From "Michael Cole, ‘Mod Squad’ Actor, Dies at 84/Mr. Cole, who played the wealthy Pete Cochran, had been the last of the show’s three stars still living" (NYT).
I remember the opening — where "Julie Barnes" gets out of breath trying to keep up with "Pete" and "Linc" who seem to need to lug her along on their hippie-busting venture — but I don't remember watching the show... which began when I was a senior in high school and, living at home, had easy access to television. What were the other shows on at the same time? It was Tuesday at 7:30, and the other shows were "Lassie" and "I Dream of Jeannie." I don't think I liked any of that. Jeez. "Lassie." Still on in 1968. And "Jeannie," a scantily clad slave to a military man. Shows that were on that year that I actually liked? Here's the top 10:
- Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In (NBC)
- Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. (CBS)
- Bonanza (NBC)
- Mayberry R.F.D. (CBS)
- Family Affair (CBS)
- Gunsmoke (CBS)
- Julia (NBC)
- The Dean Martin Show (NBC)
- Here's Lucy (CBS)
- The Beverly Hillbillies (CBS)
I watched one all the time and 2 some of the time. "The Beverly Hillbillies" was not one of them. Of course, I watched it when it first came on, in 1962, but this was 6 years later! How long could the "hillbilly" family persist in misunderstand their new environment?
One of the shows that I watched some of the time was "The Dean Martin Show." Here's a full episode from 1968. Relive the vibe:
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Wasn't I Spy on before that?
When i saw this in reruns in the 70s, I always laughed at that shot the old boss guy busting through the door with a weird on his face. And now, seeing in 2024, it got a laugh out of me. My God, what was Spelling thinking? Is boss guy chasing Peggy Lipton? Is he in another building? Is he looking for his cup of coffee? Its a ridiculous shot.
While working yesterday, I pulled up an old laugh-in episode from Prime Amazon. God it was horrible. Tired ol jokes, bland personalities. We really were satisified with very little back in the 60s and 70s.
Looking at three actors who died, they were a little old for hippies weren't they? I thought hippies were all Althouse's age.
Yep, 1965. And Star Trek in 1966. Racists still fighting the last war.
That theme song! Seems "Police Squad" got their theme inspiration from "Mod Squad."
The Beverly Hillbillies was a very funny show for the first few years. After that, it became unwatchable, with them reworking the characters around into ridiculous plots like Granny seriously thinking you would be changed into a frog if you jumped in the cement pond.
I liked The Dean Martin Show too.
The Beverly hillibilles was like Bewtiched, it took a concept and ran it into the ground. They still had some funny episodes after the first 4 years, but mostly its just the same ol same ol - over and over. They got away with it in the 60s, because they watched TV shows once a week, and that's it.
I can remember in the 70s watching Good times, and whooping it up when the black kid said "Dyn-o-mite". Catch phrases were fun, because you saw once a week. If today, you watch on that sort of thing on DVD, its fucking annoying. Why is everyone whooping it up, you think.
I never watched the show. It looks like Cole got top billing, but my understanding was that Lipton and Williams made more of an impression on the public. It probably wasn't intended, but he may have been the first white actor to have to take the back seat to his more diverse cast members ... well, okay ... Robert Culp may have that honor.
On the one hand, TV remained very stupid and geriatric, with a certain amount of geezers ogling much younger women, preferably barely clad. Vaguely trying to keep track of what the young people were up to. On the other hand, there were people with real talent dumbing down in various ways. Dean himself, writers for some of these shows. And then: Orson Welles shows up and recites some of the Merchant of Venice. I believe kids are sheltered from this play today. Given somewhat unfair readings of both Judaism and Christianity, is there any way to achieve true friendship other than by Jews ceasing to be Jews, and Christians ceasing to be Christians?
Looking back now I'm surprised my parents (born '40 and '42) even watched this show, but they did. And us kids watched along with them.
In that opening clip, is it me or does the white guy (when appearing together with the black co-star) have extra makeup on? It's kind of obvious.
I remember the opening — where "Julie Barnes" gets out of breath trying to keep up with "Pete" and "Linc" who seem to need to lug her along on their hippie-busting venture.
