"The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer" - 13 Week Theatre
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- Опубликовано: 23 фев 2023
- SUPPORT 13 WEEK THEATRE ON PATREON. / 13week
How do you nearly destroy 50 years of progress in the portrayals of African-Americans on Television overnight? This. This is how.
13WT looks at UPN's controversial, offensive, and above all stupid, "The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer."
Super Chats and Super Thanks are always welcome. Fair Use is the Law. 
Развлечения
I can't wait for the "Homeboys in Outer Space" episode 😅
The show “Heil Honey, I’m Home” looks at and says “Boy, that’s offensive.”
Ja!
Have to say it simply. Pab? You probably provided the only true laughs this series ever received ... and deserved. As always, very well done.
Had this show been renewed, subsequent seasons could have dealt with Desmond’s descendants in service to other presidents. Titles could have been: “Desmond Pfeiffer 2”, “Desmond Pfeiffer the Third”, and “Desmond Pfeiffer Goes Forth”.
I see what you did there.
If the writing was more clever, it could have been the American Blackadder.
"I'm going to punch Mr. PFeiffer in the P'Face" is one of my favourite Golden Girls jokes; it might be intentional.
Sophia: "Hey, P-feiffer, how would you like a punch in the p-face?!" 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Awesome! Love a contemporary burn!
I never saw the show, but I lived in Hollywood at the time and saw people protesting outside of Paramount
me too
Amos and Andy was also the only place you could see an all black cast that played competent doctors, lawyers, business owners, police and all matter of professionals. It’s a shame ppl think it’s just a bigoted mess.
I've said before there was a lot of talented actors in the cast of Amos 'n' Andy and that black actors did play characters that had good steady jobs. The problem: Their characters were STILL stereotypes from a bygone era!
A UPN executive said one of the reasons they scheduled "DESMOND PFEIFFER" was to prove, "Hey, we do cool television, too."
It got a COLD reception, to be sure.
The two producers worked on the Golden Girls. There is an episode where a character last name is Pfeiffer, and the P is not slient. The joke was Sofia threatening to hit the guy with her pfist.
Amazing as always, Pab. I look forward to every video you do. I have no memory of this show ... fortunately. It's hard to believe it ran in the '90s. The '80s I could see, honestly, but not the '90s.
The Secret Diary Of Desmond Pfeiffer is an adaptation of a UK sitcom Blackadder The Third.
"Totally classic Pfeiffer!"
You saw Clerks on ABC as well? Criminally underrated.
@Brian OSullivan ABC didn't do that show justice at all.
Why are we walking like this?
Love this channel! Just found out about it. The background music is a little too loud but otherwise your presentation is fantastic!
Spread the word, bring in more viewers!
For several years I didn’t know this was a real show.
I thought it was a fake show Clerks The Animated Series made up
116 out of 125? what the heck did worse ??
Great job as always. What is really sad is there were a lot of talented actors on this project.
Indeed we've already mentioned Chi McBride, but Christine Ebersole is an accomplished stage actress with two Tony Awards. She was totally wasted here as the ever-so-crazy Mary Todd Lincoln. It makes her appearance as the lead in Fox's Rachel Gunn, R.N. deserving of an Emmy.
Only one of those 9 shows was on a broadcast network: "Malcolm and Eddie," which aired after Pfeiffer, was in last place at #125.
The other lower-rated shows were all on cable: "NFL on Sunday" on ESPN and the weeknight 8 PM reruns of Nicktoons on Nickelodeon.
@@PabSungenis How in the hell did this show beat Nicktoons reruns and NFL on Sunday? Were Nicktoons really that bad?
@Edward Shore I'm just gonna assume cable at the time wasn't as widely broadcast as UPN. That HAS to be the excuse!
It was only about a .3 rating between the worst cable show and this.
I'll has you knows, Pab, I have never heard you use the record scratch so many times in one episode, and I've watched all your Brady Bunch reviews! Every joke in this show just made me sigh..not even GROAN. As short as its pitiful run was..it was still too long!
"In my century, we've learned not to fear words." Wow, we actually got farther away from the Star Trek utopia.
Racial slurs will always hurt because we don't live in a Trekkie universe.
That Star Trek utopia is a place where racial equality is has actually been a reality long enough that racial epithets have no meaning. To be clear, It doesn't mean "white guys get to say epithets all they want without triggering snowflakes".
