SUMMER RERUN: The First Time with Scarecrow and Mrs. King

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, you crazy summer kids. It's Sharon Johnson for Ady
Stevie Ladies.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
And Susan Lambert HadAM. We launched this podcast three years ago,
and for this summer, we want to take you back
to the sweet summer days of July twentieth, twenty twenty two,
to be exact, which is when we launched our first episode,
starting our podcast.

Speaker 1 (00:21):
Way back when we were young and slightly not so innocent,
emerging from the COVID pandemic, thinking things might start getting
back to a new normal. Joe Biden was our calm,
cool president, keeping a lid on the economy, passing infrastructure bills.
We were in the first summer of the Russian invasion
of Ukraine. Europe had this summer heat wave.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
And on June twenty fourth, twenty twenty two, the US
Supreme Court overturned Row and Casey in Dobbs decision, ending
the national legal protections for the right to abortion. We
were protesting. It was a crazy time and it's just
gotten crazier, but we were also very excited to be starting

(01:06):
our podcast. It was truly a leap of faith that
someone else would be interested in talking and listening about
the Ladies of eighties television and you guys showed up.

Speaker 1 (01:16):
We're so grateful to our early listeners and this one
is really sweet to hear for the first time or
to revisit. You can tell we learned a lot about
podcasting in the last three years.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
Before we start off, I just want to thank our
incredible team, Sharon Melissa, Kevin Doucy, our nineties TV babies,
Serena Fontanessi, Megan Ruble, Sergio Perez, Sailor Franklin, and Anna Shekel.
And thank you to all of our guests for the
last three years and our incredible Patreon supporters. Y'all help
make this show. We hope to be providing you some

(01:50):
more fun stuff on Patreon, so please keep checking it out.
And now we're going to give you our first podcast.
Please enjoy this throwback to twenty twenty two, our very
first Eighties TV Ladies episode appropriately entitled The First Time
with Scarecrow, Missus King, Eighties d.

Speaker 3 (02:12):
Day, Crazy, Ancel, Pretty Bad, Through the City, and Gunning
good Man World eighty dight.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
Hello, everyone, Welcome to Eighties TV Ladies Episode one, the
podcast that takes you on a journey to the fabulous
television past. I'm Susan Lambert Adam, an indie writer and
producer who once competed in a rodeo cutting cows if
you can believe it.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
And I'm Sharon Johnson, Susan's co pilot. I'm a television
and podcast enthusiast with no rodeo experience. On Eighties TV Ladies,
we'll be examining beloved female driven TV shows of the
nineteen eighties, with.

Speaker 2 (02:58):
A few sidebars to this eventy's and nineties, and who
knows what else we'll talk about, because we tend to
get off track sometimes every now and then. On this podcast,
we're going to talk about everything from our childhood to
Jacqueline Smith's fashion line, but mostly we'll be talking about
television shows from nineteen eighty to nineteen eighty nine. So
today we will be looking at a type of show

(03:22):
they made a lot in the eighties, don't make so
much anymore, the action comedy. It's also not one of
the most incredibly super because I like to start off
in the wads a little bit, so not a hugely
super famous eighties show like Golden Girls or Remington Steel.
But I think people that didn't even see their shows
know about their shows, but a beloved show with a
very strong fan base and one that's very close to

(03:44):
my heart. Scarecrow Missus King, and.

Speaker 1 (03:48):
You can count me amongst one of those people that
didn't watch it but definitely knew of it. It was
created by Eugenie Ross Lemming and Brad Buckner.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
Scarecrow and Missus King was an action comedy that premiered
October third, nineteen eighty three. The pilot episode was entitled
the First Time. It was written by Eugenie Ross Lemming
and Brad Buckner and directed by Rod Holcombe.

Speaker 1 (04:14):
It starred Kate Jackson and Bruce Boxleitner and ran four
seasons on CBS from nineteen eighty three to nineteen eighty seven.
It also starred Beverly Garland, Mel Stewart and Martha Smith,
and the guest cast in the pilot included John Saxon
and Kate Reid.

Speaker 2 (04:33):
I love John Saxon. He's knew everything in the eighties.
He was the man.

Speaker 1 (04:38):
Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (04:39):
The pilot script for Scarecromasus King was entitled the First Time,
which I thought was kind of cute because it was
the first time they met, and it's the first pilot
and So I do know that Kate Jackson was a
huge star coming off of Charlie's Angels, one of the
biggest shows in the so and she kind of had

(05:02):
her pit of projects she you know. So the rumor
was that she was looking for a comedy because she
wanted to do something very different from Charlie's Angels. Then
she read the script and really liked it and suddenly
decided that is what she wanted to do.

Speaker 1 (05:23):
Well, And it's a very different character than what she
played in Charlie's Angels, what she was most known for.
She's now a suburban mom with two kids, divorced, just
sort of living her life and then gets inadvertently dragged
into this world of spies and spycraft. I mean, it's
a very very big shift from what she was known for.

(05:47):
For her to look at something like this, I can
see why she would be interested.

Speaker 2 (05:51):
Yeah, and I think what we've done is jump over
something because again, we're still learning ourselves, so we didn't
even explain to people what the show really is. I
just realized, but it's fine. You guys are fine, because
maybe you may already know that that you're here, so
you're listening. Probably that's the only people listening is the
people who love Scarecrow.

Speaker 1 (06:11):
Missus King anyway, a good idea just in case to
just you know, just talk a little bit about what
the show's about. Yes. So, Missus King as played by
Kate Jackson, as I mentioned, as a suburban divorced mother
of two who finds herself.

Speaker 2 (06:30):
Working with a.

Speaker 1 (06:33):
Spy in a pseudo CIA government.

Speaker 2 (06:37):
Agency unnamed the agency, that's.

Speaker 1 (06:39):
Right, that's right, and his code name is Scarecrow, hence
the title of the show. What happens in the pilot
is she has dropped her boyfriend off at the train station.
He's at the train station running away from some people
who are trying to get hold of the box that

(07:03):
he has in the hedge, the package package, and in
trying to evade them, he runs into her literally begs
her to take this package and just hand it to
somebody in a red hat on the train.

