Pink Lady

I also watched this for the car wreck syndrome. Any second I thought for sure a head would come rolling across the stage. (you just never knew). I just loved when Jeff Altman and Pink Lady would try to talk to each other...you know, the usual banter of a variety show. It was funny because they couldn't understand what each other was saying. Altman would try to make a joke, Pink Lady would look at him, then at each other, and giggle. Very surreal...

I caught a showing of this variety show over on Trio, and cannot say I'm overwhelmed by this relic of the Carter Years. The idea was certainly original enough: Take a popular (and actually pretty talented) idol-singer duo from Japan, team them up with a second-banana American singer and craft a variety show around it. Nice idea, lousy execution. Where to begin...

1. The writing is rivaled only by those apocryphal monkeys trying to write Shakespeare, an sad fact as Mark Evanier is easily capable of much better than this dreck (look at his consistently funny co-writing work on "Groo the Wanderer")

2. Mei and Kei are talented enough singers, and probably were talented actresses in Japan, but they didn't have enough of a command of the English language to grasp the right comic timing for the language.

3. Jeff Altman DOES have enough of a command of the English language, and he couldn't make a man being tickled to death laugh.

This series should be watched ONLY to either torture detainees at Guantanimo OR if you want to see something so bad that it's funny in a horrific way (sort of like PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE). Be warned, though, as I have never been able to get anyone to watch more than about 10 seconds of the show--they get up and leave and invariably ask me "why are you watching this #&#@^!".

I've got to tell you the basic concept for the show. It will convince you that the programming people were either nuts or totally stoned. Jeff Altman is a horribly unfunny comedian. His timing, delivery and presence are less enjoyable than cancer. So, some network bigwigs thought they should give this terribly unfunny guy a series! BUT, to spice it up, it should also star a Japanese pop duo who speak almost no English!!! And, these Japanese ladies should also sing REALLY inane songs. Perhaps they were more popular than Pokemon in Japan, but they just couldn't make the transition to America--their music, to the average American, sounded as attractive as cats in heat. Well, the recipe for disaster was NOT yet complete. Nope---the show wasn't yet bad enough! So, they gave them a cast of supporting regulars who were even less talented than Altman! You KNOW you're in trouble when the standout star among these supporting "actors" is Jim Varney!!! Then, wrap all this together and "VOILA"--total dreck!! I do advise you, if possible, to see an episode (one episode was about all I could take)--just so you can see how bad it really was. The problem, though, is that this show was being re-broadcast on TRIO and this channel has recently dropped off the cable lineup throughout the country and is now a broad-band channel. So, if you don't get a chance to see it, I recommend you try to closely approximate the experience. First, find a family that doesn't speak any English and which has an annoying young child who thinks they can sing or tell jokes. Get a translator to tell the child to entertain you--that they should really give it their all. Then, when he or she begins, stab yourself in the head with a fork repeatedly throughout the performance. Then, remember that this is STILL better than watching PINK LADY AND JEFF!! "Know what I mean"?

...for if TV is indeed a vast wasteland, this was the show found at the lowest elevation near the stagnant alkaline pool. We had world hunger and want in 1980, and NBC could have spent money to solve it, but inexplicably used the funds to put this show on the air for five episodes instead.

Did Fred Silverman ever notice that the ability of Keiko and Mituyo to handle English was minimal at best? Heavily padded out with guest spots to cover this rather blatant shortcoming. (The first show featured as guest star...Sherman Hemsley. Be still my beating heart.)

Not to mention Silverman's failure to consider America was not exactly a massive market for Japanese "idol music," whose appeal to the Japanese is that it is entirely predictable. And yes, Jeff Altman -- with the exception of his own routine in the first show of a certain U.S. President trying to boogie -- is scathingly unfunny.

I watched it out of the car-wreck syndrome, in other words it was so terrible I couldn't stop watching. And oh yes, if you stayed until the end of the show, a bikinied Keiko and Mitsuyo got into a hot tub with Jeff Altman. I guess I was easily bribed back then.

I cannot add much more to what has been said, save a few things. An indication of the quality of this show could have been gleaned from a TV Guide promo. A photo showed two dialog balloons above the stars heads:

Jeff: You girls are the biggest thing in Japan. Mie or Kei: Oh no, Jeff! The biggest thing in Japan is Godzilla!

This show was pretty awful, but it may be slightly unfair to single it out, for it was merely part of a horrible trend of the time. Television did what it could in the early days to be what it was trying to supplant, news, movie AND substitute for live theater, hence, the variety show. There were some people that either surrounded themselves with talent (Ed Sullivan) or featured talented and versatile casts (Your Show of Shows/Caesar's Hour or The Carol Burnett Show). By the late seventies, if you had one or two top forty songs, you got a variety show! This would include this show AND the show that featured the Starland Vocal Band ("Afternoon Delight").

So, instead of jumping on the "how bad was this show!" bandwagon, let's look at what happened to some of the performers afterward.

Sid Caesar - A legend, to be sure, but reading his autobiography one finds that he did what he could to succeed. He played Mie and Kei's father, using his Japanese double-talk. In one sketch, with mime and double talk, he berated how they dressed and during rehearsal they looked down with shame, a genuine reaction. That takes some skills. The other interesting fact is that some time later, he mentions a show that he did not get a part in and he also felt that the character would be limiting. That show was "Cheers".

Jeff Altman - Like Roger Kabler (if you remember "Rhythm and Blues" I empathize), a good comic in a bad situation. Show biz in general suffers from the malaise of "if it worked once...". Altman was/is a solid stand-up comic, but not equipped to the variety show format, a style that didn't fit Bill Cosby, either.

Jim Varney - A sadly underrated actor. I was no fan of the onslaught of "Ernest" movies, but "Hey Vern, It's Ernest", his TV show featured a glimpse of his talent. He played a drill sergeant, a very frumpy matron and a scary villain-type, all quite convincingly.

So, yes the show was bad but most any endeavor has an upside. As a matter of fact, in the "Starland Vocal Band" one cast member sat on a throne giving out comedy pronouncements. He hated it down to his doublet, but he eventually went on to having his own show, which proved wildly successful, so hats off to David Letterman!