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SEASON 1 – NBC

Created by Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider

Opening theme: “(Theme from) The Monkees” written by Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, performed by The Monkees

• 001. Royal Flush – 9/12/1966
  • The Monkees (themselves – Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork, Michael Nesmith) are a struggling band trying to make a name for themselves in Los Angeles. One day while visiting the beach, Davy saves a struggling girl from drowning when the raft that her Uncle Otto gave to her loses air. Her Uncle Otto (Theo Marcuse) happens to be nearby with his chauffeur Sigmund (Vincent Beck). The Archduke Otto informs Davy that he has rescued Princess Bettina of Harmonica (Katherine Walsh) and warns him to stay away. Because she leaves with his jacked, and because he is concerned for her safety, Davy tells the other guys and they stakeout the hotel where they are staying. They trick a chambermaid (Ceil Cabot) out of the room next to the royal chambers. They then phone Otto and ask him to come next door so they can show him the thrones they are selling. While Micky, Peter, and Michael keep him and Sigmund busy, Davy sneaks in and plays a recording they made of Otto planning to poison Bettina that night at her 18th birthday ball, at which time she will become the queen. During a musical interlude of This Just Doesn’t Seem to Be My Day, and Bettina spend a romantic morning on the beach, Sigmund pursues Micky, while Peter digs a hole for Otto to fall into. Sigmund follows them back to their apartment, and he calls Otto and they confront the Monkees and threaten to kill Battina. Davy tells them that she has sent a letter back to Harmonica stating that if she doesn’t show up to her ball, it is because Otto killed her. Otto takes her to the ball, and leaves Sigmund to watch over the Monkees. They eventually overpower him and head to the ball, where Davy sword fights him to the music of Take a Giant Step. Just as Otto is about to kill Davy, Peter announces that it is midnight, and Bettina is now the queen. She has Otto arrested and all live happily ever after.  The Monkees return to the hotel which they find the chambermaid now owns. With the episode a minutes short, the Monkees are interviewed by one of the series creators (Bob Rafelson) to fill the time. Director James Frawley is the voice on the phone.. Dick Wilson appears unbilled as a waiter at the ball. NOTE: Songs were substituted for summer reruns (You Told Me and The Girl I Knew Somewhere) and Saturday morning (Apples, Peaches, Bananas, and Pears and You Told Me) airings to promote more current material. 7/26/20

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SEASON 1 – NBC

Created by Dick St. Clair and Jenna McMahon

The series is a spin-off of the sitcom “Diff’rent Strokes”

Theme song: “The Facts of Life” written by Al Burton, Gloria Loring, and Alan Thicke. Performed by Charlotte Rae and cast (Episodes 1-6), and then by the cast minus Rae. 

• 001. Rough Housing – 8/24/1979
  • Housekeeper Edna Garrett (Charlotte Rae) has temporarily left her job working for Phil Drummond (Conrad Bain) and his daughter Kimberly (Dana Plato) and adopted sons Willis (Todd Bridges) and Arnold Jackson (Gary Coleman) to assist at Kimberly’s private school Eastland in Peekskill, New York. As Mrs. Garrett and the girls prepare for the upcoming Harvest Ball, Mr. Drummond and the kids come to attend the ball and to ask Mrs. Garrett to return home. She promises that she will eventually. The school’s new headmaster Stephen Bradley (John Lawlor) hopes to loosen some of the long standing rules of the school, namely the curfew on the night of the ball, but one of the long-standing teachers Miss Emily Mahoney (Jenny O’Hara) objects to him. The core group of students who Mrs. Garrett is caring for include the affluent and somewhat snooty Blair Warner (Lisa Whelchel), tomboy Cindy Webster (Julie Anne Haddock), the young roller skate-wearing Dorothy “Tootie” Ramsey (Kim Fields), the portly and jovial Natalie Green (Mindy Cohn), Sue Ann Weaver (Julie Piekarski), and Nancy Olson (Felice Schachter). When Mr. Bradley inquires about who will be running for the Harvest Queen, Blair thinks her standing as winner for two-years running makes her a shoe-in, but Sue Ann also nominates Cindy. She lacks the confidence but the other girls convince her to give it a go and she finally agrees, hugging Sue Ann and telling her that she loves her for nominating her. Blair makes snide comments about her tomboyishness and goes further by insinuating that Cindy only likes girls. This gives her a crisis of confidence and she announces she is dropping out of the contest. Mrs. Garrett talks with her and convinces that everyone is different in the speed in which they bloom or take an interest in boys. Mrs. Garrett then confronts Blair and insinuates to her that she knows Blair has been with a lot of men. Blair claims to only be a tease and adamantly insists that Mrs. Garrett is unfairly judging her. Mrs. Garrett points out that this is exactly how she treated Cindy. Blair realizes her mistake and apologizes to Cindy and encourages her to run against her. Blair ends up winning, and wins over her crush Greg Hockney, but Cindy confesses that her clock began its romantic ticking when Greg saw her in the dress that Mrs. Garrett helped make for her and gave her a wink, much to Blair’s irritation. The Drummond family helps celebrate both girls’ victories. 7/25/20

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SEASON 1 – CBS

Created by Linda Bloodworth-Thomason

Theme song “Georgia on My Mind” written by Hoagy Carmichael and Stuart Gorrell, performed by Doc Severinsen