Speaker 2 (07:16):
It's all he wants her to do.

Speaker 1 (07:18):
And then he runs off and she sees him being
accosted by these people who are who are chasing him,
and then you know, things happened from there that get
her pulled deeper and deeper into this this situation.

Speaker 2 (07:34):
Well, you know it's going to be a comedy. When
she steps onto the plane, onto the plane, onto the
train and looks down the train car and it is
a sea of guys in red fezes yes, and so
she doesn't know who to give the package to. Of
course that happens all the time, but it's a lovely

(07:54):
moment and we get to see like basically k Jackson,
you know, be very like again, it's very Katherine Hepburn
in in in Baby, what's the tiger one or the
panther one? Not bringing up baby, bringing up baby, Okay,
it's very it's very Catherine Hepburn and bringing up baby

(08:15):
where she's scattered in.

Speaker 1 (08:17):
The But at the same time she's clearly you know, yeah,
she's a stereotypical divorced mom of two and living in
the suburbs, but she's she starts showing how resourceful she
can be through the course of this episode too, that
she's not just you know, this sort of dim bulb
sitting over in the corner that things let things happen

(08:39):
to her. She's able to kind of step up and
and try to solve problems as which is which is
nice to see.

Speaker 2 (08:49):
So but it also the show also starred Beverlely Garland
as as as Amanda King's mother who lives with her
since the divorce, and Mel Stewart as her boss, Billy Melrose,
and Martha Smith as the kind of dismissive other female agent,
Francine Desmond. One of the things that I like about

(09:14):
the show was that there was another woman in the show,
and that other woman, though they definitely had a little
bit of like a snarky she had a snarky reaction
to the housewife, they ultimately kind of become friends and
co workers, and they easily could have not had that,
and they easily could have taken that in a very

(09:37):
like less interesting. They didn't quite take it as interesting
as you would now in the show. I think they
just didn't even know what they had kind of on
the table of that. One of the things I love
about the show was that she was divorced and with
two kids. My mom at the time that the show
started was divorced with two kids, and so that sort

(09:59):
of resonated. My mom also worked for Centers of Disease Control.
She was a microbologist, so she worked for the federal government.
It was not a secret like it is in the show.
So in the show, she keeps her secret government agency
job from her family, and her family does not know
that she is, you know, they think she's going out

(10:20):
to do her dog walking job and various other jobs covers. Yes,
the cover for the agency is a film company that
makes documentaries around the world, like about you know, crickets
and uh. And so that's the cover for why they

(10:41):
have to Oh my god, we're going to be in
the editing room late. Oh my gosh, we have to
go on location. So that's the excuse for the spy
stuff they have to go to. So this chance meeting
spends her life in a whole other direction, and she
takes it like that. I think that's the other thing
is this really is a female driven show. It is

(11:02):
really about Amanda King's choices in this show and her
discovering that she wants to be both a mom and
make a difference.

Speaker 1 (11:13):
There are several times in the pilot even where she says,
I'm looking for a job. Is there anything, So she
definitely wasn't saying thanks very much, I'm gonna go on
with my life and you guys do whatever you do.
She was like there was already like a seed was planted,
and with this door being opened to this world she
wasn't familiar with, but she obviously found intriguing enough to

(11:36):
want to stay in it.

Speaker 2 (11:37):
So all right. And then I am, of course a
big fan of romantic comedies, and Bruce Boxleitner and Kate
Jackson I think are very cute together, and as these two,
as as Scarecrow and Missus King. Although a little bit
like Lee, Stetson's very upset that he has to deal

(11:58):
with this housewife who is sort of barging into the
case more than he expected her to. So of course
it starts off with the but I don't even like you,
now I have to work with you, so in and
in one of the things that was fascinating to me

(12:18):
and reading the original script, and again this is I
found this online at a website that again I'm also
going to shout out later, so I assume it's pretty legit.
It seems pretty legit. There's several drafts of the of
the first pilot online, which is really unusual for to
be able to find for a show from the eighties.

(12:40):
And what's interesting, one of the biggest changes is that
she was married to the the Deans. So in the
in the in the original pilot script, she was actually
married and having this secret life again and I don't
know what was happening to that, which I thought was
kind of huge because it makes it not as exciting

(13:03):
or fun. It makes it a little bit creepy. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (13:06):
I'm not sure how they thought they could maintain that
for the length of a series that you were hoping
would run multiple seasons, because essentially you're asking her to
lie to her husband constantly.

Speaker 2 (13:20):
Yeah, and I think that was a really good change.
So a lot of times, a lot of times, you know,
like the script will come in, they're like, oh, we
love the script, but we're going to change this intand this,
and sometimes those changes may not make the show better,
but I think this one did because it made her
a available. They gave her this boyfriend at the start
of the show, which is interesting because you never see him.

(13:41):
So they did this this gag in the pilot where
only they're shooting over the shoulder of the boyfriend, or
they're shooting you know, like you don't get to see him.
He's behind the couch. Again. It I you know, you
sort of get why they're doing it, but it's something
that works better sort of on the page than on
the stage as because it feels awkward, Like it feels

(14:02):
really awkward. You're like, why are they not showing us
this dude? He can be and he's you know, he's
a weather he's a weather guy, and he's a weatherman,
and he's sort of not very exciting. And she clearly
knows that he's stable and a good guy, and you know,
we'll stick around. But it's clear that her mother's more

(14:24):
interested in her pursuing that relationship then Amanda King is
interested in pursuing that relationship. So that's also like it.
But it was sort of also interesting to sort of
like she clearly had this romantic relationship already in her life.
It may not have been the romantic relationship. The other
thing that I think is really interesting, we don't know

(14:46):
this at the top of the show or even for
the first season. Really, there's no divorced husband around for
the pilot. He's just gone somewhere. But another interesting thing
over the course of show that I saw and noticed,
she doesn't talk bad about him, right, it doesn't.

