Monday, August 21, 2017

"Let's run away together. To Los Angeles! They'll understand there!"


We've had this pop up a couple times before in our podcast history: two adjacent episodes in WKRP's run that provide us with a more-or-less themed podcast episode around one of the characters in WKRP's ensemble. In early Season 2 it was "Baseball" and "Bad Risk," which allowed us to delve deeply into Les Nessman's psychology, and later in Season 2 we had "Herb's Dad" and "Put Up or Shut Up," which gave us a fantastic opportunity to talk about Herb's upbringing, male role models, and masculinity in crisis in WKRP-era America more generally. "Huggable Herb" has fast become one of my personal favorite episodes of the podcast.

This week, we get a pair of Andy Travis-centric episodes. We see a dark "path-not-taken" version of Andy in "The Consultant" and the trials and tribulations of Andy as a piece of, well, beefcake in "Love, Exciting And New."

We've said it again and again; we were super harsh on Gary Sandy in Season 1 of Hold My Order, and maybe unfairly so. By this point, we know a lot more about Andy as a character and Sandy has slipped into the role much more comfortably. And these two episodes might be him at his finest. There's a great scene in "The Consultant" where Andy meets with Norris Breeze, his old friend, now a radio consultant, where Andy has to essentially complete the process that "Baby, If You Ever Wondered" back in Season 2 started. He's no longer That Guy who comes in from out of town to upset the applecart; Andy by now is one of the inmates in the asylum that is WKRP, and he wants to help save his friends' jobs. And Andy comes up with an ingenious plan to save the station, which he takes great delight in springing on Mrs. Carlson.

And speaking of Andy and Lillian... wow. "Love, Exciting And New" takes the transgressive idea of Mama and Andy dating and does some incredible gymnastics around that sitcom-y plotline, the then-very relevant issue of workplace sexual harassment, and somehow still manages to make it funny, at least to the two of us in 2017. Once again, Put-upon Andy is Best Andy.

A couple of solid episodes of WKRP, some great early-'80s history and culture to talk about... all this and a double-shot of HIRSCH! Coming your way in a couple of days!

5 comments:

  1. The consultant is my all-time favorite episode. When Venus pulls that knife on Johnny. Les is a genius. Herb is a go-getter, etc.

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  2. N E S T L E S

    Nestles makes the very best

    Chooooocolated

    https://youtu.be/pZi2og1YQJA

    ReplyDelete
  3. N E S T L E S

    Nestles makes the very best

    Chooooocolated

    https://youtu.be/pZi2og1YQJA

    ReplyDelete
  4. My absolute favorite unseen plot point in WKRP history is the staff meeting where Andy springs the idea on the staff, and what it must have taken to get everybody (particularly Herb, Les, and the Big Guy) to go along with it.

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  5. This is one of the funny things about having watched the series backwards and forwards and out of order over years of syndication: I ALWAYS think of Andy as the season 4 version, no matter what season I'm watching. So I was kind of taken aback and questioning my religion over all the Andy-bashing in season 1 of the podcast. Glad to see my memories weren't tricking me as much as I feared.

    ReplyDelete