All right… one more.
True ‘KRP fans know about Les’ bandage, but did anyone pick up on the running gag used in “The New WKRP?”
For those not familiar, in the early 90’s several members of our favorite radio station returned to do a direct-to-syndication follow-up series. It started off slow, but by the time they stopped production, the show was actually a worthy successor to the original.
Anyway, the running gag: In the famous Turkey Drop episode from the original series, the flightless birds were released onto the shoppers at the Pinedale Mall. In the new series, every script included a mention of the Pinedale Mall. Sometimes it was part of an on-air spot (“Red Wriggles, the Cadillac of worms… now available at the Pinedale Mall”) and sometimes they dropped it into conversation. I think they even visited it once or twice.
I always liked to imagine that it was a case of the new writers slipping in a subtle tip of the hat to the original scribes of the series.