Thank you all for your very gracious and enthusiastic reception to this, my latest update! It feels good to be back in the saddle once again, and I'm hoping that this cycle will prove both punctual
and pleasing to read! And now, as always, for my replies to your latest and most thoughtful and considerate comments...
It would be quite hypocritical of me not be patient and understanding about hiatus of less than a month, considering my (theoretical) readers have had to endure hiatus of over a year at times.
Indeed so! In fact I think it was more than a year ago at this point that I last asked after
A Central East
LordInsane said:
With that said, it is always good to see a new update to That Wacky Redhead, and I'm glad to hear you are confident that May will see more!
Thank you very much for your kind words! I hope you enjoy them all.
Woo!
Just wish I could reply as often
Every little reply helps! That goes for everyone, by the way
Is there anything better on a Tuesday night than a new episode of That Wacky Redhead??
In the 1979-80 season? Well, IOTL, ABC had
Happy Days,
Three's Company,
Taxi... (But really, you're too kind.)
Andrew T said:
Utterly believable in this world, and, uh, it probably gives new life to Benson's-and-Jessica's banter/catchphrase from the first two seasons. ("You want me to get that?" "If you don't mind.")
It was definitely my thinking that race relations ITTL had moved forward
just enough for a provocative show like
Soap to muster the courage to go ahead with this storyline, and I'm glad you thought so, too! What tipped the scales was when I researched about Guillaume, his take on Benson, and his relationship with Helmond. That "dignity" quote is my insurance - I think there's a part of him that would
love to send up the crushing earnestness of a
Guess Who's Coming To Dinner-type story.
Andrew T said:
Given the role that interracial romance has played in the gay rights movement IOTL, I wonder if we're in for a comparable acceleration ITTL. 1979 marks the ten-year anniversary of Stonewall, too....
Funny you should mention that, actually. Mr. Loving, of
Loving v. Virginia, is still alive ITTL, as he died in 1975 in a drunk driving accident (in which Mrs. Loving was also injured, though she survived). Together they have four children, as opposed to three (because they, like so many others, said "Let's have
one more..." in the early 1970s).
This isn't
quite relevant to your point, but I thought I would mention it here, as it's one of those butterflies that I wouldn't likely divulge organically.
Andrew T said:
I suppose that even the great ones are entitled to a
teeny little
Author Filibuster now and then.
That was certainly
not an Author Filibuster! It was merely a case of
Writer on Board. But don't think I
couldn't write a 5,000-word update on the subject!
Andrew T said:
I was wondering when Carlin would get a show, given the rampant success Pryor is enjoying ITTL. Also -- and I say this as a life-long fan of Carlin -- I think you've absolutely nailed George Carlin circa 1979 here.
Thank you. I was worried about how Carlin fans would have perceived this update, but, as you say,
someone was bound to give him a chance and, well...
Andrew T said:
Pryor will probably also kick off OTL's Seinfeld-esque tradition of networks looking for vehicles in which to showcase standup comedians a decade or so early, although the networks haven't yet hit upon the idea of sticking a standup comic in a sitcom and watching what happens. Yet.
Technically, it was
Roseanne which kicked off the "standup sitcom" tradition;
Seinfeld came (slightly) later.
Roseanne was an immediate hit upon premiering in the 1988-89 season, and reached #1 - tied with
The Cosby Show (in a fitting "passing of the torch" moment for family sitcoms) - the following year. It did not fall out of the Top 5 until the 1994-95 season.
Seinfeld cracked the Top 30 only in its fourth season (1992-93), reaching #1 for the first of two non-consecutive seasons in, what do you know, the 1994-95 season (it dipped to #2, below
ER, before reclaiming the throne in its final season). But yes, the gist of your point is absolutely correct.
Andrew T said:
Apropos of nothing, David Letterman has been guest-hosting The Tonight Show for a year and a half now, and is signed to that sell-your-soul contract to NBC....
He has? He is? Funny, I don't recall ever mentioning that...
Andrew T said:
Oh, man. This is, of course, exactly how it would go down. In flames. Of hilarity.
