Tag Archives: CBS

Classic TV Crossover: Magnum P.I. and The A-Team

23 Jan

January 23, 2013

One of my favorite shows is Magnum P.I. I put it in the top tier of detective shows. There’s Columbo, Magnum, Kojak, then everyone else.

So I was watching it the other night and it occurred to me that, with only a slight twist to their backstory, the man characters of Magnum could easily have become The A-Team. They were in Viet Nam, they were a highly trained team. What if they were assigned to the classified job that fell to the A-Team? Magnum, Rick, and TC could be on the run.

This led me to thinking about what should have been a no-brainer: a Magnum P.I. and The A-Team crossover. It was amazingly obvious- the A-Team is spotted in Hawaii where they’ve taken a job and Thomas Magnum ends up working the same case. The army goes after the A-Team but mistakes Magnum and his crew for the criminals. Just look at the similarities. Think about it for just a second, it is screamingly obvious.

Magnum leader2

Magnum tough guy2

Magnum operator2

Magnum warrior2

Magnum van2

They could even have had Lance LeGault play a dual role.

Magnum nemesis2

While it seems so perfect in retrospect, it had nil chance of ever being made since they aired on different networks. (Magnum was CBS, A-Team was NBC.) Too bad, because it practically writes itself: Face pulling a scheme in the King Kamehameha Club, Magnum in the Aquamaniac suit, and I’d love to see Higgins tormented by Murdock. Just imagine them drugging BA to get him into the Island Hopper’s chopper. I am not much of a fan of fanfic so this is as far as I’ll go. I think this is one of the great unmade shows of television. Magnum crossed over with Simon and Simon (remember them?) and even with Jessica Fletcher on Murder, She Wrote. Neither of those crossovers screams “event.”  I can only imagine how excited I would have been had this actually happened back around 1985.

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R.I.P. Andy Rooney: Original Blogger

14 Nov

November 14, 2011

In honor of Andy Rooney’s recent passing, here is my post from last year in which I argue that Andy Rooney was the first and original blogger. I’ve added some new links and edited out a dead link so if you read this the first time, you can still enjoy some new Rooney goodies.

From September 28, 2010

The Urban Dictionary defines “blogger” as a term used to describe anyone with enough time or narcissism to document every tedious bit of minutia filling their uneventful lives.

It does not, however, speculate on who the first blogger was. For that honor, I nominate CBS 60 Minutes contributor Andy Rooney.

Since 1978, every week near the end of the show, they give Andy a few minutes to talk about whatever is on his mind. Typically, there doesn’t seem to be much going on up there. One week he blathered on about all the plastic bags he has laying around. He didn’t talk about recycling them, he didn’t suggest uses for them, he merely pulled them out of his desk drawers and from various places around his office and showed them to the camera.

“This one is from Waldbaum’s.”
“This bag says ‘I Love New York’ on it. Good thing I do.”
“I seem to have gotten this bag at a Waldenbooks, but I can’t seem to recall when I ever shopped there.”

It went on and on like that.

I think that Andy Rooney clearly inspired a whole generation of observational comedians. Listen to Andy Rooney and you can plainly hear the genesis of Jerry Seinfeld: “What’s the deal with carrying things? What’s the deal with plastic bags?”

And “What’s the deal with modern music”?

ANDY ROONEY LOSSES TOUCH WITH MODERN MUSIC:

I suspect that the real reason he has lost touch with modern music is that he is 91 years old!

According to CBS News’s biography of him, “Rooney wrote his first television essay, a longer-length precursor of the type he does on 60 Minutes, in 1964, ‘An Essay on Doors.’ From 1962 to 1968, he collaborated with another close friend, the late CBS News correspondent Harry Reasoner – Rooney writing and producing, Reasoner narrating -on such notable CBS News specials as ‘An Essay on Bridges’ (1965), ‘An Essay on Hotels’ (1966), ‘An Essay on Women’ (1967), and ‘The Strange Case of the English Language’ (1968).

Give the man credit for consistency- he hasn’t changed a bit in over 40 years. As the man himself wrote in a letter, “Let’s face it, even on the nights when I’m good, I’m not that good.”

I’ll end now with a question I’m sure we all want answered:

WHAT’S IN ANDY’S DRAWERS?

ANDY ROONEY DOESN’T LIKE E-BOOKS

ANDY ROONEY ON CHRISTMAS

 

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