I don't h8 the 90's anymore (Part 5).

• Part 1 (Cartoons)
• Part 2 (Movies part 1)
• Part 3 (Movies part 2)
• Part 4 (TV part 1)

All right, here we are, TV part 2, cable.
It comes out when it comes out.


Fancy Cable-

Showtime (1995-1998)

Give or take a year in either direction.

Through them, I got to see...

The Dark Backward.
Career Opportunities.
Defending Your Life.
Reservoir Dogs.
The Nutt House.
What's Eating Gilbert Grape.
The Road Killers.
Threesome.
Dark Angel: The Ascent.
Society.
Cemetery Man.
Canadian Bacon.
Coldblooded.
The Last Supper.
Hackers.
Kingpin.
Joe's Apartment.
The Craft. 
Tank Girl.
Showgirls.
Black Scorpion.
Crumb.
Devil's Advocate.

But there was also their shows, which included....

Full Frontal Comedy (1996-1999)

I can't find the logo to this, but I remember it was just a naked chick smashing her wet breasts against a pane of glass. One of the female comedians remarked that why wasn't there also a man whacking his dick and balls against the glass. She had a point.

Anyway, this was just a standup show, but allowed to go blue.

This is where I saw George & Otto, Maria Bamford, and Patton Oswalt for the first time.

Sherman Oaks (1995-1997)

About a plastic surgeon and his family who are having a documentary done about them.
All I remember about it anymore, is it had Peter Billingsley (Ralphie) in it.

Pretty cheesey by today's standards, it was a network style sitcom but with bad language, and fuck jokes.
Hell, basic cable does stuff with more edge now.

And Showtime later had Dexter, Dave's Old Porn, and Penn & Teller's Bullshit.
So, yeah, they're different now.


Cinemax (198??-199??)

I told the story about watching scrambled Cinemax porn with my old 80's tuning box here (see Cleo/Leo). (Also, see Cle/Leo update here)

Other flicks I remember seeing in this time "Young Lady Chatterly (which I re-created in static-o-vision up above)", "Young Lady Chatterly II (With Adam West!!)", "Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer", and "Heavy Metal".

Good times, good times....


HBO (198??-199??)

I had it free and clear and legally through 1983-1987, and I told that story.

But in the 90's, the same old cable box that could almost get Cinemax to solidify could get the sound on HBO.
Plus, I saw stuff over other people's houses, and friends brought tapes over, and old shows I missed finally came to Comedy Central in the 00's and 10's so....

The George Carlin Renaissance (1990-1999)

Doin' It Again (1990)
Jammin In New York (1992)
Back In Town (1996)
You Are all Diseased (1999)

I heard "Back In Town" first, then went back, and collected the others, and collected the new ones after that.
Now I've got it all on DVD.
I don't think I need 'em on Blu-Ray and 4K, I mean, the words are the important thing, not whether I can see George's nose hairs.

Kids In The Hall (1988-1994)

Old review here.

I stand by all of that.
I just gotta update that Dave Foley's life has been ruined by his psychotic ex-wife, Scott Thompson was on Hannibal, Kevin McDonald did voice acting for Disney, so he should be set for life, and the other two...*bored dismissive hand wave*.

I kinda wanted to lump this together with "In Living Color", "Mad TV", "Saturday Night Special", and "The Ben Stiller Show", in a category of upstarts to SNL's throne, but...I went another way with how I broke these up that felt easier.

Tenacious D (1997-2000)

Finally got to see this on Comedy Central a few years back.
Good stuff.
Didn't transcend me into another dimension or nothin though.
See my comments on "Mr. Show".

Mr. Show (1995-1998)

Saul Goodman and Tobias had a sketch show.
It was just about as good as "Kids In The Hall", and "The State".
Which is to say, pretty good, but not Earth shattering.

Hipsters however, acted like it was the second coming of Optimus Prime Jesus.
Hipsters try to ruin everything good by blowing everything out of proportion and raising impossible expectations.
Hipsters need to die.

Anyway, add this to the list of sketch shows from "Kids In The Hall".

Real Sex (1990-2009)

Really? 2009?
This shit is obsolete thanks to internet porn.
In fact, when I Googled this for graphics, I GOT porn!!!
Anyway, how did it make it out of the 90's, much less to 09?
Oh...right...old people.
Old people who can't work technology need their porn from HBO.
Sad.

