It's Garry Shandling's Show: Force Boxman

Marty Feldman on the right.

It's Garry Shandling's Show: Force Boxman
Showtime
April 10, 1987
Sitcom
VHS
B-

I mistakenly thought this was the 1990 episode called "The Last Show," which itself is the third to last.  In any case, this means that there's a videocassette with '80s stuff I need to watch before I can get back to May 1990.  This episode, co-written by Ed Solomon and Jeff Franklin, closed out Season One and has Garry leaving his show for an action program to be filmed in New York.  He's replaced by Red Buttons, who charms Garry's friends and raises the ratings.

I realize I don't have all the IGSS episodes, especially from later seasons, but what I taped received 3 B-s and 6 Bs.

Out of This World: Beano's New Diet Clinic

A different episode, but an example of
Evie stopping time, as she does here.

Out of This World: Beano's New Diet Clinic
Syndicated
November 28, 1987
Fantasy, Sitcom
VHS
C+

The basic premise of this series is that Evie Garland (Maureen Flannigan) finds out on her 13th birthday that she's half-alien.  (Her absent father is voiced by Burt Reynolds, but not on this episode.) As with Bewitched, she's not supposed to use her powers, but she can't help giving in sometimes.  She lives with her mother Donna (Danza-ly named for Donna Pescow), whose brother Beano Froelich (Joe Alaskey) also lives in their small Californian coastal town.  Both are in on Evie's secret, but no one else is.

John Boni, who wrote three Three's Company episodes, here contributes his third of four for OoTW.  Although Beano is overweight, he's studied dieting and is about to open the Waist-a-Weigh Clinic.  Meanwhile, at Evie's small private school (where Donna is the principal or something), her classmate Alex (Scott Nemes, probably wearing a fatsuit, since he looks significantly heavier than on It's Garry Shandling's Show) is being teased about his weight.  The episode is conflicted about fat people, objecting to them being mocked but also insisting that they lose weight.  Note that the string of "clever" insults Beano demonstrates is inspired or ripped off from the "nose" insults Steve Martin does in the movie Roxanne, which had come out about five months earlier.

Both Alaskey (who was a voice-actor) and Nemes do celebrity impressions here, and this episode features Mayor Kyle Applegate (Doug McClure), who's never gotten over playing Mosquitoman on TV for three years.  (I was thinking this was a gentle jab at Palm Springs mayor Sonny Bono, but he wasn't elected till '88.  However, Clint Eastwood was mayor of Carmel from '86 to '88, so I guess that's what the reference is to.)

It's Garry Shandling's Show: The Schumakers Go to Hollywood

It's Garry Shandling's Show: The Schumakers Go to Hollywood
Showtime
November 20, 1987
Sitcom
VHS
B

Ed Solomon co-wrote this fourth episode of Season Two with Tom Gammill and Max Pross, both of whom worked on Saturday Night Live in its fifth season.  Grant wins a poetry contest, with a free trip to Hollywood, from Sherman Oaks.  There's arguably more fourth-wall-breaking than usual in this one, from Grant and Pete going to a taping of IGSS to the studio audience singing the opening song and dancing to the closing song.  Florence Henderson appears as herself, still looking great at age 53.  Note that Jackie is absent, busy with her new baby.  (Yes, she had a baby since the last episode I watched.)

It's Garry Shandling's Show: Dinner with Garry

It's Garry Shandling's Show: Dinner with Garry
Showtime
April 3, 1987
Sitcom
VHS
B

In the fifteenth episode (the penultimate for Season One), Garry wants to fix up his widowed mother with his internist, Dr. Paul Derwin (Dennis Patrick, Cason's real-life husband).  The passage of time is handled cleverly again in this episode, ending with a scene at a disco in 1989.  Twenty-one-year-old Jay Kogen, who appears as Big Grant here for the first of three times, was Jay on The Bob Newhart Show a dozen years earlier.

It's Garry Shandling's Show: Laffie

It's Garry Shandling's Show: Laffie
Showtime
March 13, 1987
Sitcom
VHS
B

Shandling & Zweibel wrote this episode (the thirteenth in the series) that is both Baby-Boomingly nostalgic and cable-friendly tasteless.  (The prison rape joke would probably not have made it nowadays, although the "Nancy reaching orgasm while hiding a dog under her long skirt" sequence might've.)  Garry takes in a smart stray collie but Leonard Smith says this violates the terms of the condo contract.  "Laffie" nonetheless helps rescue Leonard from an oncoming miniature train.  Sixty-one-year-old June Lockhart appears as herself.

It's Garry Shandling's Show: Grant's Date

It's Garry Shandling's Show: Grant's Date
Showtime
January 30, 1987
Sitcom
DVD
B

Ed Solomon, Jeff Franklin (who did a couple Bosom Buddies scripts and who here does his first of three for IGSS), and Patricia Rust (writing her first of two for IGSS) collaborated for this story that's similar to but more playful than the recent Who's the Boss? one about Tony driving Jonathan on his first date.  Grant is 12 rather than about 10 and he's interested in Kim (described by Garry as the oldest 12-year-old he's ever met and in fact played by 15-year-old Priscilla Weems around the time she had a recurring role on Designing Women).  Garry chaperones and chauffeurs the two of them on their first date, in a golfcart, which is still the largest vehicle at the drive-in.  (Arguably, this scene is a Brady Bunch parody, although a ninja film plays rather than a Western.)  Just as Jenny fell for Tony, Kim falls for Garry, until Grant steals the car to impress her.  It's a nice showcase for Nemes (Grant and Garry argue over who the episode is about) and for once Garry isn't blamed for things going awry.

