Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - Mini-Ep #71: The Golden Girls, Part 1 (with writer Jim Colucci)

Episode Date: August 4, 2016

Each week, comedian Gilbert Gottfried and comedy writer Frank Santopadre share their appreciation of lesser-known films, underrated TV shows and hopelessly obscure character actors -- discussing, dissecting and (occasionally) defending their handpicked guilty pleasures and buried treasures. This week: The invincible Betty White! Gilbert meets Bea Arthur! Elaine Stritch drops an F-bomb! And the return (once again) of Herve' Villechaize!  Join us for part 2 next week! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, Ontario, got any plans? How about a trip to the casino right here, right now? With DraftKings Casino, all your favorite games are in the palm of your hand. Play the classics like blackjack, roulette, slots, and baccarat. Or take a spin on exclusive games you won't find anywhere else. Experience the excitement of the casino floor right on your phone. Download the app and play whatever, wherever, and whenever. Your options for fun are endless.

On DraftKings Casino, your way is the only way to play. Join the fun on your time, in your space, and within your means. The best part is it's safe, secure, and reliable. So deposits and withdrawals happen when you're ready. Go all in on fun with DraftKings Casino. Head to the App Store to download. Explore a full suite of games and find your favorites today. DraftKings Casino.

The crown is yours. Gambling problem? Call Connex Ontario. 1-866-531-2600. 19 and over and physically present in Ontario. Eligibility restrictions apply. See casino.draftkings.com for details. Please play responsibly.

When your celebration of life is prepaid in advance, it becomes a gift from you to your family later because no one should have to plan for a loss while they're experiencing one. Paying in advance protects your loved ones and gives you the peace of mind you deserve. Let us help you plan every detail with professionalism and compassion. We are your local Dignity Memorial provider. Find us at DignityMemorial.ca. Be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter

and subscribe on iTunes so you don't miss a single episode. And if you like the show and think we deserve a five-star rating, and obviously we do, rate us and post a review. Also, although our main purpose in life is to entertain you, producing this show costs actual money. So please help out by going to patreon.com slash Gilbert Gottfried and pledging your support to receive all sorts of goodies, merchandise, personalized roasts, and shoutouts, advanced access to episodes or personal messages from me, Gilbert Gottfried. And if we raise enough, maybe I can finally get a new co-host. I'm thinking of the Scarlett Johansson robot.

Hi, this is Gilbert Gottfried, and I'm here with my co-host Frank Santopadre, and this is Gilbert and Frank's amazing, colossal obsessions. Now we're here with another guinea. He's abusing the guest for 30 seconds. What a great start. Jim Colucci, whose new book is Golden Girls Forever. The unauthorized look behind the lanai. Isn't it lanai?

Lanai. Lanai. It's a porch. This is where we all learn that word. See, I never learned that. Lanai. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

So it's all about the golden girls. It's a frigging porch, isn't it, Illini? Yeah, it's a patio, whatever. You know, they have fancy names in Hawaii. Who knows? So, Jim. Yes? Yes?

Tell us about this book. This book is the product of a 10-year Virgo's obsession to just catalog everything that happened behind the scenes of the Golden Girls. And luckily, I started it in 2006, so they were all still around. Estelle was not well, but I talked to Bea and Rue and Betty and spent a day

with each of them at least. How about Herb Edelman? Susan Harris. Herb Edelman died in the 90s. He was the one who really was gone. That's funny man. Oh my god he was great. That was one of those that would have been a perfect guest. Yeah. Yeah because he did everything. I mean like you had Jessica Walter and Ron Liebman

I mean Herb Edelman was, he was in all those shows too. He was everywhere in the 70s and 80s. Now, you have some B-author stories. I like that we're going to start with that. I've been told to ask you. This show has no structure whatsoever. Yeah, so that's okay. I like that.

As you can see. Well, you know, yeah, the Bea Arthur story I would tell, it would be the one about spending the day with her. You know, there are other Bea Arthur stories about her love of salty language and sometimes at whom it would be directed. I'm sure Gil can fill those in. Yes. Yeah, somehow I think I can take hearing a dirty joke.

