On some Howie Mandel special, sometime in the 80s, he’s doing his shtick in a theater in the round. He’s wearing jeans and suspenders, the kind with two straps on the front that join in a Y in back and are held by one clip to the back of the jeans.
At some point he bends over for some reason telling a story and the back clip of his suspenders comes undone, springing the elastic loose and the back clip swings up and lands on his head. It took him, and the audience, completely by surprise and he freezes midsentence, mid-gesture, with one arm up in the air. He gets that wild-eyed Howie Mandel look and the auditorium is completely hushed for a moment. He yells out “Nobody move!” as though something/someone has attacked him but he doesn’t know what it is.
I can’t remember what happened next because I was dissolved in hysterical laughter. No apologies; it’s still one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.
Nice Zombie resurrection…I read about 3 pages before I realized.
When Dan Rather started to choke up on Letterman after 9/11 and apologized, saying that he’s supposed to be a “professional” and Letterman said something to the effect of “…good God man, you’re also human being.”
Jon Stewart after 9/11 (can’t remember the exact quote) saying “…we WILL get beyond this. We WILL be funny again.”
“OZ” when Adebisi raped Dino in the mail room.
“The Sopranos” when Tony beat the shit out of and killed Ralph for setting the barn fire that killed their racehorse.
“Rescue Me” when The Chief shot himself. I actually cried in real life. Also “Rescue Me” when Tommy found Lou dead after that explosion.
“Hell’s Kitchen” - May 2008 - when Chef Ramsay made the chefs think that they had to kill their own chickens. I became a vegetarian immediately after that episode.
When I was a kid, I was a huge Kiss fan. I had all the records, bought all the magazines they were in, etc. But as a child of 70s, when YouTube was Dick Tracy Two-way Television Watch level fantasy, I’d never actually seen them in motion. So when it was announced that they’d be the special guests on the Vincent Price Halloween Special in (I believe) 1978, I was stoked.
I remember talking my parents into letting me watch it (not that they were strict with that stuff, but with only one TeeVee, that meant we all watched it).
The moment that sticks out for me though, is not unbridled joy at seeing my heroes actually move, but that I was cruelly dissappointed that they were lip-synching. I mean, back in the day, that’s just what bands did when they went on variety shows, but I was crestfallen.
I can still remember when Paul Stanley did this pantomime car-driving motion (Detroit Rock City!) and thinking … how come his guitar is still playing?
Chicago Hope began about the same time as ER, but lost the ratings war to its Clooney-cast rival. Personally, I liked Chicago Hope better, because it starred Adam Arkin, Peter MacNicol, and Mandy Patinkin, among others, all actors I liked. Of course it didn’t last, although imdb says it went off the air in 2000.
At any rate, a character (the hospital’s lawyer? I’m not sure, as I haven’t seen any episodes since its original run) commits suicide by jumping off the hospital roof. Actually, he doesn’t jump, just throws a cigarette down, and walks off the edge with a determination I’d never seen in a scene like that. The character initially survived the fall, and was in the OR.
While on the table, and just before the surgeons try to save him, the character weakly says, “Let me die.” That’s all I can remember about that particular sequence, but it was powerful, and stuck with me. I’d love to watch that show again.
I watched Sinéad O’Connor say “Fight the real enemy” and tear up Pope JP2’s picture on SNL live. I was glad that I not only saw but was taping it, because this was long before YouTube and it was removed when it was rebroadcast (where they had the same song but used footage taken from a rehearsal earlier that day). The audience was absolutely silent- no applause, no booing, just a general “what just happened?” quiet.
I’ll never forget Kanye’s “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” happening live, and Mike Myers’ “WTF?” expression that reminded me of the girl from Addams Family Values (“Gary, that’s not from the script”). Myers handled it well and even had a moment with Kanye on SNL shortly after, but you could tell he wanted to be pretty much any place that wasn’t there.
Showtime used to air a sitcom called Brothers. It would probably be incredibly tame today but at the time it got a lot of press for having openly gay characters. At the time I didn’t have cable of any kind, but I watched an episode while in a (cheap) motel room in the '80s.
One of the characters was a flamingly gay character named Donald, who in the plot had a prize winning cat that he absolutely worshipped. In the episode that I saw he had to go out of town and he left the care of the cat- which was like entrusting the care of a child- to one or more of the titular brothers. While in their care the cat died- natural causes IIRC but I really don’t remember well- the important part is the cat dying. One of the brothers is a redneck-ish sort who puts the cat’s body into a paper bag. (I remember on the same episode he mentioned that his girlfriend was wanting to see "That new movie, The Colored People, so that would pinpoint this to around '86.)
Everybody is wondering how to break this news to Donald. When he comes home to collect his cat they have him sit down and they break the news to him and he becomes totally hysterical. Gay brother tells redneck brother “He’s hyperventilating… give me a bag for him to breathe into…”.
Redneck brother hands him… you guessed it… the bag with the dead cat. Donald, not knowing what’s in it, puts his face into it
That’s the only episode I ever saw of the show and I have no idea how it compared to any other episode in terms of comedy, but that scene was probably the most I had ever laughed at anything on TV to that point in my life.
The first color pictures from Mars (I think the Viking landers from 1976 sent back low-resolution black-and-white ones)
Muhammad Ali lighting the torch at the 1996 Summer Olympics (actually, he lit something that was then raised up to the torch; when they had problems with it, I was thinking, “Ali should just go up there and light it himself!”)
