Aaron Spelling
Do you have any idea how many hours of television Aaron Spelling produced? And how much of it was absorbed by the television watching public plopped on the couch, too lazy to change the channel?
Or I guess they weren’t too lazy, instead indulging in the guilty pleasure of “Jigg-o-vision”, which I guess is the inspiration for Baywatch, the heroines of late 1970s grade d action shows bobbing toward the television, breasts bopping up and down.
Perhaps it is time I read Everything Bad is Good For You, the idea behind the book being something akin to pop cultural products have improved markably in “nutritional worth”. Where does Aaron Spelling, whos programming fits the very stereotype inherent in the slur toward television as the “boob tube” (the other definition of ‘boob’ not intentional, but apt), sit in this blender? Melrose Place was better than Charlie’s Angels, right?
Actually I’m most impressed by the bombs in Aaron Spelling’s catalouge. Back when the Fox television network was having Spelling float out a new television program every season. The legacy of the show “Models Inc” is a single gag on the Simpsons, wherein the family cat tries to get attention over the family’s whole bunch of new greyhounds:
The family and the puppies all watch TV. A woman in a bikini suns
herself on a boat, and one of the puppies gets up on its hind legs and
paws at the screen. Marge chuckles, “Look at Branford II! Isn’t that
cute? He thinks he’s one of the Models, Inc.!” The family join in
their laughter. Snowball II, listless, tries the same stunt as Branford
II, only to be rebuked angrily by Homer: “Get that cat out of the way!”
Too bad the other shows didn’t have the luxury of another show to make a reference to it.
The television induis run