I think you can, too. I think I've seen a little joke you've told called The Aristocrats. I think I've heard some words in there. Something. Yeah. No, well, the story that you're talking about is that, and I'm not revealing anything because Rue McClanahan told this on stage at Bea's Memorial Service at the Majestic Theater on Broadway back in 2010.

Let it rip. And I had actually heard Rue tell this because Rue was on the show called Sorted Lives on Logo that Del Shores created. And when that show was looking like it was not going to come back for another season, they started to do this kind of comedy club tour around the country where ticket prices, I guess, would kind of be like a crowdfunding. And so Rue would come out and do what she called sit-down comedy because at that point she was in her mid-70s and she's like, oh, fuck it, I'm going to sit, and I'm going to tell my stories. So Rue told this story then, and then she told it on the stage at Bea's memorial.

And I can't imagine Betty loves it, but this is the story. That when Bea Arthur did her one-woman show on Broadway, Rue, who lived in New York with her husband, Morrow, had gone to the opening night, and they were at the opening night party. And they were about to say their goodbyes at the end of the party. And Morrow came up behind Bea and put his hand on her shoulder and kind of tapped her.

And she looked over her shoulder. And he didn't think she could completely see who he was. And plus, it was out of context. So he wanted to reintroduce himself. So he said, Bea, I'm Morrow. I'm Rue's husband. I just want to tell you the show was wonderful. It's great to see you.

And she put her hand on his really lovingly and said, oh, Mauro, it's so great to see you, and I love Rue, but Betty White is a cunt. Out of nowhere. Out of nowhere, 20-something years after she last worked with Betty. Right, 20 years she was hanging on to that. Well, I guess 17 years since she last worked with Betty 20 years she was hanging on to that well I guess 17 years

since she last worked with Betty she was hanging on to that one and you know Betty has come out about B not liking her

and that was always this story that people talked about behind the scenes about you know was there a problem and that was if ever there was a problem

it was that Estelle couldn't remember lines and they were all frustrated at having to stay late and have her do her lines again and she had stage fright too she had terrible stage fright and then then the other thing was that Estelle couldn't remember lines and they were all frustrated at having to stay late and ever do lines again. And she had stage fright, too. She had terrible stage fright.

And then the other thing was that Bea not liking Betty. And Betty came out about it, said it, I think it was on Larry King, said, ah, it's true, she didn't like me. She said it, yeah. So, you know, she's honest about it. And she says she didn't feel that way about Bea. She respected her talent. And I believe her. You know, Bea just, just found Betty's sweet nature

Little Mary Sunshine thing to be an act. To be phony. I don't think it is. I think it's who Betty is. But Betty also has that strength underneath. You don't get to be 94 in this business and still keep working if you don't have balls. And I think that B couldn't parse the dichotomy. She couldn't figure out how you could be

so strong and so sweet at the same time. And so I think she thought she was full of shit. But, I mean, it's unfortunate because they had great talent and they worked well together. And you don't hear anybody else say a negative word

about Betty White. You never hear that. Do you ever hear anybody else say Betty White is a cunt? No, it's a joke. Other than Bea. It's a joke that you would. But Bea was a Marine.

She was tough. Oh, I know. And that was something that came out after her death that nobody talked about. Yeah. I mean, there's photographic evidence of her in uniform. It's amazing. I've seen the pictures.

Yeah. I remember I once met Betty White at some event. And we ran into each other. We're looking at each other. And she goes, hello, Gilbert. Oh, Bea. Bea. You said Betty White.

I'm sorry. Bea Arthur. Yeah. There was a showbiz event. And backstage somewhere, I run in face-to-face with Bea Arthur. And she goes, hello, Gilbert. And I go, hello, Bea. And she goes, so, what are you working on now?

And I tell her, and she tells me what she's working. She goes, still living in the same area? And I thought, we never knew each other, but I said, yeah. And then with this, like, quiet, uncomfortable seconds of silence, and she looks at me, and she goes, do we know each other, or do we just know each other from television? And I said, I think from television. And she just turned around and walked away. I like how that was the end of the conversation, not the beginning.