My local UPN affiliate was contracted to show our local NBA team. So we hardly ever got to see Paramount shows. Not that we missed much. Voyager was always supposed to be shown later.....like after midnight....when they remembered to actually show them.
Hi Pab, I'm a big fan of "13 Week Theater" If you do an episode about "Platypus Man" I was originally cast as Richard Jeni's younger brother in the first pilot script. That script was good. New network UPN was not willing to take a chance and severely watered down the show! The behind the scenes were more entertaining than anything on UPN!
Now THIS I'd like to hear more of!
Please! Homeboys In Outer Space next. Lol 😂 Please!!
You beat me to the punch on that one!
Was it good? No. Was it as bad as people said it was? No. If the writing was a bit tighter, with better-looking sets, it would have succeeded. I actually liked the plots to many of the episodes. It was like a poor man’s version of Futurama…very poor man’s version of Futurama.
I was still regularly watching Voyager at this time, so I have no idea how I managed to miss this show?! When they showed it on Clerks the animated series, I laughed! “Haha, that’s a great approximation of the kind of garbage UPN would air. Good thing they never did anything quite THIS outlandish!”
I honestly don’t know how I feel about knowing that, yeeeup. They sure did.
Imagine the hilarity that would have ensued portraying the death of Abraham's 11 year old son Willy and Abraham's assassination
Hi Pab! Love the channel! Keep it up!
Thank you!
It's a shame that America never did more period piece sitcoms that attempted to be more of the period, then simply set in the period like the nogalstic that 70s show or Garry Marshall's sitcoms. I guess it's just one of those trends that British sitcoms play around with more like sitcoms about war; however out of the shorter lived ones the best one is definitely Thanks, which also deserves to be remembered here.
because america refuses to look at its own history fairly. it clashes with the rational of "we are the greatest country in existence, and we have never done anything wrong evar!"
Yeah, it feels like this show wanted to have a Blackadder vibe. But that only demonstrates that if you want to make something horrible like WW1 funny you need an /extraordinarily/ talented and intelligent group of people, not just anyone.
Another masterclass presentation Pab. thank u so much.
Ah, yes, the insane Desmond Pfeiffer series that did NOT make fun of slavery (or even mention it) throughout its brief run despite all the crazys screaming that it did. There's only one reason that it should have died quickly: it committed the only REAL crime - this "comedy" was never FUNNY.
To be fair, there were some slavery jokes in the unaired Pilot, but not in episodes that made it to air.
@@PabSungenis Accepted. Thank you, Pab. I look forward to seeing your video.
It seems to me that UPN was gaslighting by not airing the pilot which the critics did view which did have slavery jokes. This way they could say "None of the episodes aired had that sort of humor!" Had the show continued chances are the pilot would have edited out those jokes or never been shown.
All that being said, it was just a stupid, unfunny show even without the racist humor.
@@Quartzquiz333 Agreed.
@@PabSungenis Since nobody's seen the pilot, there's no telling if that's true or not. Chi McBride went on Roseanne's talk show saying that people were making up crap. ruclips.net/video/78oSrnhniDk/видео.html
This is basically a (desperately) poor man's version of Benson, the other comedy about a sarcastic black man working for a politician.
Speaking of UPN, Paramount TV had hoped that in a case of corporate synergy, they would pick up Jenny Mccarthy sitcom Jenny, which they produced after NBC dropped it from their schedule due to low ratings.
UPN had done this tactic when they picked up the Clueless TV series (also from Paramount) after ABC canned it.
So Paramount Television continued production of Jenny briefly after NBC's cancellation while they waited to see if UPN would pick it up. Answer - no.
Every aspect of the show was offensive. Including the way in which they reduced the 16th president to a bumbling sitcom character
I can imagine a reboot of this show
with Idris Elba in the title role.
I distinctly recall not watching this show.
Anti-CRT people would've loved this show.
The show’s cancellation also marked the end of the line for Dean Valentine as he was ousted as President of the UPN Network.
1:13- "THE BEULAH SHOW" was on *ABC* from 1950 through 1953.
Bill Cosby actually bought the complete library of Amos and Andy so that it could never be released.
