I Love Lucy is the biggest exception of all. The whole series (save parts of the Xmas special) is in black & white and it’s never been off the air. It’s the uber-sitcom. Over 60 yrs later and modern sitcoms are still using techniques it pioneered (from the 3 camera setup to live studio audiences to filming in LA instead of NYC). Desi Arnaz *invented *the syndicated rerun for crying out loud!
I meant that B&W episodes of a show that subsequently switched to color appear dated. Nobody is questioning the continued popularity of I Love Lucy, or of The Dick van Dyke Show or Leave it to Beaver, for that matter. On the other hand, how often did the black & white episodes of Bewitched or Green Acres air in syndication, as opposed to the color ones?
Just off the top of my head, I’m thinking that when you guys say, “I watched [name of series] for years and rarely, if ever, saw [name of episode],” it could be because of your local TV station and not some overarching pattern. (I say this mostly because my own experiences don’t seem to jibe with many of yours.)
Well in the latter case never since Green Acres was filmed in colour.
Not true. When I was in college in the early '80s, KLXI, a new station broadcasting from St. Cloud, MN, ran The Avengers every weeknight, starting with the Emma Peel episodes, including “A Touch of Brimstone.” I had been a fan of the show since I was in fifth grade, so I knew about the episode being banned; when I realized what I was was watching, I thought “Oh, wow, cool! Emma Peel as a dominatrix! Yessssssss!”
This was, I believe, in November of 1981.
Correction: KXLI, “K-41.” It was UHF channel 41.
Isn’t there a Married w/Children episode that was shown once and once only.
When Steve and Marci went to a motel and got filmed doing “the Nasty”.
Its been shown many times in syndication.
Yes, but it is back in and is in tact.
Yes, but it is back in and is in tact.
I believe it never aired the right way. I think they took the baby crying out of the opening so it was implied they were burying a dead baby, not a living one which was actually the case.
I don’t know if it airs at all in re-runs, though.
I know on a MASH fansite, they used to complain that the MASH Olympics episode never seems to come on. It might be bad luck and confirmation bias, though. I’m fairly sure all the MASH episodes air regularly.
I could have sworn I saw the first episode in black and white, on a color TV, and there are some B&W versions on YouTube, but the first season DVDs are in color and I don’t see any references to “colorizing”, so either I was mistaken or somebody decided to air the first episode in B&W one day for some strange reason.
(Another possibility: there was a separate B&W pilot, the way the Hogan’s Heroes pilot was in black & white but the rest of the series is in color.)
It’s funny but reading this thread made it occur to me that in the years since it was started, between Netflix, DVD season sets and my DVR I really sit and watch a syndicated airing of a show anymore. I do sometimes but not every day (or nearly so) like I did back then.
According to Wikipedia:
The debut episode was a mockumentary about the decision to move to a rural area, anchored by former ABC newscaster (and then-current host of the CBS game show What’s My Line) John Charles Daly. A few weeks after the show’s debut, Albert and Gabor returned the favor by appearing on What’s My Line as that episode’s Mystery Guests, and publicly thanked Daly for helping to launch their series.
I remember watching the entire first year of the series (Lisa agreed to try living in the country for six months, and the story arc ran from mid-September to the beginning of March), and so far as I can remember, every episode began with the “CBS presents the following program in color” intro. If there was a mockumentary, however, I’m sure at least the news footage was in B&W.
Lisa, BTW, initially wanted to return to the city, but changed her mind when she realized what that would entail; she particularly freaked out when she learned they’d kill Eleanor the cow.
I spent most of the period between 1991 and early 1996 recording episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I was recording afternoon syndicated broadcasts from two different Fox stations (one from Seattle, one from Spokane - I live midway between those two cities and got both cities’ stations on the local cable). Mon-Fri, one station broadcasting at 4:00 PM and the other at 5:00PM, and also both of the stations running the regular 7:00 PM first-run weekly episodes until the show ended in 1993. So I was able to record, usually, 11 episodes a week for several years.
Yet I somehow never managed to record the episode Who Watches the Watchers?
Yay zombies
Seen it in local late night syndication recently.
Saw it (flag and all) on TBS within the last few months. First time I’d seen that episode in nearly a decade.
Depends entirely on the local station. Some pulled it for years, some never pulled it at all.
I’ve never noticed a lack of that one showing up, whether on TBS or local reruns.