I can't help but laugh at the mental image myself. Carlin
definitely wasn't the only person involved in that show's production who was high as a kite, I can assure you. And he isn't used to people laughing
at him, but in this case, boy would they ever. And since we're on the topic, I would
love to hear someone make a filk song about all this, to the tune of "Poker Face". I've been imagining how the song would go and I can't get it out of my head. "
Can't read my, can't read my, no you can't read my Censorface..."
All you need is some vintage late-1970s-era video of Carlin performing, and then tack on a smiley face graphic, et
voila! Too bad I'm a writer, not a video editor.
Andrew T said:
One alt-anachronism: I'm not sure that the verb
videotape would exist ITTL.
Duly noted. Switching to "recorded". Thanks for the advice
Andrew T said:
You really convey the love that Guillaume and Helmond had for their art here.
And for each other, as well. Both of them have spoken really fondly of their friendship (which endures to this day!) in interviews, and I wanted to reflect that.
Andrew T said:
So, will the prime-time soap blossom alongside the prime-time soap parody ITTL? Once Texas Tea succeeds, you know the other networks will race to copy it. (IOTL -- as I know all too well -- this led to multiple years of the execrable Falcon Crest being among the Top 10 shows in the country.)
Well, I gave you
Soap, so it just wouldn't be right for me to go out on a limb and prevent a *
Falcon Crest, especially since that show was a product of the zeitgest, along with
Dynasty, not to mention all their various spinoffs - such as
Knots Landing, which was the primetime soap
my family watched when I was a little boy. As disconcerting as it may seem to a pop culture enthusiast such as myself, I'd actually heard of
Knots Landing before I'd heard of
Dallas!
Andrew T said:
Does VP Mathias go out and campaign for his fellow moderates? Or is he more in the mold of George H.W. Bush IOTL?
Yes, Mathias pretty actively campaigned for his fellow Rockefeller Republicans in 1978, which played a part. Unlike Bush (and there's no need to specify his middle initials
), he doesn't really become a part of Reagan's inner circle, though of course there's no assassination attempt to more-or-less
force him into it either.
Andrew T said:
To be fair, a planned rapid transit line to complement this freeway was
also completed (as a certain Councilman Takei was instrumental in its passage).
Andrew T said:
Also: does this mean there's no club scene on the Sunset Strip ITTL?
You are correct, sir! Medina is located near Century City, the commercial area which is served by the completed freeway (and was built with this access in mind).
Andrew T said:
If you really want to freak him out, tell him that within two decades, he'll be playing the voice of "Mister Conductor" on the PBS series
Thomas the Tank Engine, aimed at two-to-five year olds.
Which, yes, is how I personally first came to be familiar with George Carlin. Sometimes truth really
can be stranger than fiction.
Well well well, Brainbin, a very blooming update indeed.
Thank you, Dan! And there's plenty more flowers yet to bloom, so be sure to stop and smell the roses!
The line I quote above made me laugh out loud.
Superb update, just like all the others in this excellent time line.
Glad you're still reading, Flubber, and thank you for the compliment! It always pleases me when people laugh at my silly jokes
A variety of [verboten] more than a decade ahead of schedule? Seems to be a bit of a stretch and I don't think they could have the same themes and casting choices as IOTL.
What they really need now is a Star Trek series set at a station in the demilitarised zone between the Federation, Klingons and Romulans as a place for negotiation and diplomacy between the rival nations - with Uhura as the Federation ambassador . . . .
Well, they won't. This one isn't Trek, apparently doesn't become one of the most important places in the Galaxy in the first episode and is made over a decade earlier.
Considering the 'those ships' and 'pretty sure you can’t do any star trekking on a station orbiting a planet' things, that seems... unlikely.
It's pretty emphatically not DS9. It's pretty emphatically not Star Trek at all. It'll have very different themes (both than OTL DS9 and TOS), very different plotlines (ditto), and to avoid endangering anything about the lightning in a bottle money tree that is Star Trek, no connection to it at all.
What they said. This show may have a superficially similar premise to the OTL spinoff series with a similar name, but it will turn out to be
very different in execution. Much like an
actual OTL show with a superficially similar premise to that spinoff:
Babylon 5. This demonstrates that there
is room for multiple takes on the same basic story idea.