That's it. Just left. Well, I wonder if that was at the Friars Club roast for Jerry Stiller. Because remember, that's where Jeff Ross said that line about her. She hated that. If you remember, Sandra Bernhardt had gone on and she had sang and danced to Magic Man. I don't even know if it made the telecast.

They may have cut it because it didn't go well. And then afterward, Jeff got up and said, and Bea was there sitting there in the dais only half paying attention, that, oh, how about that Sandra Bernhardt? I wouldn't fuck her with Bea Arthur's dick.

And Bea did her classic double take and her classic look but afterward I know she was not pleased about that. Well Jeff's told that story on this show actually and I think he bought her flowers and he spent months and months making amends and I think finally they

forged something of a friendship. I think she was half flattered and half insulted. It's a roast. It's a roast. It's a roast. It's attention. Actors like attention. Right. But she was always very vulnerable and very upset about people making fun of her appearance,

and that was a problem on the Golden Girls, too. That's one of the reasons she threatened to quit all the time, because they would make fun of Dorothy. The thing is, if you called Rose stupid, Betty White is anything but stupid and knows it. Rue McClanahan is not necessarily a slut. Estelle is not necessarily 80-something years old. She's in her 60s. But when you call an actress ugly, when you carry a character ugly,

there's no way to divorce yourself from that. Wow, that's rough. And so Bea was really sick of it. And it's funny because in the book, one of the writers who started on the show in season four, Richard Vaxey, tells the story about how he and his writing partner, Tracy Gamble, got this big job on The Golden Girls and they were so excited. And their first script goes to table read and they're waiting to get their big laughs. And sometime in between, of course, when you're the junior writers on a show, between you turning in your draft or your script and it going to table read, it can be rewritten by anybody above you on that show.

And some of the showrunners had slipped in a couple of Bea Arthur or Dorothy jokes in there. show and some of the showrunners had slipped in a couple of Bea Arthur or Dorothy jokes in there and so it goes to the table read and they're reading through horrified seeing this for the first time as Bea's about to do this scene and there's a one of the characters basically calls her and it ended up being used later I think it was either the one

time they called her Buddy Ebsen or the time that they or the time they called her like Gabby Hayes I forget which one it was which one is worse and Bea burst out crying at the table read and got up and threatened to quit. She said, I'm not coming back to this show. And these poor young writers were like, you know, the showrunners told them basically

go to your rooms. And they went to their room and they're packing like, okay, well, that was great. There's a career. And they talked Bea off the ledge and she didn't quit in season four. She quit after season seven. Right. But, you know, that shows that after that, they were like, all right, we got to take this seriously. She is not good with the jokes.

She was sensitive. She was. People didn't know that about her. It was always funny. I remember when I was growing up, there were always those parts where I wondered about the actors in it where if it's supposed to be that the person's ugly. Like Margaret Dumont. Oh, yes. You got the worst of it.

Right, but she never apparently was in on the joke. I always wonder about the casting call for those roles. Oh, yes. Like the women that Al Bundy would make fun of when they were married with children and they'd always be these big battle axes. I always wondered, like, what did the casting call say? Like, must be obese, preferably hideous,

totally unattractive. And who, like, reads that and goes, oh, my lucky day, my big break. Yes. Do you remember an actress from the 70s or the 60s, Rita Shaw? Yes. R-T-A Shaw. Yes. You'd know her if you saw her.

From Ghost and Mrs. Muir. She was built like a linebacker. Oh, yeah. And she always played a stern nanny. The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, the maid. Ghost and Mrs. Muir. She was on the Ghost and Mrs. Muir. Yeah.

And she was always in that part. Yes. Yeah. Pat Carroll would turn up in some of those parts, too. Yeah, but Pat Carroll, you know, they were making always in that part. Yes. Yeah. Pat Carroll would turn up in some of those parts, too. Yeah, but Pat Carroll, you know, they were making her look that way. I mean, if you look at the Make Room for Daddy repeats, she was young and blonde and pretty. Right. That's true.

