Blog

My friend Doug loaned me the DVDs for several TV shows to watch while I’m home recuperating from heart surgery. So my girlfriend and I watched the first season of “Mad About You” over the last couple weeks. I always liked the sitcom about a happy New York couple, Paul and Jamie Buchmann (played by Paul Rieser and Helen Hunt), and it was very fun to watch now that I have a partner, because when it originally aired I was single. It’s fun to snuggle on the couch and watch a TV show about being a couple with my other half.

Things that are odd, though: the last two episodes on the DVD are out of order. I wonder why; did they air that way originally, or was that a mistake on the DVD? It’s a pretty glaring mistake because the events in the two episodes that are mixed up are sequentional and the mix up really throws you off.
The other thing that bothered me was that the Buchmanns had more fights in the first season than I remember them having, and some dysfunctional conversations. I always thought of them being a very functional couple, but watching it now, there are some fights they have that make me cringe. I didn’t remember that their friends Fran and Mark break up at the end of the first season. In my vague recollection, that happened much later. And I really didn’t remember Paul’s cheesy best friend Selby at all. Thankfully they dropped him part way through the first season when they retooled the show.
The show holds up well, though, and the chemistry between Paul and Jamie still sparks. It’s also worth watching to see the 90’s clothes. People used to make fun of me for wearing flannel all the time, but it was the style back then. And Helen Hunt’s wardrobe still holds up pretty well, too. She looked much better back then, before she turned into a stick.

Land of the Lost

The other show I’ve been watching is “Land of the Lost” — the Sid and Marty Krofft Saturday morning kid’s show about a scientist father and his son and daugher that get caught in the rapids on a rafting trip and swept into a lost world of dinosaurs and other weird alien-like monsters.
I loved this show when I was a kid, so it’s a bit painful to watch now, because it was just awful. Now I understand why my mom hated sitting around watching TV with us. But it’s bad enough to be funny, unlike some other Krofft shows that are just bad. The dinosaur effects are really comical, and the acting and dialog are hilarious, with the son Will shouting his way through his scenes. The first episode really drops you right into the action, without any back story at all, and the only explanation of how the family ended up in the lost world is in the goofy, addictive title song that’s now stuck in my head. If you want to relive childhood memories, I’d recommend getting this DVD.