Not only that, I always remembered when she first joins them she appears hysterical, with her head back and hands up around her face. Bitch, please. That turned me off, too. And I was only 7 years old! I also didn't like the hippy underground dialogue. Hippies were then much older, dismissive and often mean to young kids like me.
That said, the musical theme was awesome (still is) and made me want to run around the living room randomly bumping into furniture.
And then I'd change the channel.
Name ! "Hayes" First Name ! (rips off sunglasses, angrily) "Leeenn-con !"
Haha I was going to say that. All I really remember about the show.
Laugh-in was the only one of the top 10 in 1968 that I watched regularly. At 12 years old, it was the hippest and funniest TV show. On par with MAD Magazine for me then.
...ridiculous plots like Granny seriously thinking you would be changed into a frog if you jumped in the cement pond.
As a kid, I always thought it was the "seaman pond," because wasn't there a nearby statue there of a sea captain.
Anyway, when my aunt got a pool I'd alway call it the "seaman pond." Looking back, I'm sure my entire family heard me say I'm going for a swim in the semen pond.
"And "Jeannie," a scantily clad slave to a military man."
Now that you put it that way, I understand why my 12 your old self had a such crush on Barbara Eden. What young boy in 1968 didn't want to be, not just a military man, but an astronaut with Jeannie granting your wishes.
Jeannie : Samantha :: Mary Ann : Ginger
Samantha:Mary Ann:Jeannie:Ginger - you just know Samantha was a demon in the sack
John Amos quit the show over the "Dyn-o-mite" catchphrase and the way the JJ character was portrayed.
During the school year, our parents heavily restricted our TV watching and it was dependent upon getting good grades. Our must-watch list was Star Trek, Man From U.N.C.L.E, Jeannie and Julia. My mom's favorite was Rowan and Martin's Laugh-in. During the summer re-run season, we could catch up on Mod Squad, I Spy (which was on past our bed-time at 10pm) and others. We never watched the CBS country comedies (Petticoat, Green Acres, Hillbillies) These shows perhaps resonated with viewers in the mid-west and south but in the Pacific Northwest, the jokes fell flat - we didn't understand the stereotypes.
70s television producers were absolutely desperate to ride the progressive wave of hippy hipness. Who else remembers the Monkees, the studio-cast, made-up band that accidentally was successful in spite of their campy, atrocious comedy show, and then the band turned tables on the studio and forged their own brand and music? Took some grit.
Also @Wilbur above: The Network TV era before syndication in the 1980s consciously kept shows on the air for no more than 4 years. Many huge hit shows were set aside, and only a few lasted "too long." They had very few slots in prime time and wanted to keep it fresh. They also knew that they were fighting for 20% to 50% of the viewing audience, and often wouldn't go head-to-head versus a big hit like the Beverly Hillbillies or MASH.
They could and did pour out absolute garbage. Do you remember the routine "clip shows" that would appear once or twice a year? Bobby gets hit in the head may die. Everyone talks about Bobby's adventures and we see 1-2 mintues pieced together from prior episodes. Zero production cost and as boring as watching paint dry. But...50 million people watched and the advertisers were happy.
She turnt me into a toad, Everett.
..where "Julie Barnes" gets out of breath trying to keep up with "Pete" and "Linc" who seem to need to lug her along on their hippie-busting venture...
The bad guys spiked her Tab with acid and she was starting to peak.
Women have smaller lungs than men. Their respiratory muscles are naturally weaker than men's. They have smaller-diameter, higher flow resistance airways than men. These factors in women produce a higher total work of breathing for a given level of ventilation than that of men.
But, yeah, that aside, I'm sure that Julie's comparative breathlessness in the opening scene was sexist.
Some one upthread mentioned "clip shows". People LOVED clip shows, because it was the first time they could re-visit fun moments in the past year or couple years. But now you can binge watch a whole season in one day. So, clip shows look like boring low-effort cash grabs.
I wasn't a southerner or from Beverly Hills, and I saw the BH's in reruns in the 70s, and found them hilarious. The only problem is, as stated before, they got repetitious. BH was one of the few shows that made fun of "city slickers" and had us laughing but also rooting for the Hillbillies. Green Acres took the opposite approach. Eddie Albert was a pompous twit, and Lisa was an airhead, but they the supposed "Normal" compared to the oddball country folk.
