Friday, January 11, 2008

WKRP Episode: "Bailey's Big Break"

Note: I'm uploading episodes more or less at random (I should probably be doing them in order, but it's too late for that). If anyone has any requests for episodes they'd like to see, let me know.

(Again, see here for my explanation of why I'm posting WKRP in Cincinnati episodes.)

This one is from the second season and called "Bailey's Big Break," in which Bailey is promoted to assistant newscaster and Les doesn't like it. The writer, Steve Marshall, originally wrote the story as a spec script, but MTM bought the idea and hired him to write the new script. It's a solid "regular" episode with some good lines (my favorite is Mr. Carlson's "the center cannot hold" speech at the beginning of act 2).

I can't remember the name of the song Venus plays in Act 1 but I recall that it was a contemporary hit from that year (1979).

Also, watching it again I noticed that a few people in the audience try to applaud when Loni Anderson (then the most popular person on the show) enters, but nobody joins in. MTM seemed to impose a semi-ban on its audiences applauding for individual characters ("special guest stars" could get applause, but no regular could be singled out). The MTM refugees who did Taxi also enforced this rule. MTM finally abandoned this when they allowed the audience to whoop and cheer for Larry, Darryl and Darryl on Newhart.

Teaser and Act 1:



Act 2:



1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The song that Venus plays in Act 1 is "Nobody Knows" by Ashford & Simpson. Sounds like he's really pumping that track solidly on the clip.