1. Saturday Supercade – At the peak of the 1980’s video game mountain, CBS tried to cash in with a block called Saturday Supercade.
Airing on Saturday mornings, the block was made up of several smaller series that each took a video game property and turned it into an ongoing storyline. Whether the material lent itself to that sort of thing or not. Pitfall!, Donkey Kong, Q-bert, Kangaroo, Space Ace, and Frogger all got their own series. Frogger was an ace reporter in his cartoon, which makes sense given the complex backstory of the video game. Donkey Kong was voiced by Soupy Sales and escaped from the circus, leaving it up to Donkey Kong Junior to rescue him. Q-bert was a ’50s greaser.
These stories make no sense.
Saturday Supercade ran for two seasons and was replaced with a more lucrative (and sensible) idea: The Super Mario Brothers Super Show. Now that’s a cashgrab I can get behind.
Here’s the intro to the block. I do have to admit, it’s pretty fun. A slimy kind of fun.
2. Mickey’s Toothache – A beautiful and previously-unreleased drawing made its way out of the Disney archives recently. It features Mickey being chased by Pete and a psychotic dentist’s chair:
The cartoon was never finished, so we’ll never see how this nightmarish scene plays out. For shame!
3. Good Morning, Miss Bliss – I love Saved by the Bell. I love it! I do not have the same affinity for Good Morning, Miss Bliss, however. Well, the sensible part of my brain that knows good Bell from bad Bell does. For those of you who don’t know, Good Morning, Miss Bliss was the terrible prequel to Bell that featured Zack, Screech, Lisa, a few other kids, and Mister Belding in a middle school in Indiana. The school centered around the good-heartedness and generosity of their star teacher, Miss Bliss, played by Haley Mills. It’s awful. There’s literally nothing redeeming about Good Morning, Miss Bliss. Even more confounding is the part where NBC picked it up, retooled it, sent Zack, Screech, Lisa and Mr. B across the country to California, and didn’t offer a single word of explanation. With a better show, that would sting. With Bell, it elicits a slight shrug and an “eh”.
So, I thought I knew a thing or two about Good Morning, Miss Bliss from years of slogging through it on TBS when the syndication cycle ran through those episodes. I was wrong! Here’s the pilot of Good Morning, Miss Bliss. Yes, even before the SBTB prequel that mysteriously featured several Bell regulars, a prequel to the prequel existed – a single pilot episode, absent of Zack, Screech, and Belding BUT featuring Jaleel White, Brian Austin Green, and Jonathan Brandis as a local “tough”! It aired once, and then was thrown out. Find of the century, right here. And a weird, creepy, long intro:
The star sightings are in the first scene, for those of you who don’t necessarily want to gobble up this unwatchable mess as much as I did. For the rest of you, I’ll see you at the monthly meetings.
4. Astar – My pal Robert grew up in Canada and passed this PSA along as a bit of nostalgia he came across. It’s amazing.
5. The Trapeze Swinger – God, this song.
-ds
I am confused about this PSA. Are they saying, “Kids, if you’re not careful, you could….lose your arm??”