We're Three For All! At Least We Are Told We Are!

We're three for all! And the Channel 3 newscasters are regular folks, just like us, eating pizza and inspecting construction!

Thank you, Channel 3, for showing us the normal, ordinary, working-class people of Philadelphia. It's like looking into a mirror -- a mirror that you have held up to us! Now it's up to us to not live it down!

We can identify with these good folks, and therefore, with you. The subjects of this promo -- namely US! -- are having so much fun living their humble lives that watching Channel 3 news is a given. Especially because you are telling us that you too are working folks, just like us!

You are no-nonsense and straightforward, and that's how we, the working class, like our news given to us. We really are three for all!

Hazel Pimps Ford Falcon

Hazel asks us to see our Ford dealer to test the new 1964 Ford Falcon ("Ain't that sumpin?" she asks us in her brilliant genius/simpleton dullard style).

Her request for us to test drive a Falcon turns suddenly somber and heavy (you can see it in her eyebrows and the slow nod of her head). It's as if she is asking us to get a second opinion on a diagnosis for brain cancer. It's that urgent to her, and who are we not to run to our Ford dealer as requested.

Yet should Hazel be sitting on Mr. B's exercise bike, especially if he's only keeping it in the house for a trial run? What else does Hazel do when the Baxters are not around?

The Munsters Pilot

What's the deal with the pilot's theme song, which sounds like about sixteen theme songs in one? Luckily for us, they made some changes, and fast.

Why does every actor who plays Eddie not have a normal first name? Happy Derman? Butch Patrick?

We get to see the classic "Marilyn's date escapes from the Munster house." This one jumps over the wall! Some of them tunnel out, or worse. Good workout!

Gloria Spinoff

Sally Struthers, thinking, like Rob Reiner, that she had big things in her future, left "All in the Family" in 1978. By 1982, she was in redux, back and ready to rethink her career.

For this seemingly unwatchable spinoff, file this under "What Were They Thinking?"

If the opening credits were this boring, imagine how slow the show must have moved.

All In the Family Pilot -- Unsold, Unaired

Check out the "All in the Family" that never was. I say that these actors made a better Gloria and Mike. It would be another two years before the actual series was retooled and sold to CBS.

The sound and picture quality sucks, by the way, but enjoy the original, superior Gloria and Mike if you can.

The British Archie Bunker!

Look at the British Archie Bunker! Look at the British Edith! Look at the British Mike and Gloria! Look but don't listen, because you won't be able to follow a woid.

Lawrence Welk Gets His Freak On

Here, The Champagne King gets freaky with a young pretty. But she loses something far more dear to her than her virginity. Let's watch!

The Price Is Right Episode One

The very first episode of The New Price Is Right. Observe the rush of audience excitement and the heart-pumping thrill of having your name called to "come on down." Or, at least, to "stand up."

It's like a scene out of "The Manchurian Candidate." These people have been brainwashed to kill. It's has to be, because no sane people would dress like that.

Room 222 "Color" Promo

Ah, the late 60s, when every high school student was pushing 30.

Here, a concerned mother asks, "What do you teach, Miss Johnson? Sex Education?" but, in the promo, we never get an answer. We are asked, instead, to be titillated, because it's 1969.

Hawaii Five-O opening credits

Greatest theme song ever. Everybody pretty much agrees on that. However, one quick question: the third Hawaiian to turn to the camera (the really pretty one with the long hair that swings behind her as her head turns): what exactly is she conveying? Intrigue and danger, sure, but hers? Ours? Kam Fong as Chin Ho's? Is she in trouble? Are we in trouble?

The Flying Nun opening credits

Yes, it is unsettling, but imagine how America felt when it first laid its eyes on an actual flying nun. And I mean its FIRST glance, during these opening credits, as Sr. Betrille is coming right at you, practically bursting through your twenty-one-inch, American-made color TV set.

How did America respond? By collectively jerking its head backward, as if watching a 3D movie? In 1967, hadn't America had enough surprise and shock? And now this?

Sally Field portrays her as we expect Sally would: accepting, bemused by her flying fate. The wind is blowing through her hair (well, her wimple) and the green screen behind her shows the intense, monstrous beauty that is Puerto Rico. Yet shouldn't she be a bit more horizontal when she flies, instead of looking like she's standing up? Well, it worked for Mary Poppins.

The reaction shots are gold, Jerry. Here you can learn how actors successfully convey well-rehearsed expressions of complete amazement and intense delight, as well as ill-timed double takes (where exactly is Carlos looking when Sr. Betrille crashes through a window? The perspective is completely wrong. He's outside; she's inside.). Watch them slowly shake their head in wonder. We do too.

The theme song is diggable in that it's "flying music," where a full-blown orchestra invokes images of scurrying and nervous rushing about, which is Sally Field in a nutshell.

Pitch meeting to ABC: "we have a series about a nun, based in Puerto Rico, who flies." Laugh all you want, but the show ran for two years and forever in reruns. The Lord do work in mysterious ways.