WilliamBruceWest.com He's Forgotten More About Pop Culture Than You'll Ever Know…

They Don’t Make ’80s Shows Like They Used To…

"Well, I'm not the kind to kiss and tell, but I've been seen with Farrah..."

In case you didn't pick up on it from the current Knight Rider layout, I LOVE 80s action shows that ended up in Saturday syndication. I didn't have much of a social life growing up, so a lot of my weekends were filled with shows like these. Don't cry for me - I really enjoyed them, so these tend to provide nice escapist entertainment when I'm trying to remember "the good times". Last night, I found myself staying up just to watch the pilot for The Fall Guy on Hulu. In case you've never seen it, The Fall Guy stars 70s leading man, Lee Majors, as Hollywood stuntman Colt Seavers. Generally, the life of a stuntman is a non-publicized, unappreciated one, as the leading man tends to get all of the credit for the roles. In order to pay his rent, Colt serves as a bounty hunter between films, taking jobs from his friend, "Big Jack". He's assisted by Douglas Barr (who went on to Designing Women cameos, and not much else) and 80s pinup beauty Heather Thomas.

The show is great because it follows the typical Glen A. Larson show model: cast a rugged leading man, get a cool vehicle (in this case, an elevated GMC pickup), and find a way for it to jump over shit. You saw it in Knight Rider, you saw it in Magnum P.I., and you see it here. Plus, it's a lot like V.I.P., in that it's Hollywood locale allows for cameos from C-list celebrities. Since Colt is a stuntman for well known stars, you're always saying, "Hey, that's James Coburn!" or "That's Robert Wagner!" (on a side note, is there an 80s leading man more dapper than Robert Wagner in Hart to Hart? I mean, besides Brosnan in Remington Steele?).

Another thing I liked about this show was the frequency of bar fights. I swear, it was a dream of mine to get into a bar-fight and break a chair over a guy's back. Sure, they hit people with chairs in wrestling, but on The Fall Guy, they actually broke wooden chairs over guys' backs. Guns were available, but the fists spoke just as well as bullets. If anything, guns in these shows were only brandished in order to signal the end of the fistfights.

I posted the pilot because I really feel that this is the way to do television. They just don't make pilots like this anymore. Sure, it's dated, but it's oh so good. Plus, there are a couple of highlights in this premiere:

-Lou fucking Rawls, as a black country star!

-Eddie Albert, of Green Acres fame, stars as a crooked sheriff who kills a kid in a drunken hit & run

-Terry Kiser (Weekend At Bernie's) must have been the hardest working man in showbiz during that decade. This is his first Fall Guy appearance, but he returned 5 more times over the show's run, always as a different character.

-Holy God! Young Delta Burke is H-O-T!

-The final 5 minutes of the show feature a surprise (well, it's a surprise if you didn't pay attention to the special guest starts listed at the beginning) appearance by Farrah Fawcett, who just a few years prior had been known as Farrah Fawcett-Majors. This is a BIG DEAL, as Lee and Farrah were basically the Brangelina of their time, yet were separated at the time of filming. It's not just a cute scene, but it also seems to signal the end of an era. I know that Farrah's death was overshadowed by the sudden demise of Michael Jackson, but I believe that no Farrah tribute is complete without this scene: