SUPPORT 13 WEEK THEATRE ON PATREON AND GET EXCLUSIVE EARLY ACCESS: / 13week This week 13WT conjures up ABC's disastrous genie comedy from 1983, "Just Our Luck."
Seeing the ad for this obvious train wreck is the most wonderful part of this whole thing. You're watching, watching, watching and then he says massa and it's all over.
During the shows short run in fall 1983, TK Carter made a guest appearance on Soul Train to promote ‘Just Our Luck’. It might still be here on RUclips.
That's when television was starting to change. Happy days was in its final season. Laverne and shirley was already canceled. And 3's company was in its last season also.
I wonder if the show would have worked if they switched the roles: TK as the down-on-his-luck-guy, Richard as a clumsy genie. Maybe not, but TK pulling a Major Nelson and having to explain the foul-ups and craziness might have been amusing.
Of course I see this comment this just after I said the same thing. It would be better seeing a black man being served by white man. Still would feel like an I Dream of Jeannie ripoff though.
@@aiberlane3390 Oh, don't get me wrong, it would have still flopped because a show about a genie in 1982 wasn't going to cut it. But maybe they avoid all the backlash.
Pab, the obvious follow-up to this would be "The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer". On UPN, the network that never could figure out who their audience was. I love your channel.
He was married to the amazing Jean Smart (Designing Women, Hacks) He of course died, but was really amazing about him was he pretty much stepped away from acting and helped manage her career. It was a true love story they had
I remember this show vaguely but never considered it racist in any way. I only remembered "old" the show got just after the first episode. Sight gags, "catchy" comebacks and Richard Guillabrand (sp) trying to do his best version of Darren Stephens or Major Nelson. This was a show that essentially had nothing as opposed to Seinfeld which was about nothing.
I was 7 watching this show and was mad it was canceled. I wasn't old enough to be aware of the "what were they thinking?" aspects of it all. And one fuzzy memory: I thought Gilliland was Robert Hays until seeing this video, lol
The Gordon Brothers also created Renegades with Patrick Swayze & Kirkwood Smith. About a street gang that works for the police. Kind of like Mod Squad for the '80s. That was another 13 week bomb!
Renegades faced Dallas at 9pm on Friday nights, and Dallas was mega popular back then. Also Knight Rider aired against Renegades, so the Swayze show stood no chance.
Not sure specifically but I would guess it was to keep ratings higher. Summertime is traditionally rerun time for other shows or to burn off pilots that had no shot at going to series.
Pab, Let's see a video on the Terri Garr vehicle, Good and Evil..from the writers of Soap..It received major backlash from the sight impaired community with it's portrayal of a bumbling blind character..
Good & Evil was great -- except for Mark Blankfield's blind character. Not only was it a painfully unfunny joke (the dude was oblivious to the fact that he was as destructive as Godzilla), but they made him so pathetically lovelorn that he was thoroughly unlikable. Dunno WTF Susan Harris was thinking.
@@VinnieRattolle I think Susan, having covered lots of ground in Soap, was grasping at straws for an character was controversial, edgy, and able to make fun of..the destructive nature was funny for about 5 minutes, but after several episodes, it became embarrassing, the protests is was what ended the series..and the fact it became extremely stale after a bit...
Let's face it.... There are just WAY too many awful TV shows for him to do. But here's yet another suggestion (drumroll please): AKA Pablo! Whoa! I didn't know you were going to mention that show at the very ending.
Why is it they always go for the "racist white" thought when a black guy is a genie? If the genie were a woman (regardless of color) they'd whine about sexism!! Can't some people watch even a poorly conceived comedy without playing the race card? I remember when this debuted and yes, it was lousy and even then it was obviously a reworking of I Dream of Jeannie, with none of the charm or fun. Norman Lear deserved some raspberries for AKA Pablo and Condo, because like Gary Marshall and Gene Roddenberry, he was a one trick pony who kept trying to make 60s and 70s shows into the 80s and thinking viewers wouldn't be the wiser.
A jive-talking black guy in an 80s sitcom, what can possibly go wrong? Outside of shows like Benson, The Cosby Show, 227, A Different World, and Family Matters. Stereotype sitcoms were the only option for minority actors in the 80s and, yes, it got worse in the 90s when UPN & the WB came on the scene.
Is Turnabout and Gloria on the list in the future? Now Automan and Star Man, those I love to watch about their downfall! abc's 83-84 did have three winners, Hotel, Webster and Hardcastle and McCormick. But I was tuned to CBS and NBC at that time. The theme song that's sung (Just our Luck) sounds almost like R&B legend, Stephanie Mills.
The concept wasn’t bad, with a pretty good cast. However, the writing tried too hard. If you took a shot every time they mentioned he (John Goodman) is gay, you’d be blackout before the end of the episode. It tried to go for shock value, but just flat out overshot it. I had high hopes when it first aired but was disappointed by the results. I expected better.
@@cityhawk Remember Love Sidney with Tony Randall? Randall, as the gay Sidney Shorr, overdid his "Felix Unger" persona up to 11 (or, as I recall, up to 51), but they didn't DARE mention his sexual orientation because it was 1981 and the network was scared up to its neck.....
Very interesting, so interesting I was disappointed by the length. I wanted MORE. Maybe some episode descriptions, particularly cringe scenes, and more about the backlash. Also a "where are they now" or "what happened next" for the show's creators and stars. Good, but incomplete. B+
I was able to watch an episode of it last week. It deserved the reviews they got. They were more interested in using special effects than they were writing. The cast was mediocre and writing was non-existent, but their special effects were well done. I thought they were trying to do an 80s version of “I Dream of Jeannie”. Were they well off. This pretty much spelled the end of ABC being a rating powerhouse, taking a nosedive into third not long after. So many things went wrong here.
Just Our Luck was going to fail because of competing against The A-Team. And, sitcoms at the time were considered dead to the networks and viewers. Shows like Dallas, Dynasty, original Magnum P.I., and The A-Team were dominating the Nielsen ratings. The Cosby Show totally revitalized the genre in the fall of 1984. ABC started to dominate Tuesday Nights again by the fall of 1986 with Who's The Boss, Growing Pains, and Moonlighting.
I love watching this channel. And I tried watching an episode of Just Our Luck here on RUclips, but couldn't do so as it was just so awful. The writing is terrible, the jokes are lame, and the characters are not really that likable. And what was ABC thinking about pitting it against The A Team? No wonder it failed. However, I have to say that the theme song to the show was really good. Very catchy and sounds like something that'd be recorded in the late 80s or early 90s instead of 1983, I especially like the chime at the end of the song.
Of course, in its last year, Laverne and Shirley lost Shirley; Laverne wasn't in every episode; and Lenny wasn't around much either because Michael McKean was busy filming This is Spinal Tap. Otherwise, same as always. /sarc
The show kinda copied the single-camera-style setup with laugh track structure used by 1960s sitcoms like "Bewitched", "I Dream of Jeannie", "The Partridge Family", "The Brady Bunch" and so on, basically adding to the dated-ness of the concept.
48 Hours was in 1982? Wow, was I off on that one. Good grief, the CAST is stereotypical, not just the characters. Just how many of these types of "sitcoms" was Richard Schaal in? Was it a Federal law or something? Good job as usual. This one I actually remember, though for the same reasons you do. (BTW - The reviews were almost unanimously bad for The A-Team as well)
Dec. '82. In addition in the Summer of '83 Murphy starred in Trading Places opposite Dan Ackroyd (who 2 month's earlier was in Doctor Detroit which ironically also starred Carter)
I remember this show. TK Carter was a genie! The late Roy Orbison and Don Cornelius did guest spots in a few of the episodes. Also, four years later, TK Carter would go to star in my favorite campy comedy of all time "He's My Girl".
I'm sorry, Pab, but I've been clicking on this episode for two days and all I get is the loading circle. I really like your show and I'd really like to see this episode and I don't think it's my internet connection. Any suggestions?
An African-American man has lines stating that he is to be a servant...and no bells go off? That's beyond tone-deaf. I saw the first episode of this. The genie lived in the guys closet...which revealed another dimension and a very comfortable bed. The overly Caucasian staff you mention here, I feel was part of the problem that "Baby, I'm Back" had, but you could accuse quite a few shows at that time or earlier with that. There were some exceptions: Hawaii Five-O, in its original run did its due diligence in hiring local talent and ethnically appropriate cast.
This show didn't last long but I like the theme song. Makes me wanna dance
Seeing the ad for this obvious train wreck is the most wonderful part of this whole thing. You're watching, watching, watching and then he says massa and it's all over.
RIP Richard Gilliland just found out he pass away on March 18th at 71 that according to Deadline Hollywood
During the shows short run in fall 1983, TK Carter made a guest appearance on Soul Train to promote ‘Just Our Luck’. It might still be here on RUclips.
This was shown on uk. Itv I think
There's a bright spot that came off this disaster. ABC allowed Happy Days to end with a 1 hour finale up there with the M.A.S.H ending.
That's when television was starting to change. Happy days was in its final season. Laverne and shirley was already canceled. And 3's company was in its last season also.
The 'Genie" sounds like a modern version of Steppin Fetchit.
Another show I loved as a kid I never viewed it as racist. After this show I became a TK Carter fan.
In the early 80s TK Carter was seen kinda like a modern day Eddie Rochester Anderson where he usually played a smartaleck domestic.
Omg I’m so glad you’re back with more 13 Week Theatre!!
The singer of this theme sounds like a cross between Michael Jackson and Jermaine Stewart.
Klymaxx! ruclips.net/video/THvcOWv1eVM/видео.html
The cat should really have been "Shabu's" "master".
Thank you for this one.
How does a channel that produces such top tier content only have 3k subs?
If you watched the promo for the first time, the odds of you saying WTF is immediate.
I wonder if the show would have worked if they switched the roles: TK as the down-on-his-luck-guy, Richard as a clumsy genie.
Maybe not, but TK pulling a Major Nelson and having to explain the foul-ups and craziness might have been amusing.
Of course I see this comment this just after I said the same thing. It would be better seeing a black man being served by white man. Still would feel like an I Dream of Jeannie ripoff though.
@@aiberlane3390 Oh, don't get me wrong, it would have still flopped because a show about a genie in 1982 wasn't going to cut it. But maybe they avoid all the backlash.
You also have to remember that this was the early 80s, when racial tropes and stereotypes were the norms on film and television.
1983.
I immediately could still sing the theme song.
At least the theme song SLAPS
Klymaxx! ruclips.net/video/THvcOWv1eVM/видео.html
Theme song kind of sounds like Michael Jackson. 🤔
I like The Roy Orbison Episode of Just Our Luck. It was a Riff on CE3K, With Roy in The Center of it all.
Best episode EVER!!!
The minute tk said master I shook my head
This show would have never seen a pilot today and for good reason.
I DID like it's DeBarge-lite theme song, mind you.
Klymaxx did a better version on their 1986 album.
It's Klymaxx: ruclips.net/video/THvcOWv1eVM/видео.html
"The Mexican Express Card." - Paul Rodriguez.
Did Jackson actually do the theme song for this...show or was that just someone who could impersonate him?
Impersonator.
Pab, the obvious follow-up to this would be "The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer". On UPN, the network that never could figure out who their audience was. I love your channel.
Can’t stand the shows premise, but the theme is so catchy!!
2:44...3:23...38 years later. RIP Richard!
He was married to the amazing Jean Smart (Designing Women, Hacks) He of course died, but was really amazing about him was he pretty much stepped away from acting and helped manage her career. It was a true love story they had
I remember this show vaguely but never considered it racist in any way. I only remembered "old" the show got just after the first episode. Sight gags, "catchy" comebacks and Richard Guillabrand (sp) trying to do his best version of Darren Stephens or Major Nelson. This was a show that essentially had nothing as opposed to Seinfeld which was about nothing.
Gilliland was the actor, Gillibrand is the NY senator
How about a 13 week theatre of "Proyr´s place" with the late Richard Proyr playing himself, in 1984. Theme song by Ray Parker Jr btw.
That was a Saturday morning CBS series.
I was 7 watching this show and was mad it was canceled. I wasn't old enough to be aware of the "what were they thinking?" aspects of it all. And one fuzzy memory: I thought Gilliland was Robert Hays until seeing this video, lol
Gilliland was in Airplane II with Robert Hays, so maybe that's the connection your brain was making.
You should consider doing an episode on 1984's Sara with Geena Davis, Alfre Woodward, Bronson Pinchot, Matthew Lawrence and Bill Maher.
That was actually telecast in 1985.
Not even an appearance by *ROY ORBISON* could save the series!
The Gordon Brothers also created Renegades with Patrick Swayze & Kirkwood Smith. About a street gang that works for the police. Kind of like Mod Squad for the '80s. That was another 13 week bomb!
Renegades faced Dallas at 9pm on Friday nights, and Dallas was mega popular back then.
