WKRP Episode: "Tornado"

By request, here's an uncut version of a season 1 episode. The Hulu/DVD version cuts the sequence with Elvis Costello's "Goon Squad" (and by doing so, cuts one great throwaway gag: when Mr. Carlson brings the visitors into the booth, he waves his hand to clear away any smoke that might be surrounding Johnny). And all versions since the '90s have inexplicably dubbed over Les playing "The Star Spangled Banner" and replaced it with a synth version of "America the Beautiful." Since both songs are in the public domain, I assume that the recording he played of "Star Spangled Banner" was from some music library that MTM no longer had a deal with. The copy is from a CBS broadcast, so you can hear the announcer hyping up Lou Grant over the closing credits.

The key moments in the episode are well-known enough: Johnny's speech about mobile homes, René Enríquez (whom MTM would use on Hill Street Blues a few years later) looking like he's on the verge of cracking up while playing an interpreter mis-assigned to a group of Japanese executives, and Les's "godless tornadoes" speech. Mr. Carlson's phone call to the little girl is based on one of those radio urban legends that WKRP used from time to time.

Jan Smithers and Tim Reid don't appear in the episode. The original idea was that some of the characters would not appear in every episode, that they'd be recurring semi-regulars like Mr. Carlin on Bob Newhart. Eventually Hugh Wilson decided that everybody should be in every episode, so this is the last episode without Reid, and there was only one more episode ("Bad Risk") without Smithers.

Cold Open and Act 1

Act 2 and Tag