If today, you watch on that sort of thing on DVD, its fucking annoying.
Yeah, I remember when Netflix had the entire run of The Rockford Files on. I thought; "Great! I love me some Rockford Files". Even just watching one a day got old real fast. I also realized that when you see something re-run they tend to pull the "dud" episodes out of rotation and only show the higher rated ones.
The first few Beverly Hillbillies episodes were hilarious, though, really some top script writing on the concept.
WHen you see all the bland 1968 crap on the Althouse list, you can understand why All in the Family took America by storm in the early 70s. And if you look at the bland crap in the 60s (Good God "The Joey Bishop Show" LOL) you can why Beverly Hillbillies and Bewitched were so popular.
I watch this at least once a year - Dino, in rare form, singing Marshmallow World:
https://youtu.be/4l6KcK_QTBs?si=uT1FaOYRXmuBuayg
During summer break we'd park in front of the TV to watch "Jeannie" reruns. Her hair had this swishy ponytail and she lived in a jeweled bottle. We girls adored her.
Where's Laslo when you need him?
"I Dream of Jeannie," a scantily clad slave to a military man." An awful, awful show. Episodes 19, 76, 108 and 127 were especially prurient and sexist.
This is why I (and my wife, later) didn't bother owning a TV until we had our son.
In my first years of retirement, when I had friends and younger brothers to visit (most have died) I would often arrive while they were watching some old episode of a comedy or drama from the 60s, which weren't that good the first time around.
You couldn't pay me to endure an episode of any of the shows listed, now.
"I pulled up an old laugh-in episode from Prime Amazon. God it was horrible."
Sigh. Goldie Hawn and Lily Tomlin.
The Hillbillies really have to be watched into Season 6 - 1967. There's a two-part episode, the first satirizing Robin Hood with hippies. The second part focuses more on the hippies, and you can see the precise line where the culture got too weird to be satirized any more.
"then the band turned tables on the studio and forged their own brand and music? Took some grit."
LOL! That's one way to look at it. The other way is some actors, particularly Mickey Dolenz, got a taste of success playing musicians in a television show. After that, their egos got the best of them, they thought they were real musicians, they started pushing around the producers who created the show and acting like rock stars, got too big for their britches, then the producers got sick of their antics and cancelled the show, and then those actor/musicians went out and produced 0 albums, wrote 0 music and performed 0 songs. And that was the end of the great band that never was.
Well that's televison. And it hasn't gotten better. OTOH I can still enjoy a book I first read in 1968 and reread this year. That's not true for all books. Some of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels seem a little shop worn these days, I recently read one of the "new" Bond novels authorized by the Ian Fleming estate and written by Anthony Horowitz. Let's just say that the book was, how shall I put it?, awful. Times and tastes change (and Horowitz is actually a pretty good and prolific novelist and screen play writer).
Tony frees Jeannie in their very first scene together. She likes him, stows away and follows him home. He eventually comes to see that she does have her charms.
If The Professor was a fan of Family Affair it would make my week. I am sure she is aware that Sebastian Cabot recorded an album called something like "Sebastian Cabot, Actor, Reads Bob Dylan, Poet". Yes, he recited Dylan songs.
Jeannie was dressed in an outfit appropriate to the Arab culture. More often than not the "master" was the servant to the "slave". The ethics of the story is that "burden" relief and redistributive change schemes were progressive paths to moral failure. Be wary of asses bearing gifts.
https://alanbumstead.wordpress.com/2011/06/09/sebastian-cabot-bob-dylan-poet-a-dramatic-reading-with-music-1967/
I remember watching Nancy Sinatra doing “These Boots Are Made for Walking” on Dean Martin in 1966.
I remember the opening — where "Julie Barnes" gets out of breath trying to keep up with "Pete" and "Linc" who seem to need to lug her along on their hippie-busting venture.
I never watched The Mod Squad (I was two years old in 1968), but just from seeing this intro, I have to point out your unfair description of the events depicted.
The three characters are clearly converging on one location from three separate directions. Pete and Linc saunter in, looking tense with anticipation perhaps, but not noticeably strained, or even rushed. They even stand still for awhile silently sharing the moment. Then Julie bursts in, visibly exhausted from an arduous sprint.