And Alice Ghostly, I guess. Oh, my God, Alice Ghostly. Thinking about all the actresses. I just got a flashback just because I was watching. Yeah. I was watching Fantasy Island, and there was that. I'm sorry. There were those episodes.

I had forgotten about them until he showed them, where Christopher Hewitt- Yo, Mr. Belvedere. Yes. Yes. He was the guy, and there was no- Yeah, he replaced, what, Montalban? Did he replace Montalban? No, no, no. Oh, no, he replaced- He, Montalban? Did he replace Montalban? No, no, no.

Oh, no, he replaced Hervé Villachez. That's right. Now, was Hervé Villachez already dead? No, I don't think so. I think he just left. I think he just left in a contract dispute of some kind. Because he had a lot of other options. Yes.

He was really hot. Doing Lear. Somebody said when he got the job, I think Hv A. Vilchers didn't even have a phone at the time. And so they went to pick him up. And the guy, the driver said the section of LA he was in, he said he was like calling his boss and going, look, I don't want to get out of the car. If it's safe enough for Irv, it's safe enough for you, the driver. What did Irv say at the time, Gil? Yeah.

I'm very safe. Very safe. You won't get mugged and raped and be done. But we digress. Let's go back to the Golden Girls. So you never had any evidence of Betty White being a cunt? No. No, you know, I saw, well, okay, here's one thing that I think might be some evidence.

I personally was at a taping in 1992, in the last season of the show, and Estelle kept screwing up her lines as I learned now have learned happened all the time and Betty turned to the audience uh at one point after one of Estelle's flubs and did the drinking motion like glug glug glug in front of the audience and made a joke of it and the audience laughed and so Betty was clowning and it was a way to I think keep the audience on your side after Estelle was going to make that mistake 10 times but that kind of thing bothered Estelle and Betty probably knew it because Estelle had probably said something because Estelle was going to make that mistake 10 times. But that kind of thing bothered Estelle, and Betty probably knew it because Estelle had probably said something. Because Estelle was so, you know, when you have stage fright,

the more people point it out, the worse it gets. And so, you know, people could say that that was Betty being mean. I don't think it was. I really think she was trying to keep the audience going, but Estelle didn't like it. Yeah. Hey, Ontario, got any plans? How about a trip to the casino right here, right now?

With DraftKings Casino, all your favorite games are in the palm of your hand. Play the classics like blackjack, roulette, slots, and baccarat. Or take a spin on exclusive games you won't find anywhere else. Experience the excitement of the casino floor right on your phone. Download the app and play whatever, wherever, and whenever. Your options for fun are endless. On DraftKings Casino, your way is the only way to play. Join the fun on your time, in your space, and within your means.

The best part is it's safe, secure, and reliable. So deposits and withdrawals happen when you're ready. Go all in on fun with DraftKings Casino. Head to the App Store to download. Explore a full suite of games and find your favorites today. DraftKings Casino, the crown is yours. Gambling problem? Call Connex Ontario, 1-866-531-2600. 19 and over and physically present in Ontario. Eligibility restrictions apply. See casino.draftkings.com

for details. Please play responsibly. This is a paid advertisement from BetterHelp. As a podcast listener, you've heard from us before. Today, let's hear what members have told us. One member said, I would recommend my therapist 1,000 times over. She has truly changed my life. Another member said, the day after my first session, my friends and family said I sounded like myself again for the first time in weeks. You deserve to invest in your well-being. Visit BetterHelp.com to see what it can do for you. That's betterhelp.com. which includes no monthly fee, unlimited debit transactions in Canada, Avion points on debit purchases,

and so, so much more. Unlock more perks for less with RBC Vantage. Conditions apply. Offer ends June 30th, 2024. New eligible clients only. Complete criteria by August 30th, 2024. Visit rbc.com slash student100. So, you know, but, hey, Betty is 94 and still going strong, doing those game shows on ABC.