CBS successor-in-interest Paramount Global still owns the series, yet Cosby *was* publicly vocal about _Amos 'n' Andy._
I don't know for certain if it spanned 13 weeks- BUT if it did, PLEASE do a video about "FLATBUSH"(CBS/1979)
Sadly, there's no full episodes available to review. I did hear that the real citizens of Flatbush, Brooklyn were not pleased at all with the show.
ABC tried its on Flatbush pilot (Flatbush Avenue J) in 1976 that was just about as bad.
It’s a miracle this got a pilot let alone made it to TV as a series. If anyone asks why UPN is no more, this could be one of the top examples to help answer the question.
STAR TREK: GILLIGAN'S ISLAND would be one of the other ones. How they managed to screw up a show starring Kate Mulgrew is a mystery to m -
::Neelix waves, macks on Kes::
Oh, right.... That's how!
UPN had a show called Swift Justice, where James McCaffrey's Mac Swift was a ex-cop turned one man vigilante in New York helping those in need who had exhausted conventional sources of help.
Yep, if this is familiar, that is the exact same premise used for The Equalizer. Heck, even Universal Television produced both shows.
@@andrewbarton2590 - yes, but the original THE EQUALIZER had Edward Woodward, and the reboot has Queen Latifah! I'm doubt I'd rather watch the voice of Max Payne in that role....
@@drdarkeny Well UPN were so desperate for hits they felt they could clone The Equalizer.
Oh, and try and clone Law and Order, since Dick Wolf's company was on board for Swift Justice as well.
Well, that was successful for UPN - not.
"Must See to Believe TV." (14:10). Yup, I think that about sums it up.
I like to see an episode about the sitcom Complete Savages.
You didn't mince words - and from the "jokes" on display, rightly so!
Ah UPN, the black sheep of Fox and the WB. 😂
I'm ashamed to admit that the scene from 10:45-11:45 and the "lesbian b*tch" joke made me laugh...
You might be a red neck if....
Unfortunately me too
There was an episode of the Golden Girls where there was a character named P-fiefer.
Season 2, Episode 4. November 1st, 1986. "It's a Miserable Life". The Funeral Home Director.
And surprise surprise, Mort Nathan and Barry Fanaro were supervising producers\writers on Golden Girls when that episode aired.
@@Quartzquiz333 “Hey P-fifer! How would you like a punch in your p-face?”
I'm glad The CW got away from UPN's branding of obvious non-hits as "new hit series." What a silly thing to be known for.
Believe it or not Amos n Andy was a huge hit with the African-American audience. John Amos who is in roots for chrissake loved Amos and Andy. And it should be noted it was the first portrayal of African-Americans as lawyers and people of power although it’s still had a lot of stereotypes
I've often said that if you took the dialects and the stereotypes out of Amos 'n' Andy you'd have an episode of The Honeymooners. I'll also add that the black actors on this show and Beulah were accomplished thespians but this was pretty much the only work they could get at the time. Plus, like you said, the black characters on these shows had decent careers. Pity most of them were playing outdated stereotypes.
Doesn't justify it tho, sorry.
BTW, there was no Oval Office in Lincoln's day.
True. The West Wing (where the Oval Office we know is) was built by Teddy Roosevelt. However, there was an oval shaped room (the Yellow Oval Room) on the second floor of the original building that was used by a number of 18th Century Presidents (including Lincoln) as an office so I will give them a pass.
It’s the least egregious anachronism in this show.
I liked Fox Thursday night in the 90s, Martin, Living Single, and New York Undercover.
Me 2
That lineup was sooooo anti-Must See Thursday it was wonderful!
6:53 who was the most natural choice
One of the UPN trailers featured Seven Days, a show which was ended by low ratings and behind the scenes drama.
Justina Vail quit because of tensions between her and Jonathan LaPaglia (she did return briefly to resolve the storyline). Unfortunately her departure meant the end of the Frank and Olga relationship, which was a main reason why the Seven Days fans were tuning in to the show, and without Justina, UPN realised it wouldn't work.
Before Justina Vail left, there was a recast as Sam Whipple had to leave his Seven Days role playing John Ballard as he was seriously ill (he would pass away not long after Seven Days ended), and a new character was brought in played by Kevin Christy.
This show reminds me of a season of black adder where he plays a servant to the king and has an idiot servant Helping him.
