Posted by chicagomedia.org on January 06, 2009 at 10:17:23:
'Odd Couple' reruns back on Chicago TV: Oh Oscar, Oscar, Oscar!
Here's news one would assume everyone would cheer, but as a certain New Yorker by the name of Unger once argued in court: You should never "assume," because when you "assume," you make an "ass" of "u" and "me."
And folks should only be grateful to Me TV since "The Odd Couple," a great sitcom but never a great hit, has returned to Chicago TV, via Weigel Broadcasting's WWME-Ch. 23 (and WCIU's digital channel 26.2).
Talk about a reason to be happy and peppy and bursting with love: Reruns of Garry Marshall's classic 1970-75 ABC adaptation of the Neil Simon story, starring Jack Klugman as sloppy sports columnist Oscar Madison and the late Tony Randall as neat-freak photographer Felix Unger, are airing weeknights on Me TV at 11:30 between vintage episodes of "The Honeymooners" and "Cheers."
Even the first-season "Odd Couple" episodes that were airing last week are to be savored, despite the fact they predate the critical second-season switch to a multi-camera/live audience approach that enabled the series to truly hit its stride.
Remarkably, as revered as "The Odd Couple" is by anyone who cares about TV comedy and has even the slightest sense of the genre's history, the series never in its network run cracked the Nielsen top 20 in popularity.
"Top 20? It never cracked out of the bottom 20! Never!" Randall, who died in 2004, told me back in late 1992. "We never had a rating. We were canceled every 13 weeks for five years, and then we'd be saved at the last minute."
One of the more unusual things about "The Odd Couple," especially in retrospect, is that it's a show about a pair of bickering middle-aged men living together. Randall was 50 when "The Odd Couple" made its debut. Klugman (who got the part of Oscar at Marshall's insistence when ABC wanted Mickey Rooney) was 48.
"ABC's research said, 'Viewers think it's about two homosexuals,' and after that the network kept bothering us to put more women in the shows and have a lot of hugging and kissing," Marshall said at a 1989 Museum of Television & Radio panel I covered. "So whenever we had a scene in which Tony and Jack hugged each other, we'd send it to New York."
ABC Entertainment executives, who never really appreciated the gem they had, hardly needed the goading.
"They would have sacrificed it in a moment, but it was cheap, they were the third network and they didn't have anything else," Klugman told me in '92. "It was the best they had, but they didn't like it."
TV executives always "say, 'We're giving the public what they want,'" Klugman said. "But nobody ever said: Take off 'Playhouse 90' and give us 'Starsky and Hutch'."
Klugman would win two Emmys as lead actor in a comedy and Randall won once over the run of "The Odd Couple." They managed this while competing against each other as finalists in the same category all five years. Never mind the overall quality of the other competition as indicated by the fact that, in only two years neither Klugman nor Randall heard their name called, the trophy went to Alan Alda of "MASH" and Carroll O'Connor of "All in the Family."
Klugman and Randall managed to make plausible whatever absurdity the writers threw their way, no matter how over the top. And that staff -- which included Marshall, Jerry Belson, Lowell Ganz and Harvey Miller -- was stocked with comedic talent that would go on to be recognized among show business' best.
It was a staff and cast that managed to do more than salvage an inadvertent double-booking of guests that put sportscaster Howard Cosell and opera soprano Martina Arroyo in the same episode. With the addition of comedian Jack Carter and ABC Sports boss Roone Arledge (in his only sitcom appearance), they came up with one of the series' best-loved episodes.
It might not have been fully appreciated by viewers or network execs in the 1970s, but "The Odd Couple" has more than earned its due. It's DNA can be found in plenty of shows and movies to this day.
"Jack always said, 'When we come back in reruns, they'll find us,"' Randall said of the audience. "I'll never know how he knew, but he called it absolutely accurately."
Do yourself a favor. Find them on Me TV.
(Phil Rosenthal, Chicago Tribune)