She's still going. We'd love to get her. I know. I guess we have to try. You know, we thought she'd be a difficult booking. You know, her living room is lovely, butter yellow. Just bring your equipment. Go to her.

We should. For a guest like Betty White, we'd fly to her. I know. How amazing would that be? And I remember just outside of the sound place here, I was thinking, I thought, you know, it's been a couple of months or so or a year. I haven't seen Betty White on TV. Since Off Our Rockers. Yes, right.

She did a practical joke show. Yeah, and I thought, uh-oh, she must be in horrible shape, about to die. And then I find out she's already working on a new show. Yeah, as my friend Marshall Wallace used to say, you can't kill her with a stick. I love that. So tell us a couple of things about the Golden Girls that I didn't know. For one thing, we'll tell you something that of course you did know, but you didn't know. We just interviewed Lee Grant and she turned down Golden Girls. Okay. There's a hint of that in my book because I couldn't get her to confirm that.

She confirmed it for us. But I did. See, look at that. You scooped me. But I did talk to Dinah. You're a much better interviewer. You're a better interviewer. But I did talk to Dinah Manoff, her daughter, who also was on the show as crossing over

from her Empty Nest character. And so Dinah was like trying to be the go-between to find out. But yeah, because Lee Grant had been Faye for Whit Thomas Harris. Correct. She was like one of the first thoughts for Dorothy. I mean, even though it said a Bea Arthur type in the script, though, so Bea really was. She didn't want to play a grandmother.

Yeah. Yeah, which is... I guess is what it came down to. Huh. Did it start out... Warren Littlefield saw a presentation with Doris Roberts? It was actually Brandon Tartikoff.

Oh, it was Brandon Tartikoff. He was the visionary. I got that info. Well, Littlefield was there and he was involved in this whole decision-making thing. But this is the days of NBC

when Tartikoff was really the guru there. And yeah, it came from a couple of different places. They were doing, when Miami Vice was one of the hopes

of NBC to really resuscitate because if you remember in the early 80s, NBC was sucking. Sure. You know, nothing. Nothing was working. Cosby Show finally was the first comedy that worked Miami

Vice became the first drama that worked of that era and so as they were preparing to launch Miami Vice in the fall of 84 they did one of their boring fall preview specials which was you know in front of an audience full of bored and drunken affiliates or whatever and I think they're probably taping it and they gave each of their stars stars patter to read onto the prompter. And what they gave to Doris Roberts, who was on Remington Steel, and to Selma Diamond, who was on Night Court, was shtick where it was almost like Emily Littella, like where they were going to mistake Miami Vice

and think it was called Miami Nice. I see. And be two little Jewish ladies saying, Miami Nice, what is it about people in Florida? I don't get it. And so they did the shtick, and because they are really good, they made something of it. And it was really the only moment of that night that anybody remembered afterward, that nobody really cared about the patter about all the new shows, which were doomed to fail anyway.

All they remembered was, hey, that was actually funny, these two women doing this little old lady shtick. And Brendan Tartikoff in his book also talked about how he was obsessed with, I think it was his aunt in Florida, his elderly aunt, and how she got along with her neighbors and her complex. And he also watched How to Marry a Millionaire with his niece at the time. So there was a lot going on where he was thinking about groupings of women, and then particularly older women. And I think that at that moment, it all gelled when he saw Doris and Selma do that. And so it started as a joke where he was telling the other NBC executives, let's do this thing called Miami Nice. And everybody thought

he was crazy. And he was a real maverick for every Miami Nice he came up with, he came up with the Manimal, too. Manimal, we've talked about that show. Simon McCorkendale. Yeah, Simon McCorkendale. They weren't all great. They weren't all gems. But this one, he kind of kept alive.

