Fernwood 2 Night

I can tell you this for a fact. Lear wanted to do an improv show and went to Alan Thicke who said "You can't do that". Lear fired him. Thicke went into an office wrote the first week of what we know as Fernwood 2Nite. Thicke went to Lear and said "this is the only way I know how to do a show, they can improv around it". Lear hired him back. What he called "Kirkland Lake 2Nite".

I always thought of Mr. Thicke as a dull, regular performer. Knowing that he conceived and wrote this piece of brilliance puts him (in my mind) in the same league as Monty Python, KITH, Gary Shandling. Imagine the guy who played the Dad on Growing pains, actually has such a twisted and hilarious sense of humour.

Truly Thicke is an unsung genius.

"Fernwood 2 Night" was a strange and delightful summer series from the mind of Norman "All In The Family" Lear. I never got addicted to its associated series, "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" but I really enjoyed watching this talk show spoof. Taped at the fictitious WZAZ-TV studios (Channel 6, Fernwood, Ohio), every night was a parade of peculiar - and often talentless - guests. Occasionally the Mirthmakers would go on strike, leaving poor Happy Kine, the woe-be-gone-faced bandleader, to play the show's signature theme, solo, on a clarinet. I could have it mixed up with "America 2 Night" (the series that followed the next summer), but "Fernwood 2 Night" also had special features such as "Rocket 2 Stardom" (that showcased new "talent"), and "Bury The Hatchet" (which allowed those with grudges to settle them on the air).

This show was a predecessor to the later wildly popular "Larry Sanders Show" on HBO and Comedy Central's "Primetime Glick", two other send-ups of the talk show circuit. In many respects, though, "Fernwood 2 Night" was a classic. I certainly hope the entire series is made available on DVD sometime.

Other than Monty Python, I can't think of too many shows where I would actually hurt from laughing so hard, but this was one of those shows.

I think there were a lot of elements that made this show so great: all the characters were wonderful, and I like how they were so earnest in the way they went about doing their show in the small town of Fernwood Ohio, the guests who happened along and got their 15 minutes of fame momentarily, the non-PC way Barth and Jerry conversed about pretty much any topic or person, and of course, Happy Kyne and the Merthmakers.

I'd like to see the shows again to see if they were all as good as I remember.

"Fernwood 2-Night", a spinoff of "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman", was set in Fernwood, Ohio, and its three stars all had ties to Northeast Ohio--Martin Mull (Barth Gimble) grew up in North Ridgeville, Fred Willard (Jerry Hubbard) was born and raised in Shaker Heights, and Frank DeVol (Happy Kyne) grew up in Canton. So without a doubt, there was a strong tie to Ohio with a show set in Ohio. Oh, BTW, it's funny. I remember seeing it on Nick at Nite around 1990, and during the first half of the decade, it was one of only two sources from which I remembered Martin Mull; the other one, of course, was the Red Roof Inn commercials.

Anyway, it's a funny show, lampooning "The Tonight Show", among others. Both sidekicks had standard opening spiels ("And now, your host and mine, Mr. Barth Gimble!", and "And now, Heeeeeeeeeeere's Johnny!"), and they even had still images for the bumpers a la Carson! If you have a chance, check it out. You'll enjoy it, like I did, and you don't have to be an Ohioan to enjoy it!

I was never a big fan of 'Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman' but this hilarious spinoff of that show (a local talk show from the 'MH, MH' setting of Fernwood, Ohio) featured Martin Mull as smug host Barth Gimble and Fred Willard as his empty headed sidekick.The show rather mercilessly skewered small town America, its prejudices and foibles. One show for example featured a Jewish man whose car broke down in Fernwood and was featured as a guest in a segment called "Talk to a Jew".(One old lady: "Barth, I can't believe someone as sweet as this young man murdered Our Lord").It only lasted one season and for some bizarre reason the next year, the show moved its setting to Hollywood and became 'Hollywood 2Night" but without the small town setting the show's point was lost.

Extra props to the late, great Frank DeVol(veteran tv/movie composer of the 'My Three Sons" theme) as the eternally basset hound faced show's band leader Happy Kyne and His Mirthmakers, who also owned Fernwood's finest fast food joint the "Bun

'n' Run"