You know it struck me that with the flop of
M*A*S*H, Donald Sutherland probably won't do his turn as Christ in
Johnny Got His Gun... In fact,
Johnny Got His Gun probably didn't get made.
Damn.
Well, Space Oddity, that's what happens when there's no conflict to satirize. Would you rather the US government sinks hundreds of millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of troops into an overseas quagmire instead?
It just goes to show that sometimes art and culture can be the byproducts of quite devastating courses of action.
I do get the argument you and Brainbin have made about Star Trek (call it the "lightning in a bottle" argument), but I think it is a shame to lose the richness that is the larger Star Trek universe. For example, Lawrence Krauss almost certainly doesn't write The Physics of Star Trek ITTL, which is a shame.
Notwithstanding that the book was written after my 1986 cutoff, I don't see anything that outright precludes the possibility of that book being written or published ITTL. There just wouldn't be any references to any of the later OTL series in there, that's all. And
that sounds like my kind of reading!
I'm not all caught up with the meat of this tl yet, but I've been skipping ahead...
Glad you're still reading, TheInfiniteApe! I look forward to your further thoughts whenever you wish to discuss them.
TheInfiniteApe said:
Bin, eh? Haven't gotten
that one since high school. If you'd like, you can call me BB; I like that abbreviation a bit better
TheInfiniteApe said:
I wonder about Desi V's future here. I'm also trying to picture what he looks like, but I keep seeing a slightly Latin Sean Astin...
Well, Desi Jr./IV took after Desi Sr./III quite strongly in appearance (to the point that he was able to play his father in
The Mambo Kings). It's probably a safe bet to assume that the same would be true of Desi V.
Here is a photo of Desi IV c. 1962, at nine years old; Desi V would be about the same age on December 31, 1979.
TheInfiniteApe said:
I want to watch these shows! Also, it looks as if Jorge is DOA in your tl as well. That's good news.
Yes, preventing the rise of
Jorge was a goal of mine from the outset; which is one of the reasons why I was so
intrigued by your timeline, in fact
TheInfiniteApe said:
Also, I want to go to Medina in spite of my Islamophilia. Or perhaps because of it. Let's open this club irl!
You know, Medina probably
would have a vague-ish
Arabian Nights-styled decor, derived from old movies like
The Thief of Bagdad. And the... "ladies of the evening" are probably dressed like harem girls. And I have no doubt about there being
multiple hookahs in a back room somewhere. But we're definitely looking at
the Theme Park Version here.
Considering how sooner or later, we're going to hit 1981, I will love you forever if you allude to
this.
Dirty Laundry is an excellent timeline which I must recommend to anyone who enjoys this one. Though I must say, it would be rather ill-advised of me to address Don Henley's solo career without
once discussing the wildly popular rock group to which he belonged in the 1970s, wouldn't you say?
I wonder what shows my parents were watching on or around that time. (You're getting to (or are or were) around my birth time- literally.)
Well, what did your parents like to watch, exactly?
Glad that J.R. Ewing played by Larry Hagman still happens, albeit with a different name and in a different city.
I figured I owed Houston after depriving them of the chance to have the Aeros play in the NHL (especially since, IOTL, the only Texan NHL team plays in... Dallas).
I know Brainbin has something planned for another Trek series ITTL, but he refuses to tell me on the grounds it wouldn't do to spoil all the things for me.
Well, that's a big spoiler - if you had been a voice actor, and Brainbin a video-game company, the sort of thing that might lose you a job. Of course, Brainbin might be more understanding.
Luckily, my job is safe--he'd mentioned it himself before on the thread.
Ah, but that is talking about
spinoff media - indeed, Brainbin specifically mentions screen continuations as something separate to it that may or may not happen.
Having checked through our past conversations, I've said "there
is going to be something more after the miniseries", and described it further only as a "mystery project". I was very careful and did not even mention in which medium it would appear.
e of pi inferred all by himself that it was going to be another television series, which I will neither confirm nor deny by authorial fiat
Which means he
didn't spoil anything, and I
won't have to fire him. Which is good, because he'll be consulting with me on my very next update!
Which
won't be another prank, by the way