> there’s a Superman visible somewhere in every episode, usually in Jerry’s apartment, usually as a fridge magnet. The best one was the “Bizarro Jerry” episode - there was a Bizarro Superman in Bizarro Jerry’s apartment.
<b> Jerry always has a new-for-the-time Mac on his desk. Most notably he had the 20th Anniversary Spartacus one, which was notoriously one of their biggest sales flops.