Speaker 1 (15:05):
It's not it's just not in their day to day
life and in the way that maybe you know, you
could easily just assume he sees the kids on the
weekends or holidays or whatever their their divorce called for.
But yeah, I mean, you wouldn't necessarily expect that he
would be there every morning at breakfast and dinner since
they're divorced, So it made perfect sense to me, I

(15:25):
think in a lot of ways.

Speaker 2 (15:27):
Yeah, but it's interesting because you you wouldn't do that
now in a television show. If you had, you would
you would make more dramatic choices for these other characters
in the show than they make. And I think that
was the very eighties. The main characters got the drama,
but the like it wasn't like, oh and then he's
like they do later bring in and I'm spoiler alert,

(15:48):
later in seasons they bring in the ex husband. It
becomes a little bit of drama, but not much. What
was interesting is like how little like that was just
who she was at the start of the show. She's
divorced with two kids. But it was also not like
played for a lot of drama. She needs a jump

(16:09):
because she doesn't have enough money.

Speaker 1 (16:11):
That that that sort of you know, and perhaps that
was one of the choices that they made because to
keep him kind of off the off the stage, if
you will, because they didn't maybe maybe they felt they'd
have to create create some sort of drama around the
ex husband. And this is a comedy, so it's probably

(16:31):
just easier just to leave him out of the picture
and just everybody just assumes he sees the kids at
you know, other times other than when we're dipping into
her life, and her mom is used as kind of
the person that's kind of like, you're going, where are
you're doing?

Speaker 2 (16:46):
What are you going to be late for this? You
know kind of thing. We're uh yeah. The other thing
is that that's funny is is her mom is used
basically to assure the audience that her kids are okay
when she's world kid like, like she's like, oh, you
can pick up the kids, Like mom is there to

(17:07):
hold down the floor literally so that she can go
off and save the world. But I have to give
a shout out to Beverly Garland, who's amazing. She's a
great actress, like you know, classic like movies, TV star.
The joke being is that, like I just want to
I want to point out that Remington Steel started a

(17:28):
year before two years before I'm gonna have to go
look better started just before Scarecrow Missus King. And in
Remington Steel, Beverly Garland plays the mom of Laura Halt
I forget about that, which is very funny when she

(17:49):
walks out and is again slightly different character, but basically
the mom of our lead actress, detective slash Spy, and
and we were like, literally, I was like, okay, this
was her audition, Like they saw this and they were like,
oh my god, you know who we need to get
to be Amanda's mom. Beverly Garland. By the way, I

(18:11):
never also never occurred to me that the Beverly Garland
Hotel was related to the actress Beverly Garland. Really, but
it is. Yeah, of course, yes it is. I don't
know why I didn't put it together. I know in Hollywood,
So in Los Angeles there's a Beverly Garland hotel and
it's been there for decades. Kates, Yeah, and I knew

(18:34):
it existed, and literally, it never occurred to me that
it was named after the actress and built for her
by her husband, who clearly loved her very much and
built her a hotel. So yeah, So Beverly Garland plays
the mom of all spies and detectives in television. And

(18:55):
Eugenie ross Lemming actually started as an actress and a comedian.
She started with Second City, which I also didn't know
until I started researching this, which was very exciting because
again Scarecrow miss King has a lot of comedy in it,
and so she started as a comedy writer and a
comedy actress. And in fact, she was with the Second

(19:17):
City team a lot with Harold Remis and John Belushi,
which is which is again for me, those are like,
oh my god, she worked with masters and ran with
the wolves, like you know, so that I'm very excited.

Speaker 1 (19:33):
Well, it's another example of how there's not one path
for anything in this business. In particular that those they
started in the same place, but certainly didn't end up
in the same place. She ended up as a showrunner
on television, John Belushi ended up as a comedic god
to most of us. And so you just never know

(19:58):
where something that they're going to lead you, or your
talents are going to lead you sometimes.

Speaker 2 (20:02):
And you know what, I just watched an interview with
her from the nineties and she literally talked about that
She's like you just I just wanted to keep making stuff,
and that became a way to, you know, to find
a voice, which I thought was really interesting. So and
she's been partner. They've been writing partners, Brad Buckner and

(20:24):
her kind of since she started writing. So the first
show that they were on is Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman
back in nineteen seventy seven. Well, uh, and then but
it was nineteen eighty three that they wrote a pilot
called Scarecrow and Missus King, as far as I can tell,
and I actually have a copy of that pilot, I

(20:47):
script in hand. I'm going to wave my scripture, all right,
So I think we should take a little break and
we'll come back and then talk more about Kate Jackson,
talk more about the pilot the first time, and then
about are really So we're going to do three questions,

(21:10):
and then we're also going to do but is it?
We do a little segment. We're going to call it
but isn't. So we'll be taking a break. Stay with us,
we'll be back. We'll see you soon. Welcome back to
eighties TV ladies. And we're talking about Scarecrow and Missus King.

(21:31):
And one thing we haven't really gone into is that
it's romantic and sexy or I thought so.

Speaker 1 (21:43):
Well, definitely, But I have always been of the opinion
that men and women that work together on television don't
need to have a romance. That always seems to be
kind of the direction that the writers like to push
things because the audience, I think kind of likes it.
But for me, it's a double edged sword in that respect.

Speaker 2 (22:07):
Well, for sure, And again but I think it was
completely expected in the eighties that if you had a
man or woman working together that they would be romantically involved,
that there would be at least sexual tension between them.
I mean, Remington Steele had launched just before Scarecromis is King,
and that was basically all that show is about. In
a lot of ways that in the cases, but I

(22:30):
think this was very classic. It was set up to
be a romance as well, and what I enjoyed was
that it was also them becoming friends as well as
romantic partners.

Speaker 1 (22:44):
Yeah, it was one thing I was glad about is
they took as long as they did to go there,
if you will, that it wasn't just from the beginning,
even it seemed like it was headed that way, but
you weren't entirely sure, which I kind of appreciate it
because it gave the Amanda character a chance to learn

(23:06):
her way in this new world and figure out what
her worth and what she could contribute, and which I
really appreciated.

Speaker 2 (23:13):
Yeah, there was it was they actually really I think
the pilot did a good job actually of setting up
like their personalities in such a way that you knew
like there was potential both for their friendship, their partnership
and a romantic relationship, and I think it really balanced
that out. I really There's a scene at the Lincoln

(23:35):
Memorial and it's very cute. She's like, what are you
doing for Thanksgiving? Do you have place to go? Are
you okay? Are you like? You seem so alone? He's like,
I'm a loner, leave me alone. But it's very it's
very sweet. There's a real sweetness to the Amanda King
character that that everybody sort of bristles about in the

(23:56):
agency world but ultimately ends up being kind of her
superpower is that she sort of the naivete that she
brings to it is the ability to enables her to
see things that the rest of them can't see because
they're so jaded and spy agency guys. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (24:16):
Absolutely, And you know, she brought a lot to the table,
and I think things that she didn't really understand or
know that she had to offer as well, and that
was part of it. And I like that they gave
her a chance to speak up and you know, speaker
thoughts and really contribute to to solving a number of
the cases that they came up with, which's great.

Speaker 2 (24:38):
Yeah, So we'll get into when we start looking at
season one, which will be next next time, our next
time as opposed to the first time that I did
there with the pilot. But we'll talk about some of
my favorite episodes in season one and which one I

(24:59):
think is sort of the penultimate episode of the show
for me. Maybe Sharon's going to have to pick one,
and my imagination is going to be different from mine.
But I really liked when they you know, sort of
kind of like worked really well together but were also themselves,

(25:20):
like very strongly, Like the Amanda King character was like, well,
this is how I do things, and the least debts
in character was like, well I don't do things that way,
but this is how I do things. And when both
of their strengths came together that was when the show
sort of shined the most. And for me also what
became more later in the seasons, I think they really

(25:47):
perfected it probably in later season one season two was
sort of these little buttons at the end of the
episode that were really mostly about them and those That's
what I lived for, is those little character buttons where
they were cute, either buddies or sexual at tension. So

(26:08):
that is my favorite. And I'm a big fan of
both these stars. So like Kate Jackson, totally big fan
of hers, Bruce box Seidler totally big fan of his,
and I think again they both would have found a
show where they could shine together in a way that
was pretty unique for the time.

Speaker 1 (26:28):
Oh absolutely, it's I know that there was Remington Steele,
but that was a different kind of relationship, if you will.

Speaker 2 (26:39):
But I.

Speaker 1 (26:41):
Even though there was in this show, there was some
and even in this pilot there was some indication of
or dismissiveness of her suburban housewife ness.

Speaker 2 (26:53):
It was never.

Speaker 1 (26:57):
As dismissive as perhaps you might think it could have
been at the time. There was underneath it maybe just
kind of okay, you're you're. It was more of a
you're inexperience, not you're stupid, you know what do you know?
And I think that was that was one of the
strengths at the show.

Speaker 2 (27:15):
Yeah, for sure, although in some of those early first
season you're like, Okay, he's a little angry at her.
That's not nice. But I think that was because like
the amandic ing character was so nice and and and
again I think even looking back, that still resonates for me.
And and one of the things that I felt like, Oh,

(27:36):
here's this person who is actually not your typical spy
or female detective character. You know, Laura Holton Remington Steel
is very tough. Her whole point is I can do it.
I'm I always wanted to do this. This is what
I wanted to do, and I can do it as
good as a man. In fact, I do it as

(27:57):
a man in some ways a man I invented and
nobody knows that he's invented. And then this guy walks in, right.
So the whole premise of that show is she is tough,
and she is a detective, and she is up for
that job. And this is a woman who kind of
felt like, oh, I'm a mom and I'm a housewife

(28:21):
and I'm going to live this life. And then her
life got turned upside down and she sort of discovers
what she wants to do and discovers that she can
be both right and that is actually still even unusual
that you can have both in this world. Like it
actually to me. I look at something like Parks and

(28:42):
Rec and in some ways there's a parallel for me
looking at a showl like Parks and Rec where Leslie
Nope is perky and sweet and driven, but ultimately a
like is very much her own woman and a somewhat
untraditional woman in a business environment, and yet is able

(29:06):
to sort of bring all that home for herself and
be incredibly successful and also true to kind of her sweetness.

Speaker 1 (29:15):
And those characters really appealed to me. Yeah, I liked
that they didn't force her to lose that sense of herself.
Where As you said she's a nice person, she was
still a nice person at the end, despite all the
things she'd experienced and the things that she'd seen, the

(29:37):
things that had happened, she still approached things from the
standpoint of I'm going to treat people well, you.

Speaker 2 (29:44):
Know, yeah, and I'm going to assume the best of them,
even those Russian spies, a lot of Russian spies in
this show because it was nineteen eighty three. So yeah,
and the show, you know, we'll get into it later.
The show takes a little Reagany, you know, kind of

(30:06):
it's it's got a it's got some Reagan in the
background because he was our president the time. So but
I want to also talk about Bruce box Lightner because
I was a fan. One of the reasons I watched
this show was for him. Bruce box Lightner, the star
of Tron also the star for me. Again. The other

(30:29):
place that I knew brought Bruce boxlighter from was Kenny
Rogers The Gambler the TV movies. But he also starred
in How the West Was One, which was a television show.
And and right before this, he had done a show
called Bring Him Back Alive that was sort of clearly
inspired by sort of the Indiana Jones phenomenon and uh

(30:54):
and and there was another show that same season that
was another like you know, write the book, so you know,
it was again sort of the sort of great White
Hunter Explorer, Indiana Jonesy kind of a show. But that
was not a successful show. So I think I was

(31:16):
really glad when he showed up in Scarecrow Missus King.

Speaker 1 (31:22):
I don't think I was really familiar with him before
Scarecrow and This is King, which, as I think I
mentioned earlier, earlier I did not watch but was aware of,
because again, there are only three networks at the time,
it was almost impossible not to at least be somewhat
aware of some of the other shows. So I didn't

(31:44):
bring that into the show. Of course, like everybody else
who watched television, I was aware of Kate Jackson.