It's Garry Shandling's Show: Garry Met a Girl Named Maria

It's Garry Shandling's Show: Garry Met a Girl Named Maria
Showtime
January 23, 1987
Sitcom
DVD
B-

Ed Solomon's first of eight IGSS stories, collaborating with Janis Hirsch on her second of two, kicks off the return of the series after a hiatus (as Garry notes in his opening monologue).  Although it has some nice touches, like the map during the credits and the characters bursting or threatening to burst into song, I don't think it's aged as well as the episodes we looked at previously.  To some extent, it's a parody of the "regular character considering marrying a female illegal alien to prevent her being deported" plot, as Garry fully acknowledges, and I think naming her Maria (as was the name on What's Happening!! and Three's Company, while it was Angelina on Welcome Back, Kotter) is a nod to this trope that would reach its ultimate expression in that fall's series I Married Dora, on of course ABC.  But the stereotypes (not just Latino but gay) are presented without much finesse and the "Lou Gehrig" joke gets dull with repetition.

Tony Plana, whose TV debut was as Amid on What's Happening!!, plays Maria's brother Jorge.  Richard Karron, who was an Officer on Three's Company, is again a Priest on this show.  Assistant Director Peter Barth again appears as himself.  And Barbara Cason, who was a Nurse on Mork & Mindy and Miss Fritzinger in The Brady Girls Get Married, makes her third appearance as Garry's mother Ruth.

It's Garry Shandling's Show: It's Garry Shandling's Problem, But It's Jo-Jo's Show

It's Garry Shandling's Show: It's Garry Shandling's Problem, But It's Jo Jo's Show
Showtime
October 15, 1986
Sitcom
VHS
B

This sixth episode is the first of two written by Janis Hirsch, who did two for Square Pegs.  It features contest winner Jodi Jones from Texarkana.  At first, she's treated as a special guest, the credits (although not the theme song) giving her equal billing with Garry.  But then Nancy's sex-addict friend Morgan (Christine Kellogg, who would return in a different role) arrives and draws attention, especially from Garry.  There's more playing with form here than the last episode we looked at, and I laughed out loud at the "newspapers piling up" gag as well as Nancy's deadpan follow-up.  I was also surprised by the relatively sexually explicit plot, but then it did debut on cable.  Late '80s Fox would bleep Jo Jo's insult of Garry.  (IMDB says it's "asshole.")

Geoffrey Blake makes his last appearance as Lewis and doesn't have very much to do.  Lynette Mettey, who played four different nurses on M*A*S*H, is Dr. Brody here.  Paul Willson, who had a couple roles on Mork & Mindy, appears for the third time in the role of Garry's neighbor Leonard Smith (often referred to by his full name).  Kate Mulligan plays Bethany, her first of six roles on the series.  Production Manager Peter Barth appears as himself, as he occasionally would that season.  And, yes, comedian Norm Crosby appears as himself, complete with tux and mic, at the sex clinic.

This episode is the 400th show I've reviewed to receive a B.  The series would have a hiatus of about three months and then come back as strong as ever.

It's Garry Shandling's Show: Grant Gets Broken

It's Garry Shandling's Show: Grant Gets Broken
Showtime
September 17, 1986
Sitcom
VHS
B

This is the second episode of the series, as Garry tells us in his opening monologue.  That is, Garry Shandling delivers an opening monologue as a character named "Garry Shandling," in a series that took the George Burns aspects of Burns & Allen and made them even more modern and meta.  It's the first of my cable series, although I originally watched it on Fox a year or two after it premiered.  (And for awhile Fox and Showtime aired new episodes almost simultaneously.)  Then and now, I found it funny, not just gimmicky but genuinely quirky and likable.  Sitcom situations are presented tongue in cheek, as when Garry sees no point in having his friends' approval to babysit again, when "we've already done that show."

I don't remember anything about Episode One but as it's called "The Day Garry Moved In," we can guess that it set up the premise.  The series is still settling in, and in fact Garry tells us we haven't met Jackie yet, because she hadn't been cast before.  Bachelor Garry, who says that he can barely dress himself, is friends with Pete and Jackie Schumaker, played by Michael Tucci (from Grease) and Bernadette Birkett.  Their 12-year-old son is played by 12-year-old Scott Nemes (who was in Meatballs Part II).  In this episode, Pete and Jackie are having marital problems, so he suggests they go to Santa Barbara for the weekend and he'll babysit Grant.  They're reluctant, till Garry's responsible single neighbor Nancy Bancroft (Molly Cheek, with some of the biggest '80s hair I've ever seen outside of a metal band) says she'll help out.  Unfortunately, Garry's friend Lewis (Geoffrey Blake in a role that would soon be dropped) hits Grant with Garry's front door.  The fourth wall is soon in shambles, and not just from Garry.

Richard Karron, who was an Officer on Three's Company, makes his first of three appearances on IGSS, here as a Priest.  Gorgeous Dream Babe Lesa Lee would play a nameless Woman on Who's the Boss? in '89.  Shandling co-wrote this episode with Alan Zweibel, who wrote for Saturday Night Live in the '70s.  Veteran director Alan Rafkin, who did an episode each for That Girl and What's Happening!!, two for M*A*S*H, and twenty-three for The Bob Newhart Show, here does his first of an impressive forty-eight for IGSS.