Bosom Buddies: Not the Last Picture Show

Bosom Buddies: Not the Last Picture Show
ABC
March 25, 1982
Sitcom
DVD
C+

Leonard Ripps wrote this episode with its ironic title, the last episode to air.  Yes, Buddies in two seasons managed only one more episode than Gilligan's Island managed in its first season.  It's not much of an episode to go out on, although there are some things to note:

• We see the group in middle and old age, aging badly in Kip's version and gracefully in Sonny's, but sadly Sperber would die at 47;
• Ruth is ageless in both of Kip's scenarios, and ironically Holland Taylor hasn't really aged much in the last 35 years;
• The episode would be funnier if less was done with stereotypes about older people and more with predicting the future, although there is yet another Anson Williams reference;
• Kip sees not only himself marrying Sonny, but Henry marrying Amy (and having kids with her, while Kip's own marriage is sexless), and Sonny agrees with these pairings (but sees herself and Kip as frisky);
• They've seen the Smothers Brothers make three comebacks, and would see them make more;
• They spend the evening at a new wave concert, where "the kids" (presumably in their earlier 20s) take cocaine.

Bosom Buddies in its second season is at its best as good as it was the first season, but the thing is, it usually isn't at its best.  The grades range from one C to two B+s, averaging out to a B-, which isn't bad of course.  Watching Season Two, I sometimes wondered what went wrong, by which I mean both why didn't the show stay at its peak, and why wasn't it a bigger hit with the audience.  I think the series was always more than the cross-dressing slapstick show that it's still sometimes perceived as, even if the writers themselves resorted to low humor at times.  They were certainly capable of hip, literate humor, too, but that probably wasn't going to help sell the show.  (I watched the bonus feature on the DVD, which was marketing Buddies for syndication in '84, and only the most obvious comedy, and Hanks's new stardom, were hyped.)

Maybe this was never going to be more than a cult show.  Maybe it would've had better luck on cable, if it came along a few years later, when original programming on HBO et al. was starting to appear.  All I can say is that it was my favorite show when I was in junior high and I'm glad I got to revisit it over the years, including in recent weeks.  It holds up well, not perfectly, but well enough, and the cast is deservedly still proud of it.