I saw one episode of this somehow.
Maybe it was a rare free preview weekend for HBO or something.
It was all right.
I mean, it made my dick move, so it wasn't totally lame.
Put, porn is better.
Not that porn is great, I'm actually starting to get bored and fed up with the trends and repetition in porn, but that's a rant for another day.

Taxicab Confessions (1995-2006)

It's exactly like its SNL parody.

Somehow, people lapped this shit up.
For 11 years.
Well, Oprah lasted 25 years, so nothing should surprise me.
Again, old people.


Basic cable-

QVC Star Trek/Star Wars/Comic Book specials (199??-199??)

I fucking loved these!!

Before there were Youtube shows, and podcasts, and Nerdist to get your sci-fi talk show fix, and before Sci-Fi Channel had a panel show (SF Vortex, more on that later), the sci-fi guests came to QVC.

I know, weird, huh?
But, for us geeks that couldn't afford to go to a convention, this was were you could get your fix.

The host was always Steve Bryant, and he and his guests would shoot the shit about their show/movie for up to 3 hours, and hawk merchandise while they did it.
Oh, and they took audience calls.

For Star Wars, it was almost always Mark Hamill, but a couple times they had Billie Dee Williams.

For Trek, they had Jonathan Frakes, Mirina Sirtis, Majel Barrett, the chick who played Nurse Ogawa, the chicks who played the Duras Sisters, DeForest Kelley, George Takei, Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols, and a couple rare times, James Doohan.

For comic books, they had Peter David, who would also do Star trek shows to hawk his Trek novels.

One time, Archie Goodwin was on to plug his Classic Star Wars comics.

Another time, Mark Hamill and Kevin Conroy were on together to plug "Batman: Mask Of The Phantasm".

The last one I can remember was '95 when Voyager premiered.
I remember it distinctly, because a fan who called in said the Voyager pilot "came out with guns blazing", compared to other Trek pilots.
I remember at the time agreeing with that assessment.
I haven't seen "Caretaker", since it aired, so I dunno how its held up.
Update- I'll be a son of a bitch! They just aired it!
And...it's pretty damned good!

Can't remember any specials after that.
"First Contact", was 1996, and I don't remember a QVC show to plug that.
So, right at Voyager is when they dissolved these.
I definitely know there was no how-do-you-do for the Star Wars Special Editions in '97.
They might have done some shows to hawk wares with no guests, and no Bryant, but yeah, it was dead.

I hear they've recently brought these back, but I can't find that they have the juicy guests like the good old days.
And Steve Bryant isn't on there anymore.

Anyway, these were around when Trek was in its greatest heyday ever, in the TNG/DS9 pre-Voyager days, and when the Star Wars Expanded Universe was also seeing its best days.
Man, these were fun.
What a fun time.


Mystery Science Theater 3000 
(1989-1996 Comedy Central)
(1997-1999 Sci-Fi Channel)
(2017-???? Netflix)

Speaking of good times!!

From here.

There was MST3K, but I missed the entire original Joel run, cuz our shitty cable service stubbornly refused to let us have Comedy Central all through the 90's for some inexplicable reason.
Caught up on syndicated reruns, and tapes though.
...y'know, I'd forgotten what a dick move that was by our cable company...I hate their rotten stinking guts all over again.
It wasn't like they couldn't afford new channels either, they gave us new ones, they were just utter shit, like the religion channels.
"Yeah, you yokels can't handle funny, here's some Jesus shit instead".
Fuuuuck yoouu!

Cable company sons of bitches.
Well, now it's finally the opposite.
Because we've hung on so long, never unsubscribing, no matter how much poo and contempt the multiple owners flung our way, and now they're bleeding subscribers through Netflix, and Roku, in order to powder-puff our asses, they've given us.....everything.
All the channels, boxes in every room, and free Starz.
*Crosses arms smugly*
All right then.
*Self satisfied nod*

Course, the new MST3K is on Netflix....*sigh*.

But, it's all good, shitloads of the old ones are on Youtube, and CometTV has them going all the way back to the KTMA episodes.
I've long since filled in all the gaps.
I'm good.

They never really ended.
From 2004-2006, the Mike crew were "The Film Crew", from 2007 to 2013, the Joel crew were "Cinematic Titanic", and from 2006 to present, the Mike crew have been "Rifftrax".