The lads do lend some support to the winded Julie as they escape together, but it would be downright dishonest to claim she "gets out of breath trying to keep up with" them.
"They're young, they're hip, they're cops" featured in a million '70's teenage riffs.
I often watch shows from the 70s and 60s and then notice the "sexism". Girls being helped by men, Girls in short skirts, jokes about Girls who cant do math. And then i turn it off. And cry myself to sleep.
While living in the Twin Cities in the late 70s, we attended shows by a most excellent ensemble called The Wolverines Classic Jazz Orchestra. Their genre was music from the 30s and 40s. Some of the numbers they performed had been written by Clarence Williams I, grandfather of the Mod Squad star.
I was born in '62 so don't remember a whole lot of 1960s television, but remember The Mod Squad being on. I remember watching some of these shows but don't recall if I did so in their original run or in syndication. It was whatever our parents watched (or let us watch). "Laugh In" I think I liked ("Sock it to me!" -- Richard Nixon). Probably Mission: Impossible we watched as first-run.
I've been watching old Perry Masons lately, I don't remember that ever being on in our house but I am quite liking it. And Jonny Quest! I know I watched those in the '60s but not the original run; when it was on Tubi I watched them all like 3 times.
Of course its all subjective, but I shocked at how bad the Rockford files are. Didn't hold up for me, and I loved the show as a kid. Magnum PI, I still like. Newhart I like, Bob Newhart show bores me. Was 80s TV really better? I doubt it. Just my tastes changed.
I was a kid at the time but remember this show’s intro as well. My favorite Beverly Hillbillies episode was the one with the hippies where granny gets busted for saying, “I’m gonna smoke some crawdads but first I need to get a little pot.” The joke being that the hippies and cops thought crawdads was lingo for marijuana.
Returning to the Top Ten list above, this is sorting them by premiere date:
Gunsmoke (1955)
Bonanza (1959)
Beverly Hillbillies (1962)
Gomer Pyle, USMC (1964)
Dean Martin Show (1965)
Family Affair (1966)
Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In (Jan. 1968)
Julia (1968)
Here's Lucy (1968)
Mayberry RFD (1968)
The classics are the old ones at the top. The crap was the new stuff at the bottom, with Laugh-In being the pivot to the next generation of true comedies. I think what was going was that the Newton Minnow school of thought slowly pushed aside any slap sticky comedy or violent dramas, until there was nothing but pablum left. That situation couldn't persist forever.
How well I remember the days of steam television. We got TV in 1949 when it was mostly radio with pictures. Ernie Kovacs had a morning show out of Philadelphia, and Kukla Fran and Ollie came out of Chicago. Eddie FIsher and Perry Como had 15 minute shows on Friday evening. In those days the signal only went as far as St Louis, so TV developed separately in LA.
I actively avoided The Mod Squad. It sounded horrible.
Brilliant!
Michael Nesmith might disagree. He wrote and performed some great music. He wrote "Different Drum," and hinted about it on one of the Monkee episodes.
Has TV really gotten any better? I loose interest with most shows after a viewings. It all just seems so repetitious. Mrs. Bar still loves some shows, though.
I don't think I ever had a chance to see it back in the day. I don't think it aged well, or made it to rerun syndication.
A TV show from that era that is every bit as good today is the Johnny Cash show. I think it was a summer replacement series or started that way. No comedy skits, just music. Bob showed up to sing the now famous duet version of Girl from North Country.
The early adopters of new technology (color TV here) tend to be well-off men and tend to be very interested in sex. This also applied to the patrons who bought Roman sculptures, Rennaisance artists, the first buyers of film cameras, movie cameras, TV, the early PC era, and the early Web.
The TV netowrks couldn't go where the easy market was (showing no clothing at all), and had to keep it in the Reader's Digest magazine middlebrow zone. Most early TV was adapted from Vaudeville and Broadway. Also consider that there were many Jewish New York writers, producers, and actors -- they consciously produced commercial Christian products throughout the Swords & Sandals era and into the 1970s.
Before I click, one question. Golddiggers? Yes/No Yes is better. Always had a soft spot for Gomer. Peasant wisdom was highly valued in my surroundings.