Also Knight Rider aired against Renegades, so the Swayze show stood no chance.
Oh wow, A.K.A. Pablo. I remember when it first premiered, I thought it was going to be the funniest show on television. Boy, was I disappointed!
Does anybody know why ABC cancelled Happy Days and showed the remaining episodes in the summer?
Not sure specifically but I would guess it was to keep ratings higher. Summertime is traditionally rerun time for other shows or to burn off pilots that had no shot at going to series.
Jean Smart’s husband
Pab, Let's see a video on the Terri Garr vehicle, Good and Evil..from the writers of Soap..It received major backlash from the sight impaired community with it's portrayal of a bumbling blind character..
Good & Evil was great -- except for Mark Blankfield's blind character. Not only was it a painfully unfunny joke (the dude was oblivious to the fact that he was as destructive as Godzilla), but they made him so pathetically lovelorn that he was thoroughly unlikable. Dunno WTF Susan Harris was thinking.
@@VinnieRattolle I think Susan, having covered lots of ground in Soap, was grasping at straws for an character was controversial, edgy, and able to make fun of..the destructive nature was funny for about 5 minutes, but after several episodes, it became embarrassing, the protests is was what ended the series..and the fact it became extremely stale after a bit...
Welcome back! I can't wait for more episodes
Talk about a coincidence - Just Our Luck star Richard Gilliland died March 18, the same day this 13 Week Theatre went up :(
It's a particularly eerie coincidence considering the news of Gilliland's death didn't break until March 25.
TK Carter habitually got ripped off. Dude was talented and deserved a show that worked.
Oh, so AKA Pablo is next on your list? Can't wait. I remember that one too.
Not yet. I can’t find any episodes or significant amounts of footage.
@@PabSungenis Ok. However, I am still waiting for Baby, I'm Back. You asked us to vote on future episodes and it won unanimously.
Coming up.
Mario Lopez was on this show before Saved By The Bell.
Hey there? Will you do a re-upload to mention the passing of Richard Gilliland last March?
Let's face it.... There are just WAY too many awful TV shows for him to do. But here's yet another suggestion (drumroll please): AKA Pablo! Whoa! I didn't know you were going to mention that show at the very ending.
Ah yes, the show that featured Rodriguez's 'Mexican Express Card' joke that made the Hispanic community mad.
Is it Michael Jackson who's doing the theme song for "Just Our Luck?"
Nope. Sound-alike.
@@PabSungenis Ah thanks!
its Klymaxx singing the theme
Why is it they always go for the "racist white" thought when a black guy is a genie? If the genie were a woman (regardless of color) they'd whine about sexism!! Can't some people watch even a poorly conceived comedy without playing the race card?
I remember when this debuted and yes, it was lousy and even then it was obviously a reworking of I Dream of Jeannie, with none of the charm or fun.
Norman Lear deserved some raspberries for AKA Pablo and Condo, because like Gary Marshall and Gene Roddenberry, he was a one trick pony who kept trying to make 60s and 70s shows into the 80s and thinking viewers wouldn't be the wiser.
A jive-talking black guy in an 80s sitcom, what can possibly go wrong? Outside of shows like Benson, The Cosby Show, 227, A Different World, and Family Matters. Stereotype sitcoms were the only option for minority actors in the 80s and, yes, it got worse in the 90s when UPN & the WB came on the scene.
Anyone else having trouble getting this one to play?
Is Turnabout and Gloria on the list in the future?
Now Automan and Star Man, those I love to watch about their downfall!
abc's 83-84 did have three winners, Hotel, Webster and Hardcastle and McCormick. But I was tuned to CBS and NBC at that time.
The theme song that's sung (Just our Luck) sounds almost like R&B legend, Stephanie Mills.
3:38: ok, but that room is bomb.
Any room with a free ATM is bomb.
You should do one on "Normal Ohio" [John goodman as..a gay man]
The concept wasn’t bad, with a pretty good cast. However, the writing tried too hard. If you took a shot every time they mentioned he (John Goodman) is gay, you’d be blackout before the end of the episode. It tried to go for shock value, but just flat out overshot it. I had high hopes when it first aired but was disappointed by the results. I expected better.
@@cityhawk Remember Love Sidney with Tony Randall? Randall, as the gay Sidney Shorr, overdid his "Felix Unger" persona up to 11 (or, as I recall, up to 51), but they didn't DARE mention his sexual orientation because it was 1981 and the network was scared up to its neck.....
omg yes, he need to get on it.