And when Tony Thomas and Paul Witt, the other two and Witt Thomas Harris, came in with a writer to pitch something to NBC that they didn't want, as they were walking out the door, Tartikoff said to them, you know, there is an idea I want to throw at you. And he talked all about Miami Nice. And whoever that writer was, I don't even know was not interested can imagine kicking yourself imagine but paul witt being married to susan harris knows her sensibility very well and so that's something she'd love and sure enough she did so they kind of it's it's so funny most shows obviously start with the writer pitching his

heart out trying to get a show to a studio in a network and this is a case where the network said all right susan you're good here's our idea idea. And obviously that bodes well for getting it on the air. And that was it. And Bea Arthur turned down the part originally. She did and she didn't. She claims, it's hard to- There's conflicting stories about that too. Well, it's hard to reconcile Bea's recollections with the people in the real world. What did she tell you? Bea told me that she was the last person in town to hear that it was written in this script called The Golden Girls that Dorothy was a B. Arthur type.

And that is what it was written as. It's funny. Jessica Walter said before that it was written a Jessica Walter type for, I think, Jessica Walter for Arrested Development. For Arrested Development. Same thing. Dorothy said a B. Arthur type. So everybody else in town remembers that and that originally they say B didn't want to do it. Now maybe her agent said she didn't want to do it and she didn't know. I don't know. But they had to go to find

some alternates and that's, there's a whole tragic story of Elaine Stritch's audition that she told in her. I was just going to bring that up. Did she drop an F-bomb, Elaine Stritch? Oh yes. So Elaine Stritch, I'll get to that in a minute, but Elaine Stritch had an audition. But eventually it came back to B where Susan Harris really said, it's B or I don't want to do this show. And one of the reasons NBC didn't want B, so one of the reasons they hadn't even pursued too hard, was because of Maude and her abortion. And so B had a strong Q score, which

means that people knew who she was, but it was also a negative score, that people didn't like her. Because of Maude? Because of Maude. Wow. How about that? And so NBC was not thrilled with the idea of her, and that's why they made this Elaine Stritch thing happen. But at the last minute, now Bea says, okay, when she did hear about the show,

she didn't want to do it because she thought, with Betty originally slated to play Blanche, which is true, it was going to be too much like Sue Ann Nivens, and with Rue originally slated to play Rose, it was going to be too much like Vivian from Maud. And so she said when Rue called her to beg her to do the show, Rue, I have no interest in playing Sue Ann Nivens meets Vivian meets Maud. And so she said when Ru called her to beg her to do the show, Ru, I have no interest in playing Sue Ann Nivens meets Vivian meets Maud

or something like that. And Ru had to say to her, that's not what we're doing. It's been switched, didn't you hear? And B signed on very soon after that. But yeah, oh, the Elaine Stritch story. So when NBC wouldn't have B and apparently B wouldn't have them anyway,

the head of casting at NBC, a gay guy, so he knows theater, was like, you know, there is another candidate who is very B. Arthur-like, I think meaning she has balls and a deep voice. And so they flew Elaine Stritch in from New York. And literally it could not have been set up like more like a farcical comedy scene because it wasn't until I think she was parking in the NBC parking lot that Susan Harris said to the executives in the in the audition room. By the way, it's either be or nobody and I'm not doing the show. And here's Elaine Stritch walking in for her audition. And as they said, it was, you know, audition rooms, I guess, often are a very cold, weird L shaped room where the actor is made to feel very uncomfortable. And Elaine Stritch comes in and she starts doing the lines and she's getting like, it's ice cold. Nobody is reacting to her because she doesn't know. They've just been arguing about it before she walks in. And the more the room is ice cold, as actors tend to do, the more she tries to get bigger and bigger and win them over. And then she thinks she's going

to embellish a little by throwing the F-bomb in there a couple times. Pass the fucking hors d'oeuvres. How weird. Susan did not care for that. And so there was tension between her and Susan Harris in the room because Susan had just said, I only want Bea Arthur. Now, who is this you're bringing in who's saying fuck in the middle of my lines? Right, right. So it didn't go well. Well, it would have been a very, I mean, I guess I could see it working with Elaine Stritch, but it would have been a very different show.

