Pink Lady

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!

This was from the period when NBC was horrible and Fred Silverman was running the show (no pun intended). This from the man who help develop gems like "Three's Company" and "Laverne and Shirley" for ABC and beauties like "All in the Family" and "M*A*S*H" for CBS.

It baffled me that he went to NBC and came up with crap like this. How could you give a show to 2 women or anyone for that matter who could barely speak English??? I still remember both Kei Masuda and Mei Niemoto at the beginning of the show tell the audience who that night's guests will be. You could barely make out what they were saying and it was very painful to listen.

Jeff Altman as well; This had to set his career back 2-3 steps. I like his comedy, but even he couldn't save this show.

Every episode would always end with Mie and Kei say something to Jeff you couldn't understand, then they would remove their kimonos revealing the swimsuits they were wearing under it and would drag him fully dressed into the hot tub. It was one of the few funny things I can remember, but they did that every week and it got old fast.

Clearly, not one of television's best moments.

First, let me be very clear: "Pink Lady" was not a good variety show. It was a pretty horrible one most of the time. BUT it WAS at the same time a truly awesome show. The 70s also gave us variety shows from Donnie and Marie, the Mandrell Sisters, Captain and Tennile and many, many others. All of them sucked--lame comedy, bad music, horrible production values. That was the standard in the 70s--especially from producers Sid and Marty Kroft. "Pink Lady (and Jeff)" rises above all these by being just plain weird. Casting two unknown Japanese pop stars along with a homegrown but not really any better known comedian was so stupid a thing to do that it bordered on genius. In other words no one in their right mind would have thought of it. The result 30 years later is a great 1980 time capsule of the clash between American Crap-Lame culture and the rising Japanese pop culture that you're not going to see anywhere else. Lots of jokes are made at the girl's expense--especially by semi-regular Sid Caesar, who does a recurring samurai bit that makes John Belushi's old SNL routine look PC by comparison. But the Pink Ladies get their digs in as well, making fun of Altman's non-celeb status, height, and lack of manliness. And its even funnier when you can tell that they have very little idea what they're even saying.

The culture clash plus the language barrier plus the really poor taste plus the ultra lameness of the comedy bits, mixed in with the super-peppy, semi-sexy disco performances (in English and Japanese) by the perky, super happy Pink Lady makes for a late 70s Variety Show parody you could not make up today. It is a time capsule of stupid fun that makes me nostalgic for the days when "crap TV" was good natured goofiness instead of "reality" show meanness.

Screw the 21st century! BRING BACK PINK LADY AND JEFF!

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.