Speaker 2 (31:50):
So well in Kate Jackson. We'll do a deep dive
on Kate Jackson later, but again, not only was she
coming off Charlie's Angel but some of the stuff that
I didn't quite realize even though I, again I was
somewhat aware of her earlier shows, but she had starred
in Dark Shadows and then The Rookie, and with The

(32:13):
Rookie she became super famous, like she had the most
fan male for that show than any of the other
people on the show. Really, yes, well by the end
of that show. So basically, when it came time to
do Charlie's Angels, which was a really originally called The

(32:34):
Alley Kats it was developed for Kate Jackson to start in.
She apparently renamed the show. She said, Allie Katz is dumb.
I'll like she said that, but she was like, no,
it should be called Harry's Angels, and then from there
they ended up with Charlie's Angels. But she also sort

(32:56):
of made the show like wanted different things from that
show show, which is from what I hear since made
it a better show. Now we can talk about whether
it was a good show or not later. But and
she got to pick the character she played. She was
originally supposed to play Kelly, and a fairly later in

(33:17):
development she decided she wanted to play Sabrina, and then
Jacqueline Smith came in play Kelly. But here's the thing.
So I was a little fascinated by Scarecrow Missus King
because it was the first show that I saw female
names at as executive pre show showrunner, and that made

(33:37):
an impact of somebody that was interested in film and TV.
I was like, I took notice. I remember sort of going, oh,
and I am hard pressed to find some other female
showrunners in the eighties, So I did a little research.
I guess it's not surprising that.

Speaker 1 (33:56):
Finding any many be difficult because it still was, and
certainly not as much now, but very much a like
most businesses, very male dominated.

Speaker 2 (34:11):
So yes, and I was surprised again that even you know,
by the eighties, it was such an unusual thing to
see a female showrunner. What I will say, so I
did little research. The very first what they're calling the
very first female showrunner, was Gertrude Berg, who was an

(34:33):
actress and writer and producer and created a radio show
called Rise of the Goldbergs, which later became known just
as the Goldbergs. And it was a sort of domestic
comedy family show about a Jewish family in the Bronx.
And she starred in the show as the matriarch of

(34:54):
that show, and that was incredibly popular. She won a
Tony and an Emmy Award for Best Actress. And again
it was first a radio show from nineteen twenty nine
to nineteen forty six, and then it was a television
show from nineteen forty nine to nineteen fifty six. Now
there were also shows that like a Betty White ran

(35:17):
like kind of conversary talk shows, but that variety show,
but it wasn't until twenty years later that apparently the
next female showrunner appeared. Charlotte Sue Brown was an American writer, producer,
and director, and so I'm going to call her the

(35:40):
first female showrunner who didn't star in the show of
primetime network television. And she ran Rota, the spinoff for
the Mary Tyler Moore Show. She was a protege of
the creator of Mary Tyler Moore, James Brooks. Thank you,
I didn't get there, and had her first writing job

(36:00):
on the Marriagetellymore Show, and then she worked for shows
like Door Stay and Partry's Family, and then she came
back on as a writer on Rhoda when they spun off,
and then stayed on the show and worked her way
up from writer, producer to executive producer. That's great. So
that was my little research dive into the first female

(36:23):
show runners. But that was them again pretty late in
the television game. Twenty years. Waiting twenty years for your
next female, first female showrunner, Yeah, no question, but on some.

Speaker 1 (36:36):
Level not surprising, I suppose, because it's it's kind of
astonishing what Gertrude Berg was able to do back at
that time, and it you know, the feminist movement really
didn't start taking off until the late sixties early seventies,
So it takes a while sometimes for things to trickle

(36:58):
down up through to get to a point where things
start to change and start to happen. So I I
wish I could say I were more surprised, but I don't.

Speaker 2 (37:08):
So I think about it. I don't think I am. Yeah,
you know, I don't think I am. So yeah, it's
it's a long time between trains sometimes. Yeah, absolutely, all right.
So that question maybe brings us to one of the
questions We're going to ask you on the show. But

(37:30):
is it And we're gonna look at Scarecromisus King, and
we're going to ask this question. When we're done looking
at Scarecrow, Missus King, we want to say, but is
it a feminist show? It's female driven, but is it
a feminist show?

Speaker 1 (37:45):
I think it is, especially because Amanda King, as I
said before, she's she's a suburban mom, she's got kids,
and decides to start down this professional road that never

(38:07):
sort of fell into her lap, that she never really
thought about as something that might be a career for herself,
and jumped into it with both feet and worked really
hard at it and was very successful at it, and
from that standpoint, I think absolutely it is. She was
a door open for her and she ran through it,

(38:27):
So good for her.

Speaker 2 (38:29):
All right, And I'm going to agree with you. I
think it is a feminist show, and I think it's
one of the reasons I come back to it, and
one of the reasons it has a pretty core fan
base that even though it's again not the shows that
you know, it may not be in that top one
percent of shows, it's a show that I think weirdly

(38:54):
holds up in a weird way, but it holds up
as a feminist show because it basically stays about her
and even though it's about them and and they're romance,
it's really about does she get what she wants out
of her world? And I think ultimately, both in the

(39:16):
pilot and in the show, in the course of the show,
she does, and we're following like her story, even though
we're also obviously following their story. It is Scarecrow and
Missus Gang and and you know, again the time also
of the name shows Hardcastle, McCormick, you.

Speaker 4 (39:35):
Know, Simon and Simon, Simon and Simon and on and on.
So yeah, yeah, ten Speed and Brown Shoe we can
do a whole podcast on the name shows. So yes,

(39:55):
I am going to say this's a feminist show. It's
a little like it's got a lot of bumps. There's
a there's a you know, some missed opportunities for for
doing more with Francine Desmond, the other Spy, and and
Amanda King. I think that those are two characters that
you would now definitely do more with, even if the

(40:19):
show is scarecrow Missus King.

Speaker 2 (40:22):
And I think also again he you know, everybody else
sort of learns a little lesson from Missus.