Oh my goodness yes! Please do this one at some point.
@@kali3665 It didn’t help that it was on Friday nights at 9:30PM as it was opposite the second half-hour of The Love Boat.
I Love It When A Plan Comes Together, and I Ain't Gonna Fly!
Very interesting, so interesting I was disappointed by the length. I wanted MORE. Maybe some episode descriptions, particularly cringe scenes, and more about the backlash. Also a "where are they now" or "what happened next" for the show's creators and stars. Good, but incomplete. B+
I was able to watch an episode of it last week. It deserved the reviews they got. They were more interested in using special effects than they were writing. The cast was mediocre and writing was non-existent, but their special effects were well done. I thought they were trying to do an 80s version of “I Dream of Jeannie”. Were they well off. This pretty much spelled the end of ABC being a rating powerhouse, taking a nosedive into third not long after. So many things went wrong here.
Just Our Luck was going to fail because of competing against The A-Team. And, sitcoms at the time were considered dead to the networks and viewers. Shows like Dallas, Dynasty, original Magnum P.I., and The A-Team were dominating the Nielsen ratings. The Cosby Show totally revitalized the genre in the fall of 1984. ABC started to dominate Tuesday Nights again by the fall of 1986 with Who's The Boss, Growing Pains, and Moonlighting.
777 views when I posted this. Lucky number 7?
I love watching this channel. And I tried watching an episode of Just Our Luck here on RUclips, but couldn't do so as it was just so awful. The writing is terrible, the jokes are lame, and the characters are not really that likable. And what was ABC thinking about pitting it against The A Team? No wonder it failed. However, I have to say that the theme song to the show was really good. Very catchy and sounds like something that'd be recorded in the late 80s or early 90s instead of 1983, I especially like the chime at the end of the song.
Of course, in its last year, Laverne and Shirley lost Shirley; Laverne wasn't in every episode; and Lenny wasn't around much either because Michael McKean was busy filming This is Spinal Tap.
Otherwise, same as always. /sarc
Stevie Wonder can see where this is going .And all white crew and director.
The first promo I saw made me think, “this is pretty racist.”
The show kinda copied the single-camera-style setup with laugh track structure used by 1960s sitcoms like "Bewitched", "I Dream of Jeannie", "The Partridge Family", "The Brady Bunch" and so on, basically adding to the dated-ness of the concept.
and I thought having a woman calling a man her master was uncomfortable...
48 Hours was in 1982? Wow, was I off on that one.
Good grief, the CAST is stereotypical, not just the characters. Just how many of these types of "sitcoms" was Richard Schaal in? Was it a Federal law or something?
Good job as usual. This one I actually remember, though for the same reasons you do.
(BTW - The reviews were almost unanimously bad for The A-Team as well)
Dec. '82. In addition in the Summer of '83 Murphy starred in Trading Places opposite Dan Ackroyd (who 2 month's earlier was in Doctor Detroit which ironically also starred Carter)
I remember this show. TK Carter was a genie! The late Roy Orbison and Don Cornelius did guest spots in a few of the episodes. Also, four years later, TK Carter would go to star in my favorite campy comedy of all time "He's My Girl".
I'm sorry, Pab, but I've been clicking on this episode for two days and all I get is the loading circle. I really like your show and I'd really like to see this episode and I don't think it's my internet connection. Any suggestions?
E-mail me at pab@sungenis.com
Interestingly, I'm having the same problem on my android phone, but it's fine on the cpu at work.
@@gregster61 Hey, my phone's an android, too...
When are you going to cover free spirit TV show
burl ives did it better in 'the brass bottle' 1964
This was made of cringe.
This is awful. D:
I like the theme song! And nothing else. The races should have been reversed. It would still be a stupid show, but at least it would be progressive.
An African-American man has lines stating that he is to be a servant...and no bells go off? That's beyond tone-deaf. I saw the first episode of this. The genie lived in the guys closet...which revealed another dimension and a very comfortable bed. The overly Caucasian staff you mention here, I feel was part of the problem that "Baby, I'm Back" had, but you could accuse quite a few shows at that time or earlier with that. There were some exceptions: Hawaii Five-O, in its original run did its due diligence in hiring local talent and ethnically appropriate cast.