I'd love for you to do a video on UPN
A small sample of short-lived UPN wonders:
The Mullets
Shasta McNasty
Platypus Man
Pig Sty
Homeboys in Outer Space
@@Quartzquiz333 The whole history of UPN's programming is wild. The people who ran it and kept it going for 10 years with almost all of its shows ranging from hit, to cult status to disaster made UPN's ride incredible. Though technically, UPN is still going under the CW brand. I doubt anyone at Paramount has much love for it today.
@@Quartzquiz333 - ::cough!:: STAR TREK: VOYAGER! ::cough!::
Please cover the disaster that was Heathers the TV series.
Not to split hairs, but I'm pretty sure the creators intended for it to be pronounced Puh-feiffer as that was also a joke on the episode of The Golden Girls entitled "It's a miserable life" written by, you guessed it, Mort Nathan and Barry Fanaro. 😊
Thus the joke about “or they were stupid enough… I choose to give them the benefit of the doubt.”
@@PabSungenis it's a big favorite in my Golden Girls fan groups. It's just sad Barry and Mort recycled it. It was hilarious the first time. Sophia says "Hey Puh-feiffer, how'd you like a punch in your puh-face?!" 😂
this offensive pile of garbage stinks of "how to do blackadder without ever seeing blackadder."
Barry Fanaro and Mort Nathan wrote on The Golden Girls? They truly learned nothing.
More like they forgot everything.
They should've done better. This was not funny and badly written humor.
The show just looks awful.
I disagree with the promo. THIS SHOW WAS BEYOND CRAPPY. I did like Malcolm n Eddie though which was a hit
Which shows were worse than this?
This was a well-written and superbly-acted show. The episode "AOL (Abe Online)" was especially good.
OMG now do Workin' it!
I’ve been wanting that forever
I did not know that this show existed. So wrong on every level and so bad Ed Wood would disown it.
Maybe it would have worked better with Andrew Johnson...
Have you does Hot_l Baltimore?
Next to nothing exists last I checked.
@@PabSungenis Pity. I was wondering why I never saw all that much of that.
@@PabSungenis Yes it was short lived but very funny or at least I remember it being something in the vain of Barney Miller. Which is one of the best ensemble show drama or comedy
Based on a hilarious play with a great cast. I would love to watch it, never mind cover it.
@@PabSungenis Our best bet is for the Norman Lear Effect channel to post it. They've put up obscure shows before like Palmerstown, U.S.A.
This like bad comedy central in the early 2000s. Chi's a good actor though.
yeah UPN did air a lot of questionable shows
As long as everybody's throwing out shows you should do, how about some of Steven Bochco's swing and a misses? Besides the infamous COP ROCK (which even HE made fun of in its final episode!), there was BROOKLYN SOUTH (a HILL STREET BLUES-like series concentrating on the Uniforms rather than the Detectives), PUBLIC MORALS (his biggest failure, which only lasted one episode!), CAPITOL CRITTERS (an animated satire about Washington, DC and American politics using mice, cats, rats and cockroaches), TOTAL SECURITY (a half-hour dramaedy set in a high-end private security firm), BLIND JUSTICE (about a blind NYPD detective who successfully sues the city to stay on the job despite his disability), OVER THERE (an ensemble drama set during the Persian Gulf War), BAY CITY BLUES (a show about a minor-league baseball team, and an early attempt by Bochco to make Dennis Franz a television star), BEVERLY HILLS BUNTZ (Bochco and Franz again, this time as a morally-quetionable ex-cop turned Beverly Hills P.I.), and PARIS (a series starring James Earl Jones as an exonerated prisoner who becomes a police captain and criminologist).
In the case of Public Morals, CBS put the show (and the only episode aired) on Wednesday nights at 9.30pm.
This put it against Top 20 rated The Drew Carey Show, the established shows Party of Five and Voyager, and 2 new comedies that had a few weeks head start by the time Public Morals debuted- the US version of Men Behaving Badly and The Jamie Foxx Show.
ITV here in the UK showed all 13 episodes of Public Morals, including the episodes not seen on CBS.
@@andrewbarton2590 - how was it?
@@drdarkeny Was a not bad show from what I recall.
Looking at it, CBS pressed the panic button too quickly (with the ratings and the reviews) instead of trying to find a new slot for Public Morals, where ratings may have improved and viewers able to make their minds up on it.
They were probably expecting it too to be big from the start due to Steven Bochco.
How about one of the best Barney Miller?