Speaker 1 (40:30):
King absolutely and then begin to trust her and to
listen to her and not you know, think, oh, she
doesn't have anything to offer because she's this suburban housewife.

Speaker 2 (40:42):
Yeah, and so there's there's a lot of that. Now
is it progressive and do we need to define progressive?

Speaker 1 (40:48):
I think we needed to find progressive. I well, I
guess I would. I would say it's progressive because it
pushes the genre, if you will forward. We are seeing
a woman in a role the day we haven't seen before.

(41:12):
It's being successful, that's being respected. So that says that
despite what you might think of women who are primarily
at home, that they do have something to offer, So
there's a in that respect, I think it is progressive.

Speaker 2 (41:35):
Sure, yeah, and I'm going to say it's sort of
yes and no, which again I think we're gonna end
up with a lot of that in the eighties.

Speaker 1 (41:46):
But yes, I agree with you on all of that,
because if you think about where things were in nineteen
eighty three, what women were doing, I mean, just a
few years before women were finally able to get credit
cards in their own names without having to have some
man in their life signed for it. And here we
have this woman who basically is saying, yeah, I did

(42:10):
the normal thing. I got married and then unfortunately I
got divorced. But now this is happening for me, and
I want to do this. I'm going to do this.
I have things to offer here.

Speaker 2 (42:21):
Yeah, and I actually love the Again, it's sort of
the challenge of the domestic home life versus saving the world. Right,
there's a lot of stuff that they do with that
where it's like I'm still trying to hit I've got
to fix my flat tire, you know, and get the
kids to their dentists. And so this will be very

(42:42):
convenient that the office is near their dentist. Like there's
literally a line in the pilot when she realizes where
the office is that it's close to our kids dentist.
And again, I think given that that's what you do
as a as a parent, much less a single parent,
you're trying to balance those worlds and there is a
glimpse into that that we hadn't seen. We'd seen it

(43:04):
in like one day at a time. We've seen it
in other things, but but this was I'm going to
have a challenge. I'm going to choose a challenging career
that I want to be a career and my home
and my kids. And in particular, I think that was
very exciting to see and to see be fun and

(43:28):
adventurous and not just burden some right, So in that way,
I think it was progressive, still not incredibly progressive on
on you know, elements of race, other you know, women roles.
So I think a lot of that was pushed by

(43:51):
you know, I'm going to give Kate Jackson credit and
the showrunners for pushing that for that lead role. And
again there's a couple of things. There's another thing that's
in the pilot script that did not make the aired pilot.
That's a line. It's one line, but it was one

(44:11):
of those things that said to me, that spoke to
me is like, oh, these shows are showwriters were at
least thinking a little bit progressively. These creators show in
the pilot script that Lincoln memorial scene and she's asking
him about She's like, you know, any any missus spy,

(44:32):
any little spies? You know, any girlfriends, any boyfriends. It's
something that Missus King asks the spy guy if he
has a boyfriend. In the pilot script, which for nineteen
eighty three I'm going to call pretty progressive. Oh yeah,
like I'm meeting you and I'm you know, it's not

(44:53):
quite asking pronouns, but it's asking are you gay? What's
your personal life like? And it's sort of like completely
thrown in there that line in the pilot. I don't
know if they shot it a certain way and then
changed it, but it is now anybodies, any girlfriends, any buddies.

(45:13):
So clearly someone between the pilot script, the first by
the script which got changed a lot, and the aired pilot,
that little tiny bit of progressive, like a like the
barest hint of progressiveness kind of got pulled out. And
I think there's a lot of that in the script,
and certainly in terms of you know, just there's another

(45:40):
episode that's later that I just noticed because it had
a black female spy working with Lee Stetson for like
a line. She had a lines, and she was in
the scene with him and did a thing. Oh no,
she didn't have a line. She looked like she was
gonna have a line, and then she didn't. And then
they were doing the wrap up of this thing, and

(46:00):
she's gone like, You're like, wait, but you had her
there for You certainly had her there for at least
an hour. You probably paid her for the day. Couldn't
she be in the next scene and have a line?
Like so that background stuff. I have to say, it
feels like early on they were actually trying to do that.
There's a little bit of color in the show. The

(46:25):
pilot was shot in Washington, d C. Which I think
gives it a nice flavor that you don't usually see
in the eighties, Like you really are like, oh, they're
standing in DC. But yeah, so I'm going to say
it's it's sort of a five or six on the progressive.

Speaker 1 (46:45):
I think for its time, it was very progressive. But
you're right as a you know, for ours.

Speaker 2 (46:50):
It's hard not to look at it. But and again
I'm thinking of like I think one day, it's not
covering issues of importance of the day. So even though
again that's not what the show is trying to do
or even pretending to do, but it's it is progressive
in this one way, but it's not in other ways.
So I'm going to say, fair enough, yea, fair enough?

(47:12):
All right? So what's our next thing? What acts are
we going to talk about?

Speaker 1 (47:17):
Is it time for three questions?

Speaker 2 (47:19):
Three questions? Okay, yes, let's do three questions? All right.
Who's going first? I'll go first. So the first question
is well, no, first means you have to ask me quests,
all right, all right. So the first question is no,
or it means I have to ask you questions. I
think that's the first Either one is fine, all right,

(47:39):
I'm going to ask you the question. Okay, all right?
So what is the eighties ladies driven TV show that
resonated with you.

Speaker 1 (47:52):
I'm going to go with Designing Women. It's a show
that holds up surprisingly well these days. It has moments
that I will remember forever. Most of them are Julia
Sugar Baker rants because they're fabulous, and I liked that

(48:17):
it was these four women working in a business together
making it work, and they were all so different, they
all had different things to bring to the table.

Speaker 2 (48:25):
But yeah, it's a great show. It is a great show.
And I remember I remember that aspect of they were friends,
but they were also working together. It was a little
bit of life goals in that and I love that
show as well. I don't remember it as as much,
but that is. That is an awesome eighties TV Lady show.

(48:47):
So then, what is your current or current shows that
are you would consider TV Lady show? I have two.