Yeah, but, you know, any sitcom that's classic is classic because every piece of casting was right. Yeah, the chemistry. If you try to change any one character in any classic show, you'd be like, that wouldn't have worked. But maybe it would have been different. Well, we had Lee Grant on, Gil, and we were trying to figure out if Empty Nest was a spin-off. Neither one of us could remember that Empty Nest was a spin-off. It was, but it was a spinoff in the worst way. They started with the concept that they wanted to create something called Empty Nest, the Whit Thomas Harris people.

So they wrote this embedded pilot that they embedded within the Golden Girls. Did it have former Gilbert podcast guest Paul Dooley in it? It did, and Rita Moreno. And they played a couple whose daughter had just moved off to college. So they were an empty nest. It was a dreadfully boring episode. The girls were in it quite a lot because they were the girls' next-door neighbors, which is how they introduced it.

But it's like one of those episodes when you see it coming out on the Golden Girls, you're like, shit, it's that one. I don't remember that. You know, we're going to have to do a special episode of these phony spin-offs. Yes, we will do one. Like Married with Children had about four of them. Yes. Yes, we will do one. Like, married with children had about four of them. Yes, right.

And they didn't go. That was so clumsy. All of a sudden, Al would go, hey, it's my best friend in the whole world, Tim Johnson.

He's always getting into some weird adventures. And you go, what? And then why are we spending a half hour with him? Yeah. Or the Brady Bunch had one of those

where it was a weird family. That was the Ken Berry thing. Yes, Ken Berry. He had one of each, a white kid of his own, an adopted Asian and black kid. Ken Berry on Sir Sherwood Schwartz tried to spin Ken Berry off. Yes, and so they had an embedded thing like that. And what's so weird about

those shows is they would be introduced as so-and-so's lifelong best friend you go well it's the best friends how come they would never mention one and they never will be again yes exactly and then what happens too is the main characters after doing like a few seconds, then disappear. Yeah. And then maybe they'll come in the middle. It's a light week for the main characters that week. They're cashing the check and going off to Cancun that week. I mean, in the 70s, I remember Maude was a character on All in the Family before she-

Well, that makes sense as a spinoff. They would do it a little more seamlessly. Well, normally that's what happens. Characters get spun off into their own situations, but sometimes they try to. It's a cheap way of doing an episode of your show. If you want to do a pilot but you want it to be paid for by your existing show, you just do it as an embedded episode. So that way you can air it no matter what happens. It's just cheapness.

Yeah. I remember on – I mean, in Married with Children, they had that one with Matt LeBlanc and – Oh, yeah. What's that uh what's his name we just talked about him was it joe bologna joe bologna yes it's a father and son jesus i haven't thought about oh i saw that written somewhere in like a matt leblanc bio and i i forget what it was they were italian yeah they were a bunch of good boysas. Oh, yeah, exactly. There was another one they did where Alan Thicke was the star. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just the Ten of Us, I think.

No, was that just the Ten of Us? No, that was something else. I think just the Ten of Us was the one with Bill Kirkenbauer. Yeah, you're right. Yeah. Yeah, I remember Alan Thicke, though. What was the Alan Thicke one? That, I don't know.

Maybe they introduce it like Kelly is either going out with Alan Thicke or Alan Thicke. A very special intergenerational dating episode. And I don't know. And once again they're introduced and then the main characters just go off to China. Well that's what happened with this Empty Nest thing.

So Paul Dooley and Rita Moreno it's all about them and their missing daughter. And then because that didn't go why did they love that that title, Empty Nest, I'll never know. So when they introduced Richard Mulligan's character as a neighbor, they spun him off kind of the more traditional way. I see. Called it Empty Nest still, but Empty Nest, it's like, what? His daughters are living with him. Right.

How is it an Empty West nest in any possible way? With the immortal David Leisure. With David Leisure, who was in both. Oh, my God. He was in both pilots. He's the only continuity between the two Empty Nests. He was in both pilots. He's the only continuity between the two empty nests. He was in the one

with Rita Moreno and Paul Dooley, too. Here we go, boys. One, two, three, two. Give it up for the Col colossal obsessions Give me that fract, colossal obsessions Give me that fract, colossal obsessions