• 001. Designing Women – 9/29/1986
  • Atlanta, Georgia based businesswomen Julia (Dixie Carter) and her younger sister Suzanne Sugarbaker (Delta Burke) combine their resources and form their own interior design company Sugarbaker & Associates. The elegant and liberal Julia acts as president at the firm, while self-centered former Miss Georgia World Suzanne holds no official title. Also investing in the partnership is Charlene Frazier (Jean Smart), a former secretary of Julia’s late husband Hayden, and Mary Jo Shively (Annie Potts), Charlene’s next-door neighbor and the main designer. As the ladies try to keep the business out of the red, Suzanne announces that her gynecologist is retiring. Mary Jo suggests the services of her ex-husband Ted (Scott Bakula), from who she was just recently divorced after helping put him through medical school. Suzanne goes to see him, and when she returns, she announces that she is now dating him. Mary Jo is livid, considering all she contributed to his career and the fact that he constantly cheated on her. Ted winds up proposing to Suzanne, and so she arranges to have Ted over so that he and Mary Jo can work out their differences. Mary Jo tells him that all she ever wanted from him was a thank you for all she did to help him. He comes through with a sincere thank you, making Mary Jo feel grateful for the whole situation. Arlen Dean Snyder is Ray Don Simpson, who hits on the women in a restaurant and is severely rebuffed. 7/24/20

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SEASON 1 – Showtime

Created by Tom Kapinos

“Main Title Theme from Californication” by Tree Adams and Tyler Bates

• 001. Pilot – 8/13/2007
  • Hank Moody (David Duchovny) is an alcoholic novelist who is suffering from writer’s block, on which he blames his hedonism and Los Angeles lifestyle after recently departing New York City. He maintains a relationship with his ex-girlfriend Karen Van Der Beek (Natascha McElhone), with whom he also has a 12-year old daughter Becca (Madeleine Martin). Hank has a dream that he goes to a church to pray for guidance and is seduced by a nun, and when he wakes up, he is in bed with Heather (Michele Nordin), the same gal who was the dream-nun Heather. Her husband (Chase Penny) comes home and he is forced to flee without his pants. From there, he meets Karen and Becca, and brings Becca home for visitation, where she finds a naked woman named Sandy Carr (Camille Langfield) in his bed. He blows her off and she accuses him of only sleeping with her to get even with her husband Todd, who had made his book God Hates Us All into the film Crazy Little Thing Called Love which he hated. Later Hank gets into a fist fight with a man (Philip Shahbaz) at the movie theater who is using a cell phone during the film. On his way home, he stops at a bookstore where he meets a girl named Mia Lewis (Madeline Zima), who is reading his book God Hates Us All. They go home together and have sex, during which she punches him twice in the face. Hank and Karen meet with Becca’s teacher Penny Lyons (Miriam T. Green) who tells them Becca is taking an interest in boys, and she caught a boy feeling her up, and she told Lyons that she didn’t know any other way to get a boy to like her. Hank meets with his best friend and agent Charlie Runkle (Evan Handler), who works with the UTK agency and tells him that Hell-A magazine has offered him a job blogging for them. They have dinner with Charlie’s wife Marcy (Pamela Adlon) and friend Meredith (Amy Price-Francis), whom he quickly insults causing her to walk out of the dinner. He meets another woman (Alison Mei Lan) before leaving the restaurant and goes home and sleeps with her. He had to run out on her when he gets a call from Karen because she was tipped off that Becca was at a party in the Palisades. They catch her getting ready to smoke pot, and Hank carries her off. Becca is furious, but Hank and Karen chat back at her place. Although Karen is engaged to a guy named Bill, Hank asks her to marry him. Before she can answer, Mia comes into the house and Karen introduces her as Bill’s 16-year old daughter. Stephen Sowan is the drunk kid. Michael H. Barnett is the gawky dweeb. 7/23/20

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SEASON 1 – ABC

Created by Kenya Barris

Theme music composed by Transcenders

• 001. Pilot – 9/24/2014
  • Andre “Dre” Johnson (Anthony Anderson) is a wealthy Los Angeles advertising executive for Stevens & Lido, who despite his surrounding in an upper middle-class neighborhood that is largely white, struggles to cling to his African-American culture and values. His wife is Rainbow “Bow” (Tracee Ellis Ross) is an anesthesiologist who comes from a mixed family with a white father and black mother. They have four children: teenagers Zoey (Yara Shahidi) and the somewhat nerdy Andre “Junior” (Marcus Scribner), and fraternal twins Jackson “Jack” (Miles Brown) and Diane (Marsai Martin). Dre’s father Earl “Pops” (Laurence Fishburne) also lives with the family. Dre expects to receive a promotion at his firm to Senior Vice President, but during the meeting where it is announced, he is told by his boss Leslie Stevens (Peter Mackenzie) informs him that he is indeed promoted to that position, but of the newly formed Urban Division, which offends him. He is also struggling with relating to his son who seems to have no sense of black culture and wants to join the field hockey team with his white best friend Zach (Nick Carson), and also wants to become Jewish so that he can have a bar mitzvah. Dre sits his family down and tells them that they are going to work harder to embrace their culture and tells Junior that he is going to throw him an African rites of passage ceremony for his 13th birthday instead. Dre completes his first assignment to show the diversity of L.A. for the tourism account using footage from various violent interracial encounters in the city, which nearly get him fired. Rainbow and Pops both talks some sense into him about his going overboard with his ‘keeping it real’ attitude. Junior admits to him that he’d like to play basketball but that he sucks, and he only joined the field hockey team so that the girls will like him. He also assures him that he’s not trying to be white, but just trying to be himself. Dre re-thinks his tourism campaign and creates a dynamic video presentation around the idea of keeping L.A. ‘colorful’. He also throws Junior a hip-hop party for his birthday, which appeals to everyone. Jeff Meacham is his adversarial co-worker Josh Oppenhol. Jacob Kemp is his assistant Kris, who Dre considers an honorary brother. Michelle Meredith is the tour guide. 7/24/20

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