My Mother the Car wasn’t a bad show. Jerry Van Dyke was decent in it. The wife was attractive and the kids weren’t obnoxious. Of course he had to keep the fact that his mother’s spirit was in the car a secret, or else people would have feared for his sanity. What ruined it for me were the formulaic plots involving Avery Schreiber as an obsessed car collector named Captain Manzini who was always trying to buy or steal the car (a 1928 Porter) from Dave Crabtree (Van Dyke), always by unscrupulous means.
Strictly speaking, the idea of someone coming back as a car is orders of magnitude more stupid than the idea of martians or genies. Martians and genies are “real” (mythological) things. Coming back as a car is just stupid, the Stephen King novel notwithstanding.
Yep, in the last three years even. I was so looking forward to it and then it was nothing but teh stupido.
That’s certainly not how I look at it. 
We used to sing, “It’s about time, it’s about space, it’s about time I slapped your face!” I vaguely remember the show, it must have been pretty bad, I remember a lot of the “Gilligan’s Island” episodes.
Seems like “The Time Tunnel” was airing about the same period, all I can remember of that is two guys running down the tunnel that broke down every single time they used it.
The Time Tunnel was a good show. It had Lee Meriwether in it.
One of the things that keeps me coming back to the SDMB is stuff like the above. I find it both interesting, and vaguely upsetting, that you can post about what prevented My Mother the Car from being a good TV show, and I find myself agreeing.
I would nominate a more recent entry - The Crazy Ones, the last thing Robin Williams did before his unfortunate death. If ever a show absolutely stank of desperation, that was it. As line after line clanked heavily to the ground, I could hear the network in the background saying “You love it, don’t you? Tell us you do! It’s great, isn’t it? Isn’t it? Robin Williams is funny! ISN"T HE!!! YOU HAVE TO LOVE THIS - MY CAREER IS ON THE LINE!!!”
Regards,
Shodan
That show is terrible. It’s my guilty pleasure on long plane rides.
I just finished watching a show called “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” that I discovered on a plane. It’s pretty bad but also kind of endearing.
I just read about Airwolf. No, not the first three seasons. But apparently the last season was bought out by USA Network. Who didn’t hire any of the original cast. Who used a body double to kill Ernest Borgnine. WHO DIDN’T HAVE ACCESS TO THE AIRWOLF CHARACTER. So they literally used footage from the first three seasons.
Surely that has to be a contender, a show in which the producers don’t have rights to the title character?
The Hensel twins do not have two heads. They are, as they put it, two people who happened to be born stuck together.
:rolleyes:
I loved their show precisely because they are so otherwise normal.
And don’t forget Mr. Ed. Talking car, talking horse. Ay, what’s the difference? That period was definitely known for unique story lines.
It’s been awhile since I saw it, but didn’t everyone in the past, no matter how far back or where, always speak English?
Remember in the early 1980s when some Christian-oriented wackos were playing albums backwards to expose satanic messages? Apparently the “Mr. Ed” theme song contains such a message. :rolleyes:
Weren’t there some homeless people they could have been feeding right about then? :dubious:
Anyway, I’m going to add the Republican Convention to this list.
And for any given election year.
Close–they spoke Amurkin; even the English.
Actually if you play the Satanic Mass backwards it was Mr Ed theme.
I’m going to go with Davey and Goliath, mentioned upthread.
Why?
Because while there may in theory have been worse shows, there were none I could not avoid.
If you were a kid growing up in the '70s, and desperate for something to watch on TV on a rainy Sunday morning, Davey and Goliath was there - cluttering up the few channels available to you.
I probably owe it a bit of a debt, in that being forced to either watch that, or read books, or draw pictures - well, it was so bad, it actually convinced me to stop watching TV and to do something presumably more constructive. 
Why? It’s not my cup of tea, but I’ve managed to sit through an episode or two with my grandmother and be mildly entertained.
Wow, yeah that’s awful. I take back what I said about TLC having all the worst shows.
Supertrain