Speaker 1 (49:00):
On Network television. Yes, I still watch network television. Somebody's
got I know, and that's me. I'm the one Gray's Anatomy.
I've watched it from day one, loved it from day one,
have stuck with it through thick and thin. There have
been some years it were I mean, it's eighteen, it's
the season eighteen. It's not all going to be great exactly.

Speaker 2 (49:21):
Oh my god.

Speaker 1 (49:22):
I don't know that we'll ever see a season eighteen
for anything again. So but I love it and the
other one you can find on Paramount Plus. It's called
The Good Fight.

Speaker 2 (49:34):
It's a.

Speaker 1 (49:36):
Spin off, if you will, from a show that was
on CBS called The Good Wife. It stars the incomparable
Christine Baranski, who has been overlooked, deprived of an Emmy
for her work on that show for all these years.

Speaker 2 (49:56):
She's amazing, She is amazing. Yeah, it's an incredible show.

Speaker 1 (50:00):
It's it's a wonderful, incredible show that goes in places,
does things. It's it's the showrunners are a married couple,
Robert and why can't I think of her name? The
Kings is what I usually think of the mask and
they are there. It's an incredible show and I highly

(50:21):
recommend it.

Speaker 2 (50:22):
All right, The Good Wife just on my list. I loved,
I mean, I love The Good Wife. And then The
Good Fight is on my list. It's literally in my queue.
And I watched the first episode and loved it. And
then of course I haven't gotten around to it because
you cannot watch everything, yes exactly, but that is it's
still in my queue. I haven't taken it out of
my queue. So all right, all right, and then the

(50:46):
last of the three questions, what's the most television moment
that you've had in your life?

Speaker 1 (50:56):
So at work, I am an Alto in the employee choir,
and as part of the performance that we do, there
is a some Christmas songs that are that are played
that we don't necessarily have to sing, but their their

(51:17):
voices singing it. So we recorded them about five years ago,
and movie nerd as well as television nerd that I am.
I was incredibly amazed to find that we would be
recording re recording these songs at the Newman Stage at
the Fox Studio over in Culver City. The Newman Stage

(51:42):
is named after the first of the many Newman men
who scored all have scored all kinds of movies that
you have all heard of, none of which I am
coming to mind right at this moment. But it felt
I'd ever been on a stage like that before, but
I could It was as if I could feel all

(52:06):
of the other the ghost of all of the other
movies that had been scored there and all the musicians
that had played there, and it was magical.

Speaker 2 (52:15):
I was going to say that that is that was
pretty great. Love. I love those moments where you realize
you're in someplace special, doing someplay special, and you'll sort
of never match it, and you can kind of feel
the beauty of being present in that.

Speaker 1 (52:35):
Okay, So those are my three questions, now for yours.
So let's start again with what is the or are
the eighties ladies driven TV shows that resonated with you?

Speaker 2 (52:48):
Well, there's an awful lot of eighties television that resonated
with me. But I'm gonna I'm gonna pick my top three, Okay,
which is Scarecrow and Missus King, one of the reasons
we started this, which I still have a lot to
say about. So we'll do a few more episodes. Remington Steele,

(53:13):
which again one could argue started as a female driven
television show and became a male driven television show, but
I would really it's probably a both. And then Cagney
and Lacey and not because I watched a lot of
Cagney and Lacey to be fair, as a kid. It
felt very serious. It got very serious. But the idea

(53:38):
of Cagney Lacy existing was very resonant to me. And
I love those actresses and I loved watching them. I
didn't religiously watch that show, but that show was like,
it was like, oh my god, we have our own
starskin Hunch like like it was it was I knew
it was important, but I also just liked kind of it.

(54:02):
And and it's again a show that visually has stayed
with me that I think was really truly trying to
be groundbreaking, and those actresses are are like amazing terrifict
And what about currently?

Speaker 1 (54:19):
What is resonating with you? Now?

Speaker 2 (54:22):
I'll see I should have done some research. Oh what's
the fun of that? That is no fun at all? Okay,
So I'm just gonna go with things that just are
popping off the top of my head. Like I have
to say, again, Parks and rec even though it's not
now now still stays with me. The good place still
stays with me. And I would watch it in an instant.

(54:46):
But in terms of just what's on now, you just
start blanking on things. They just slide away. It's about
the writer. It's based on her book Shrill. Thank you,
I got there. I got there. It's just like an
association game. Shrill was really like I just finally caught
up with it. And that's the thing. Now is is

(55:08):
now whenever you happen to get it into your queue
exactly right. So I just caught up with Shrill and
really enjoyed it and thought that again, as a show
that feels both progressive and feminist, which is what I
would call a lady's of TV show, a TV ladies.

(55:31):
I think that you know, that's right there, and there's
just there's a lot now that's so exciting that there's
like more than I can think of to name right now,
which is fun. But those are the ones that are
in my mind right now.

Speaker 1 (55:44):
Yes, it is an embarrassment of riches right now when
it comes to watching television, and it's been for years,
for several years, but continues to be impossible to watch
it all.

Speaker 2 (55:54):
Yes, we now have a big, big buffet exactly. Okay.

Speaker 1 (56:00):
And last, but not least, your own TV real life
TV moment.

Speaker 2 (56:08):
Okay. So, probably one of the more dramatic moments of
my life was a random thing that happened when I
was driving back from Angel's Crest Forest with my boyfriend
at the time, and we stopped to help this It
was getting dark. We were kind of having a little

(56:32):
bit of a fight, but not really, but we were
going to go see dark Man. This is nineteen ninety.
We're driving back down into Glendale and I see this
woman on the side of the road. She's got a
child in her arms and she looks like she's broken down.
There's a van and it looks like she's broken down.
So I pull over. He's like, what are you doing?

