Mystery actor
Do you recognize him?
Valerie Harper (1939-2019)
I like what Harper is quoted as saying about Rhoda: “Rhoda, like most of us, was a victorious loser.”
A debate review
Hank Stuever, television critic.
Crossover candidate
“Hey, you’re that guy!” ”The thousand-dollar-a-month guy!”
Masonic Toad
Perry Mason in Zippy.
Ben Leddy hosts The Rewind
The third episode is here: “The Size of the Universe,” with educational television footage from 1957.
The Bob Rosses
The New York Times asks: “Where Are All the Bob Ross Paintings?” And there’s an answer.
Ben Leddy hosts The Rewind
Our son Ben is hosting WGBH’s online series The Rewind, an exploration of the WGBH archives.
Pocket notebook sighting
From Stranger Things.
Chock full o’Things
From Stranger Things, a can of Chock full o’Nuts.
C-SPAN reveals all
As with two-person political debates, the best place to see the Trump Fourth speech was C-SPAN, which cut away again and again for shots of the crowd.
Arte Johnson (1929–2019)
Readers of a certain age will remember him from Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In.
TSWOCABTTS
Television Show Whose Opening Credits Are Better Than The Show.
Todd
“Can we say goodbye to Cuck Todd?”
The magnificent Andersons
A Father Knows Best marathon.
Code Red
A downstate-Illinois meteorologist is off the air after criticizing the Sinclair Broadcasting Group’s melodramatic “Code Red Day” weather alerts.
Schools and TV dinners
The TV dinner and the virtual school proceed from the same model: one person, in front of a screen. Get out your laptop, or TV tray; it’s time for “school,” or “dinner.”
Oswald
A lying narcissist with a big tie. But any resemblance to a real person is purely coincidental.
Que me ves guey
Walking on Olvera Street in Los Angeles, I saw this face and caption on T-shirts at kiosk after kiosk.
Ashbery Trek
“Are you wearing some unusual kind of perfume, or something radioactive, my dear?”
Benjamin and Newman
Watching The Graduate (dir. Mike Nichols, 1967) Saturday night, I wondered: could Mrs. Robinson’s icy “Hello, Benjamin” be the inspiration for Jerry Seinfeld’s “Hello, Newman”?
No TV for a week!
It’s been no CNN or MSNBC for a week, and I feel fine.
Joe Friday and T.S.E.
An Andrew McCabe sentence sounds like them both.
Jackie Wilson and milk
It’s nice to hear a few seconds of Jackie Wilson on TV, even if it’s in a milk commercial.
BAGS TO RAGE
I misread a screen title in a Marie Kondo episode.
Joe Namath on TV
I’m not sure which scenario is worse to contemplate: that Joe Namath needs these benefits, or that he’s willing to say that he does to make some money. O television!
Screen life
“By all accounts, Mr. Trump’s consumption of cable television has actually increased in recent months.”
As if
“Is there a secret whiteboard timeline in the Mueller office?” As if anyone talking on television would have the answer to that question.
Not just a white Christmas
The times are changing: Hallmark premieres four movies this holiday season with African-American male and female leads, the first such movies in Hallmark history.
New directions
A Hallmark movie has quoted “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”