The It Was a Thing on TV Podcast Network

Every bad show has a bad season, it seems.  We will cover such bad seasons in future episodes.  For now, we are dedicating an entire show to one such season, Saturday Night Live's 6th season.  Almost nothing from the show's 5th season carried over, and it showed.

It's another social experiment gone wrong, in multiple ways.  Utopia didn't last two months and it cost FOX $50 million in just acquiring its rights.  Surely some heads rolled.  And what's the deal with the cartoonist as host?

A world run by kids--no curfews, unlimited candy, and no homework...right?  Here's a social experiment from 2007 which sought out to see how 40 children would run their own society, CBS' entry Kid Nation.

Before returning you to your regular universe, we have two more visits in the Sanford and Son family--the very short-lived series which replaced the parent show, titled Sanford Arms, and an early 80s attempt to revive the franchise in Sanford.

Over the next two episodes, we will explore the three spinoffs of Sanford and Son, as well as the show which caused Sanford and Son to end.  In part one, we look at the first spinoff, Grady, as well as the show which effectively killed the mothership, The Redd Foxx Comedy Hour.

This episode and the next may have low volumes.  Some of our microphones acted really weird when we recorded.  We're sorry about that.

The NFL season starts tonight!  (Who knows how long it will last...)  In celebration of the start of the new season, we look at what is considered the worst Monday Night Football game, a 2007 affair between the Miami Dolphins and the Pittsburgh Steelers.  Though Miami had a forgettable team that year, that wasn't the primary reason this game was bad.

It's not the Double Dare from 1976 which was previously covered, nor is it the Double Dare on Nickelodeon a year later.  This Double Dare was a cop show in the vein of Miami Vice which lasted just over a month on CBS, starring TV's Wiseguy and the guy who is as cool as the cool side of the pillow.

From the era of Deal or No Deal, we get a game of luck, truth telling, psychology, some memory, and lots of balls.  2/3 of us didn't like it.  If you like it, you likely will really enjoy Golden Balls.  It was popular for a brief period of time, but quickly faded away to obscurity.

Link to weirdest Split or Steal round ever:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0qjK3TWZE8

When late 80s family sitcoms and wrestling overlap, the end result is the short-lived Canadian entry Learning the Ropes, starring Lyle Alzado.  We also determine the Canadian equivalents of TV shows it seems everything goes back to.

M*A*S*H is one of television's most popular shows ever, yet its spinoff AfterMASH lasted less than a season and a half.  Was it too derivative from the parent show's plot?  Did it just run its course?