Tonight, on a Very Special Episode

On our last show, we talked a bit about old sitcoms and the phenomenon of “very special episodes,” where a normally comedic show would take a dark, sometimes very dark, turn, with a serious plot around alcoholism, a serious accident, death, and even pedophilia. That’s right-our regular heroes thrust into a real-life scenario that would silence (actually, this was the only good part about it) the audience laugh track. But after listening to the last podcast, I think I may have let these “very special episodes” (let’s call them a VSEs to save time) off a little easy.

They sucked.

Back then they got a lot of attention-maybe a quarter-page, “Close Up” listing in TV Guide. The weekly promos with a somber voice over reflected the tone, and I swear to God (or maybe Garry Marshall) the National Enquirer had a commercial with a semi-animated, smiling but sobbing cutout of Henry Winkler to promote a VSE of Happy Days (more on that in a minute-and yes, the National Enquirer had commercials once upon a time). These episodes came from out nowhere and hit us with the subtlety of a sledgehammer.

I’ll bring up just a few. On Diff’rent Strokes, Arnold and his best pal Dudley (an all-time sitcom sidekick name, right up there with Squiggy, Potsie and Rerun) spent their time at a bike store, where the kindly store owner (played by Gordon Jump, also the lovable Mr. Carlson on WKRP in Cincinnati) gave them wine (!) and wanted to take pictures of them with their shirts off (!!) on s TWO PART VSE. On Happy Days, Richie decided he wanted to be cool like Fonzie with a motorcycle, only to end up in a coma, leading to the Fonz crying and pleading to God by Richie’s bedside. On one VSE of Family Ties, Alex Keaton found himself in therapy to adjust to the death of his best friend (no, not Skippy-ooh, another good sidekick name though) but some random guy named Greg, who had never actually been on the show before but hey, if you kill someone off in a sitcom they can’t be a regular character (sorry, McClean Stevenson).

Who asked for these? I’m using these three examples because these shows were pretty lightweight comedies-shows you tuned into to laugh, and enjoy, as a simple escape from, well, life, for half an hour or so. Did the actors/producers/writers feel they had some kind of obligation to inject reality into these worlds? Were they trying to win Emmys? Did they think these characters needed more emotional depth to be more relatable? Or did they simply run out of ideas and take an easy if not overly dramatic, way out?

Maybe it’s all of the above. Maybe it’s none of the above. But I’m sure of two things: one, we had plenty of reality, and emotional depth, in our everyday lives-we didn’t need it from TV. And two, Arnold and Dudley really should have stayed out of that bike shop.