(56:55):
And I'm like, she needs help. And then she comes
runs up to our car, gets in the car and says,
I just needed to ride to the bottom of the hill.
And as I pull out, I realized there's somebody chasing
us from that vehicle, and ultimately it turned out to
be her husband, who was mad and drunk and had

(57:18):
a gun oh and ended up following us down the
mountain and fired twice at my car. Wow, And it
became this huge, very huge draw moment in which you
realize it's absolutely zero fun to be in a dramatic
moment like that and is really not where you want

(57:40):
to be, and you want it to just end. And
then we were all safe when all of a sudden done,
and he was arrested when all of a sudden done.
And then I ended up having to go to court
and testify at the grand jury. And it was a long,
crazy thing that didn't necessarily end up great for me

(58:03):
in terms of like how I felt about the whole experience.
But I do remember when we did finally end up
going to see Dark Man that night that I was like,
it is zero fun to watch them just gun play
around this movie like it's no big deal. But that

(58:23):
was literally driving down a dark mountain road with a
angry person behind you who is drunk according to their
partner that's in your car with their child and having
them and hearing shots. Is was one of the most

(58:43):
dramatic moments of my life. So it was super dramatic.
I don't recommend it, and we all ended up safe
in that moment afterwards, so we're lucky.

Speaker 1 (58:55):
I just have no words. That's incredible.

Speaker 2 (58:58):
It was a weird moment. It was really it made
the paper. Wow. Uh My boyfriend's mother called him because
his name is in the paper and was like, what happened, Uh, yeah,
I made the Glendale News.

Speaker 1 (59:14):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (59:15):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (59:16):
Well I'm glad that everybody you know got out of there.

Speaker 2 (59:20):
In one thing, I'm super glad there. It's it's insane.
I have never really owned any guns, and yet I've
been shot at twice. That's once, but that's a story
for another die. I like my drama scripted and filmed.

(59:40):
That's what I decided. That sounds like a bumper sticker.
All right, I want to do the little part that
I'm going to call audiology, which is a little bibliography
for our podcast and for what we're looking at. So
first I want to tell you where to watch Scarecrow
Missus King in case you want to check it out. Well,
probably the easiest place to watch it, because they own everything,

(01:00:05):
is Amazon Prime. That is probably the easiest place to
watch it. You will have to purchase it. It is
not part of their free video, so that's kind of
a bummer. However, I highly recommend the DVDs which are
still available, which you can also find at Amazon or
your DVD provider, because the quality of the sound and

(01:00:30):
picture is much much better. The Amazon streaming for eighty
shows seems like a lot of people weren't paying attention
to what they were doing. I mean literally, the cropping
is wrong. They're cutting off the heads of Bruce box Lightner,
and I think that is rude. He's a tall guy,

(01:00:51):
but you shouldn't cut off his head. I've got a
lot of the research that I did on fan sites
for Scarecrimisus King, of which which is the best of
which is called call Me a Cab and it's at
call Me a Cab dot com, which is a line
that's used in one of the later episodes, one of
my favorite little exchanges between them. And she has done

(01:01:14):
an amazing job of collecting materials and she is also
part of a podcast called the Missus King Chronicles along
with three other ladies who are doing episode walkthroughs. It's
very fan base. They're super adorable and it's really funny
to hear them talk about the show. So that's at
mksepodcast dot com. There are two books I actually looked

(01:01:37):
at for this show. One is called How Tall Are You?
By Greg Morton who starred in Scarecrow Missus King as
the little brother. But it's very he's talking. He talks
about being on the show and being a child actor
in the eighties. And then the other show is like
an academic book and it is a television's feed Spies

(01:02:00):
and crime Fighters, six hundred characters and shows nineteen fifties
to the present, written by Karen A. Romenko. So are
those are our audiology for this week. There's some homework
to do.

Speaker 1 (01:02:19):
And now we want to give a shout out to
our audio engineer, Kevin Deacy, co producer Melissa Roth, plus
our social media manager and production assistant, Megan McKiernan, and a.

Speaker 2 (01:02:29):
Special thanks to my husband, Richard Haddam, who will be
on as a guest later in later episodes. He's a
podcast super guest. It's been on many, many episodes of
various podcasts, and so he had a lot of great
advice for us. I want to shout out the guys
from Astonishing Legends Forrest Burgers and Scott Philbrick, a fabulous

(01:02:52):
podcast about Astonishing Legends of supernatural phenomenon.

Speaker 1 (01:02:58):
And our other advisors, Chris Stashue and Mike White from
the Projection Booth and Culture Cast. Check out their podcast
if you haven't already.

Speaker 2 (01:03:07):
Find out more about us at our website eightiestv Ladies
dot com. That's eight zero ads tv ladies dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:03:18):
Let us know if you're liking this podcast. Giving us
a shout out on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram really helps a lot,
and through the website you can send us an email
to tell us we got something wrong, but.

Speaker 2 (01:03:29):
Not too wrong. Don't meet, don't yell at us. Well,
Lissa thinks you're gonna yell at us, so please don't
do that. I want to be right. Tell us what
we got right. We hope you join us for our
next episode, We're going to continue our dive into Scarecromises
King part two. I know you think that there's that
we've covered all the Scare Promises King, but we haven't,

(01:03:50):
not at all. We're going to look at the first season,
which is adorable and funny and really fun. We're going
to talk about what went right and what we think
went wrong in season one. We're also going to look
at the making of the show. We get to talk
about something that's not unheard of in television production, but
it's still unusual. In the middle of season one, Scarecromas
is King change showrunners and so we're gonna We're gonna

(01:04:13):
talk about that. But I want to tell you a
story or two about one day to Bartlett, the female
showrunner that was brought on mid season and we'd go
on to run the rest of season one and all
of season two. She's an incredibly underrated and lesser known
showrunner who started on The Rockford Files.

Speaker 1 (01:04:31):
We hope Eighties TV Ladies brings your joy and laughter
and lots of fabulous new and old TV shows to watch,
all of which will lead us toward being amazing ladies
of the twenty first century.

Speaker 2 (01:04:44):
I want to be an amazing lady of the twenty
first century, sharing me too, Let's do it. Okay, all right,
thank you guys, see us soon. Eighties day, so pretty

Speaker 3 (01:04:58):
The city, the staple in train mechanics, working on a
Bob Money Bamber, anything rid

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