I mentioned clip shows. They were boring cash grabs back in the day. I always changed channels or read a book.
Except Maj. Nelson and Darren both were all “no no don’t do me any magic favors or conjure up gold bars or anything!”
I had a definite WTF! reaction as a kid.
Ah Maryann. We had a wealth of beautiful brunettes back then. Marlo Thomas (That Girl) and Sally Field (The Flying Nun) and Karen (Room 222) and of course Agent 99 Barbara Feldman. Before we even got Charlie’s Angels and MacMillan and Wife and Dallas …
I watched a bit of Dean Martin Show. His first few jokes were pretty good. I didn't own a television, but they used to play his show in bars. And why not. The show recommended heavy drinking.... Dean Martin was probably the coolest guy in the Rat Pack. He had worked as a professional prizefighter and casino dealer. He was so laid back he didn't even cheat on his wife. Sinatra was the better singer--and indeed the greatest---but Dean Martin was authentically cool.....I didn't own a television for the longest time but I saw some of those shows in rerun when I finally got a TV. I certainly admire the moral character of the astronaut in Jeannie. He never once took advantage of the scantily clad, gorgeous slave who was duty bound to fulfill his every wish. He didn't even have a passing thought in that direction.
I know Nesmith became a record producer, did not know that he wrote some of the songs. Still, the facts remain, they were a studio creation, success went to their heads, they took control and drove the project into the ground.
Gunsmoke the GOAT. 635 Episodes
I was too young to watch most of these shows when they were first aired. (Except for Bonanza and Gunsmoke. My dad loved westerns and later became a U.S. Marshal.) So I saw most of these shows in reruns.
I remember there was a 1969 show called Room 222 about high school students. One episode dealt with a student who ran for some local political office. In one of his speechs, the student went far too left, politically, and all his campaign contributions instantly dried up.
Peter Tork and Michael Nesmith were actually musicians before they were cast in The Monkees. They got Mickey Dolenz to learn how to play the drums so that they could go out and actually perform their songs live. Davey Jones was a bit of a primma donna, so he got stuck "playing" the tambourine. Davey started in the theater. He played the Artful Dodger in the original London and Broadway productions of Oliver! (Where he got a Tony nomination.)
I was in 8th grade -- didn't really like the show very much -- but I loved that theme song!
The Monkees were actually pretty good. Dolenz in particular was a great pop vocalist. They weren't great musicians, of course, but in that era many of the big hitmakers benefitted from the studio work of the Wrecking Crew.
Fun fact: Stephen Stills auditioned for the Monkees but was deemed too unattractive.
Michael Cole. Now there's a name I haven't heard for decades. He's best remembered here in Oz for this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rr3vjCh-wy8
The weird thing about the Mod Squad opening is that it simply shows them running away from some unseen (presumably criminal) adversaries. Not apprehending them, not defeating them, but desperately trying to get away from them. Perhaps that look resonated with young viewers of that, many of whom were trying to avoid the draft rather than fight and possibly die in Vietnam.
I don't think Jeannie was a very effective slave, despite the trappings. From what I remember, the Major was somewhat stuck with her initially, and then she became an agent of chaos in the buttoned-down man's career. Almost a metaphor for men who are stuck in their ways and need a woman to shake their lives up.
Good Grief, Jennie is not a "Slave", she's a 2000 year old Genie, a wisp of smoke, trapped in a bottle till Larry Hageman found her. She takes human form, because its a TV show.
Gunsmoke was massively better than Bonanza. Some of the scripts are really dark, and nobody living on the frontier in Gunsmoke is remotely close to clean.
“I certainly admire the moral character of the astronaut in Jeannie. He never once took advantage of the scantily clad, gorgeous slave who was duty bound to fulfill his every wish. He didn't even have a passing thought in that direction.”
Plenty of after market “video” to cover that side of the story.
I liked 12 o’clock high, on after Gomer. “I don’t want a tour, over Berlin or the Rhur, flak really spoils the cloudy view.” A song they sang while drinking after the mission.
Frank Sinatra wished his voice was as fine as Dean Martin's great one...
They refused to record Sugar, Sugar, so Don Kirschner invented The Archies to record that classic.