LOL! Barney Miller practically ran forever! And deservedly so.
One thing that appealed to me as a playwright about "Barney Miller" was how most of the time it obeyed Unity of Place. Almost all the action that mattered happened inside the twelfth. From time to time I've played with adapting some of my favorite episodes into a stage play as "The Life and Times of Barney Miller" but doubt I'd ever get the rights to stage it. Or anyone to come see it.
You mean Fish with Abe Vigoda?
@@PabSungenis That would be an excellent title for your play *and* a callback to the original Barney Miller pilot 😀
@@PabSungenis I say it's worth a shot! Barney Miller was an awesome show and remembered fondly! LEOs still praise it for getting so much right about police work in NYC at the time.
@@PabSungenis - Hal Linden might....
i saw this when it first aired. ithought it was funny
If you still think it's funny then there is a problem.
This was basically a very bad rip off of Blackadder. I dont think the concept was inherently bad - but the execution and writing is dreadful McBridge is good but cant raise the material alone. Had it been a smarter satire, maaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyybbbbbbbbbeeeeeeeeeee it would have worked. Instead, it aimed for the low hanging fruit and relay heavily on the 90s style of mugging comedy and lazy anachronisms.
You said it perfectly. I'm no prude about edgy comedy and I truly think that anything could be made humorous if done right. The problem was this was done poorly, going for the lowest common denominator instead of being clever.
@@DavidTSmith-jn5bs I’m really surprised it’s never mentioned because the set up relatively the same: con artist manservant( with a dimwitted but intensely loyal sidekick) who serves a real life historical figure whom in “reality” is a moron. Hell, the kitchen set is straight up ripped from the 3rd series. I’m pretty sure even one of the plots from taken from a Blackadder plot line.
When I was watching this video, I was thinking that the assistant was like a bad imitation of Baldrick.
Pab, do you ever get tired of saying "But, that's another story"?
Never. It was the last joke in the first episode and it just worked so well.
@@PabSungenis You should patent it!
NEVER stop saying it, Pab! That's your catchphrase!
Pill Crosby. Lol
That's actually funnier than it has any right to be. Certainly funnier than any joke on Desmond Pfeiffer.
I think DeSantis is going to use this show to replace actual black history cirruculum in Florida!
Careful you'll have Marjorie Taylor Greene screaming that this show should be revived!
So this show is pretty much a ripoff from another show Benson but its set in Civil War
This was a pretty bad show and had they staged it in some other era and written it better, it MIGHT have had a chance."Soap", some years earlier, had a blackface scene. The Colonel decided to pull off a break-in and he and Chester black up and they take Benson (who does NOT wear blackface) and when they are caught...it ends in a DANCE.
There also was an unsold pilot (I think it featured Ron Masak, but we are dealing with a 50 or so year-old memory) that aired twice. This married couple was doing something Polynesian and he browned up and wore a grass skirt.
If you saw "Cop Rock" (and hey, someone had to), the African-American bad guys all rapped, which, while Rap was and is not the stuff of Conservatories and drawing room parties, didn't do any favors for the genre.
As for GOOD stuff, 13 Week Theatre might be well served to look at "Frank's Place" from the late 80's. Funny, nuanced and,sadly, fading from memory because the jukebox in the restaurant played a lot of music that would make the rights messy for DVD release or streaming.
Even if the show was not considered controversial, it was a mess. Bad concept, uninteresting and unfunny.
No whitewashing around it (Pun intended), this might the dumbest show talked about on this channel. WHO THE HELL GREENLIT THIS CRAP RIGHT BEFORE THE TURN OF THE MILLENNIUM?! The fact that the creators helped write some of the funniest episodes of The Golden Girls is beyond baffling!
Luckily Dann Florek survived this show when he went on to SVU.
UPN were clearly desperate for hits by this stage. By this point only Moesha, The Sentinel and Voyager were the only UPN shows to last longer than one season.
And Mort Nathan and Barry Fanaro's other shows post Golden Girls, The Fanelli Boys, which starred one of Dann's SVU co-stars, and Pacific Station, had died a death on NBC.
Which would have been a red flag against it from the off too.
Malcolm and Eddie had made it a couple of seasons by this point.
Also remember that Paramount trusted them with this show AFTER “Platypus Man!”
Yep, add that to the list. But still, UPN had more misses than hits.