“Wheezy Joe” in Intolerable Cruelty.
People having important information, but aren’t willing to talk on the phone about it and must meet up in person.
A happily married couple decide to get a divorce after having a petty argument and their best friends must figure out a way to bring them together again, all in less than 30 minutes.
That ones not been retired its still a staple of whodunnits and cop shows.
Airplane may have ruined this for serious drama, but I haven’t seen the old “the pilots are all incapacitated and our hero has to land the plane!” storyline in quite some time.
Surely you’re joking! 
Hen may not have been big, but he did shoot a woman in the head in cold blood.
L&O: CI Ex Stasis
He used the respirator because he had lung trouble, he murdered the woman to get a lung transplant.
Sitcoms having a Very Special Episode in which the characters deal with a serious issue, like drug abuse, or teen pregnancy, and such. I heard an interview on NPR recently with some TV writer, or producer (I can’t remember who it was). He said there there used to be a much sharper line between comedy and drama, and networks wouldn’t allow writers to tackle serious issues in a comedy out of fear that it might be seen as making fun of the issue. If they wanted to deal with a serious topic, the only way they could do it was with a Very Special Episode that took on a more serious tone than the rest of the series, so it was clear that they took the issue seriously and weren’t joking about it. With “dramadies” more common now it’s become acceptable to have the characters deal with those kinds of issues in a normal episode, eliminating the need for the Very Special Episode.
Men who did not let the ladies in their life use their special powers…
Who in their right mind would not let Samantha or Jeanie use the powers given to them???
Blink your nose Samantha, i need a new car…Jeanie, bring me fresh abalone.
done…
It might have helped Samantha if she had told Darrin she was a witch before they got married.
I once took an “interest inventory” test that was helpful. It rated interest in six categories: R - reality (dealing with physical things), I - ideas, A - Art, S - Social, E - Entrepreneurial, and C - clerical. The test isn’t meant to determine what you’d be good at, but what you’d probably enjoy doing if you were good at it.
Did she not? I mean, that’s usually a 3rd or 4th date revelation.
Yeah, it was a late revelation. She was living with the mortals and hadn’t told.
The first two B&W seasons of Bewitched are generally considered better than the color seasons, but haven’t been seen as much by most people. Those episodes are heavier on some fish out of water material for Samantha and more romance between Samantha and Darrin. The consensus best episode, named A Is For Aardvark for no discernable reason, features Darrin being given powers unawares by Endorra. The experience corrupts him and he asks Samantha to reverse time at the end to make it go away, sort of a Superman I ending. Again, the earlier episodes have a more pronounced romantic element than many fans find endearing. Aardvark and others make the point that witchcraft is corrupting, even though Sam winds up using some in nearly every episode.
Later episodes became more garish and used Sam’s relatives more to create mischief. Then actors started dying or leaving. Bewitched had a lot of great supporting characters, but the replacement actors were typically inferior to the originals. The crowning blow was Dick York’s departure. Elizabeth Montgomery may have preferred Dick Sargeant personally, but beyond the occasional snide putdown Sargeant had nothing to offer. York was more likeable, funnier, and a more believable romantic partner. Plus York wasn’t the straight man, his was the funny character. Sargeant couldn’t do that, and Montgomery wasn’t particularly funny, so the show had to resort to gimmicks like the awful Dr. Bombay episodes.
She told him on their wedding night, though before they had consummated the marriage. That actually left Darrin kind of high and dry (so to speak), since he had to come to grips with the situation and wonder what he had gotten into.
Endora, of course, was tickled pink, since she had been opposed to the marriage from the beginning.
WTF was wrong with Tony? Imagine going to work, and the tedium of dealing with dipshit senior officers when back home you have a genuine genie in the form of ripe young Barbara Eden more than eager to do your bidding. A guy that crazy shouldn’t be allowed near heavy equipment.
But does she have a belly button?
Yeah, don’t trust a human-looking creature without a belly button.
Besides, my understanding is that allowing a Djinn to grant your wishes is essentially a 'deal with the devil" and the wish will always have unexpected ironic negative consequences, similar to the short story “The Monkey’s Paw”.
Though, I admit my knowledge of Djinns may come more from bad horror movies than actual mythology 
In the original 1001 Nights there was a story in which a djinnaya falls in love with a mortal human.
On the one hand, she gives him lots of extravagant gifts.
On the other hand, she decides to take vengeance on all of his enemies, without stopping to ask whether he wanted any such vengeance. Or even if he considered them to be enemies. She wreaked havoc on his friends and family.
There was another story in which the daughter of the king of the djinni falls in love with a mortal. Getting her father to approve the marriage was a non-trivial ordeal.
Well, there’s always The Fisherman and the Genie" from the 1001 Nights – that had a genie determined to kill the guy who let him out, but it wasn’t a “Monkey’s Paw” wish with unforeseen evil circumstances. You may be right about that type of story being a relatively recent invention. I know that I’ve written my share of them.
That’s odd, I thought genies were always grateful to be released from their cramped bottles or lamps. But again, my djinn knowledge is mostly limited to pop culture.
And speaking of 1001 Nights, @mbh’s telling of the 1000 nights story in the previous post to yours makes it clear that the consequences for getting amorous with a djinnaya can be severe, even apart from any wishes made and granted. Cavorting with genies on any level is clearly a crapshoot:
This almost sounds like a ‘gritty, dramatic reboot’ of I Dream of Jeanie, ‘Bel Air’ style-- wasn’t Jeanie always granting what she thought would be a wish Major Nelson would have, and getting it hilaroiusly wrong?