Sad news. I watched The Mod Squad as a kid and now daily on MeTV+ during my lunch hour. Dated, but still a quality show.
Green Acres is the place to be.
TV shows from the 1950's, 1960's and 1970's do not age well at all.
Jonny Quest is a big exception to that -- the most fantastic cartoon I've ever seen.
Columbo is another big exception.
Those are the only two shows from that era that I would rate an A.
In the B range, there are a fair number of shows that are still a lot of fun.
The Avengers
The Phil Silvers show
The Andy Griffith show
Maverick
Mission: Impossible
Spider-Man
My Living Doll
The Odd Couple
Bugs Bunny
The Brady Bunch
The Rat Patrol
The Twilight Zone
Donald Duck
Perry Mason
The Huckleberry Hound Show
Batman
Scooby Doo
Love Connection
But a lot of shows I watched as a kid, from Happy Days to MASH, are mediocre or worse. And probably some of the names on my list wouldn't hold up with younger audiences who are used to 21st century TV.
TV in our century is way, way better than in the 20th century. It's not even close. One of the more striking phenomenons I've seen in art is how much television has improved. Most of Hollywood's production now is made for the small screen.
That Maverick episode that made fun of Gunsmoke? Classic!
“If The Professor was a fan of Family Affair it would make my week”
Sorry, I didn’t watch that show. The show I watched all the time was Laugh In and the show. I watched some of the time other than the Dean Martin show was Bonanza.
And what a human form it was..... oooh, la la. I read some years ago that Eden and Hagman loathed each other.
Let us not forget the 1977 episode of Happy Days in which a water-skiing Fonzie Jumps the Shark, thus creating a useful expression.
My 94-year-old father in law has "Gunsmoke" on the automatic DVR for his DishTV .
Some things never get old.
Lets see, Favorite 60s/70s USA TV shows:
01) Dick Van Dyke
02) MTM
03) Andy Griffith ( the Barney Fife years)
04) Green acres
05) BH - first 4 years.
06) Batman
07) Family Affair
08) Star Trek
09) Columbo
10) The Invaders
11) Gunsmoke (really a 50s show but on all 10 years)
12) Twilight zone (started 59, but ended 64)
13) The Untouchables (started 59, but ended 64)
14) Muppet Show
15) Get Smart
16) Kolchak - the night stalker
17) Bullwinkle show (also 59 but mostly 6os)
18) All in Family (first 5 years)
19) Hawaii Five O
20) Johnny Quest
We watched detective/conmen/mysteries in rerun or original run
The Rogues
To Catch a Thief
The Saint
Mannix
Mystery! on PBS with that fantastic Edward Gorey intro
Maverick
Alias Smith and Jones
The Wild Wild West
Perry Mason
Mission Impossible
The Avengers
Ellery Queen
I still love all these shows and thanks to the internet and DVDs have been able to rewatch them.
Yeah, I'm older than most here and am confused as to the time frame we're considering. The best mid-60's plus entertainment shows were Rowan & Martin; Smothers Bros. & Sonny & Cher. Others? All in the Family; Sanford & Son; Star Trek (if you had color TV); Wide World of Sports; I Spy!
All the rest, well some of them if one was at home with nothing else on. So, an adult lifestyle then had 7 (seven) hours of "try not to miss" TV. Needless to say the advent of Sunday NFL/AFL in color was must watch!
MASH lasted 10 years longer than the fucking Korean War. It should have been set during the 30 years war.
Rory .. but he never saw her belly button
All in The Family and Sanford & Son debuted 1971 and 1972 respectively. Sonny & Cher came out in 1971 also. Laugh-in started in 1968. Smother's Brothers, Star Trek, and I Spy started in 1965.
Let's face it. We would all be a lot smarter if television had never been invented.
1970s showbiz could only ride the Archies so far, and young "creatives" had plenty of other ideas. Today, Hollywood is completely reliant on comic books for characters and stories. They even raided Archie comics and turned them into some dark murder mystery or something very alien to the original comic books.
I'm surprised that the great (at first) series Combat! hasn't been mentioned.
It told stories about American GI's in France (a period of months) over a span of five seasons.
Spaek for yushelf.
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