The last scene from Newhart (and they followed up on it on the The Bob Newhart Show reunion show)
1976 Battle of the Network Stars. An argument broke out when the ABC team accused the NBC team of cheating during the relay race. To settle it, the team captains decided to have a 100 yd. footrace. So Gabe Kaplan and Robert Conrad raced it out. Mr. Kotter vs. Pappy Boyington. Pudgy & pale vs. tanned & fit. And Kaplan smoked him - beat him by at least 10 yards. The whole thing covered by Howard Cosell.
The sixties space shots. I couldn’t tell you how many times I sat breathless hoping for a parachute to suddenly appear in the sky and the astronauts to be retrieved safely. The high point of course was Armstrong stepping onto the Moon.
Talking about the parachute moments; none were more nail biting than Apollo 13. Waiting for that chute to appear was agonizing. And I’m not talking about the movie, where you knew how it would end. I’m talking about the real deal where nobody knew if the parachutes had been damaged or not. I think there were many joyous shouts across the US and elsewhere that day.
Nowadays, live drama like that is hard to come by, and when it does happen it’s usually something bad like 9/11.
My mom and I stayed up late one Friday night in 1972 or was it 1973 - Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert? - to see this freaky English performer named David Bowie. And there he was in full regalia - wow!!! I remember thinking, this is no one-trick pony, this guy has IT, whatever IT is.
I think it was NBC that accused ABC of cheating, and the NBC team threatened to walk, claiming that it was rigged so ABC (which aired it) would win. (What happened was, one team’s best runner started about 10 yards back of where they were supposed to start, so a weaker runner would have less of a distance to run. The next year, they marked “baton passing areas” on the track.)
The whole clip is here. After the race, Telly Savalas (CBS) accused NBC of cheating, by having the final runner back up and take the baton from the 3rd runner way too early, since she was slow. The judges reviewed the tape and gave NBC a 2 second penalty, which meant ABC won the race. That’s when Conrad (NBC) went nuts, and finally agreed to a race between himself and Gabe Kaplan (ABC).
BTW, the clip is a fascinating & hilarious peek into 70’s TV. My favorite bit from Conrad -
“He is Greek (Savalas), and the Greek are famous athletes, and that’s how this all started. And he’s Jewish (Kaplan), he wants to arbitrate all this. And I’m German, I want to kill both of them!”
Mine is a childhood memory, (I googled) April 13, 1991. I was eight years old. I used to spend the weekends at my Dad’s crummy little apartment and he had a black-and-white TV in his bedroom. I was laying there watching Saturday Night Live like I usually did and R.E.M. came out and performed ‘‘Losing My Religion.’’ It was so late at night, so silent, so dark, and even though I’d never heard of them, that haunting melody stuck with me.
The other was was Columbine. I was sixteen. It was a bad year. I had just gotten home from school and they showed the footage on TV. I remember so clearly this clip of a student falling out of a two-story window to get to safety. It was utterly horrifying.
That event made me so afraid to go to school. I ended up developing a hernia I was so stressed out.
When I was three, my father made me watch the astronauts on the moon. I remember being puzzled that everyone thought this was such a big deal, since Felix the Cat regularly went to the Crab Nebula, which I knew was farther away.
Also: “Do you believe in miracles? Yes!” (1980 U.S. Olympic Hockey Team victory over the Soviets.)
And, “I am Kendra, the Vampire Slayer!” My husband and I looked at each other. “Huh? Oh!” Joss played it completely fair, but this was the best twist I’ve ever seen or heard of in fiction.
I didn’t even watch SNL as a kid but somehow caught that episode. It’s also stuck in my memory.
I also remember the first time I saw a bench-clearing brawl in a hockey game - I was about 9 or 10 and I don’t remember who the teams were, I think one may have been the Quebec Nordiques, that’s how long ago it was.
The first time I watched “Ren & Stimpy” - it was the “Happy Happy Joy Joy” episode - my then-boyfriend’s best friend and I were watching it and we were laughing so hard we couldn’t breathe.
What I remember about the Sinead O’Connor SNL moment is that I was watching it, but turned to a different station when she came on because I couldn’t stand her music. So I never even saw the whole ordeal. I think they reshowed the clip on some news program the next day before Lorne Michael had it sealed off in the catacombs of 30 Rock somewhere.
Avoiding the obvious big ones.
I was watching SNL and I dozed off during a commercial break. I woke up to some guy in the shower asking his wife about how to sing some TV theme song. It was sooooooo stupid that I was absolutely sure it was one of those fake SNL commercials. The only reason I had any doubt was it didn’t have any of the cast in it, but over time I was convinced that it just had to be a parody. I mean, it was just such a stupid commercial and so badly acted, how could it be real?
About 3 months later I saw that commercial during a different program.
One that sticks with me personally is from some time in the 80’s, 1986 or so. WWF, Saturday morning, Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake vs “Outlaw” Ron Bass. Bass beat him down and then attacked him with the spurs he carried to ringside. He cut Beefcake’s forehead open pretty badly. The put a big red X over the screen to “censor” it.
This was back when seeing blood in pro wrestling was something unusual and really shocking, especially to my 10 year old self. These days having a limo blow up is no big deal, but it really stuck with me.
I feel so young! I was born in '86. I don’t remember footage of the Berlin Wall, or Oklahoma City or Columbine (probably since it was during the day). I remember Diana’s car crash, I ran downstairs to tell my mom Princess Diana was in a wreck. 9/11 really stuck with me, of course.
Reading stories like this you really understand how television became such a central part of our lives.