The longest gap they were truly gone was between the Sci-Fi Channel finale, and "Film Crew", and even that gap was probably filled with reruns somewhere.

Now the old MST3K brand has fresh blood pumped into it with a new cast, and Joel producing.
They'll go forever like Star Trek and Doctor Who.
*Salutes*


Just Say Julie (1989-1992)

See "Earth Girls Are Easy", here and here.

Julie Brown was the female Weird Al Yankovic, she was great, she deserved better, and I miss her.

The format of this was weird, she had on talk-show guests, but the show also had a fictional universe with skits that was like a raunchy adult feminine "Pee-Wee's Playhouse", and the two sides would bleed together.
Hmm, it was like a live-action "Space Ghost Coast To Coast".
Ahead of its time.

Last things I saw her in was an anthology movie containing parodies of the TV movies for Lorena Bobbitt, and Tonya Harding called "Attack Of The 5 ft. 2 in. Women", and a parody of Madonna's "Truth Or Dare", called "Medusa: Dare To Be Truthful".

Oh, and of course she was in "Shakes The Clown".


You wrote it, you watch it (1992-1993) 

Sorry, no image. *shrug*

The first thing I ever saw Jon Stewart in.

The premise was, you'd send in a letter with an idea, or even a whole skit, and The State (who you probably know now as "the Reno 911 guys") would act it out.
Jon Stewart hosted between skits to introduce the letter to set it up.

The only one I remember, was they did one on dreams, and a guy sent in a letter that he had a dream he was being followed around by Fred Schneider from the B-52s, and he was annoyingly turning everything he did into a song.

In the skit, Thomas Lennon was Schneider, and the guy (from the letter (played by Michael Showalter)) went to the bathroom in a public stall, and Lennon/Schneider was in the next stall singing "everybody's takin' a poo poo!!!".

That burnt into my memory for some reason....


The Jon Stewart Show (1993–1995)

"Oh, look, the guy from 'you wrote it, you watch it', has a talk show!".
Is what I said.

Had no clue as to how famous he was gonna be.

Howard Stern was on one time mocking how MTV cancels everything, and predicted Stewart's cancellation.
Stewart tried to laugh it off, but you could tell Stern was landing his punches.

Although, Stern did advise him to use his MTV experience to springboard out, and get the Hell out of there.
And then he sent a message out to any young kid looking to make it, don't even dream of being a "star", on MTV, because they'll ruin you.
Use it as a stepping stone, and then get the fuck out.
He was right.

That was 22 years ago, and MTV has only gotten 1000 times worse.


The State (1993-1995)

As mentioned above, you're more likely to remember them as "the 'Reno 911' guys".

Y'know, this'll be unpopular, but I'll say it, I remember this a lot more fondly than I do "Kids In The Hall".
I just do.
I thought "Kids", fell on its face with dumb skits a lot more than this did.
And I can instantly remember a lot more lines from this.
Sorry of it blasphemes some hipster religion, but I think they're the more talented troupe.
Their record speaks for itself.


Loveline (1996-2000)

Old review here.
Said most of it there.

Adam Corrola and Dr. Drew are still around.

Corrola's got a podcast, and Dr. Drew did a bunch of MTV/VH-1 shows, and is still doing the radio version of Loveline with some other guy.


Singled Out (1995-1998)

I always liked to imagine that the people who hooked up on this fucked, got VD, and called Loveline, and that one show fed the other in an ouroboros.

Who knew how famous Chris Hardwick would become?
He's got like, a million shows.
He must clone himself.

They recently did an episode of "@Midnight", where they decorated the set to look like "Singled Out", and everyone dressed grunge style, and all the questions were from the perspective of the 90's, and everyone acted like their 90's selves, but sarcastically making predictions about the 10's.

It was better than all of "Singled Out".
Probably because they could freely slam MTV at long last.
I think they even razzed Jenny McCarthy for being an anti-vaxxer.


The Tom Green Show (1999-2000)

Similar to Howard Stern. (See below)
Got old fast, glad I saw it though.
Looking back on it, meh.


Dead At 21 (1994)

Old review here.

I just put that there to mock all over again.
Booooo, Dead At 21! Boooo!


Celebrity Deathmatch (1998-2007)

*Tinge of pain just looking at this*
I thought it was all right, but it was my neighbor Greg's favorite thing ever.
He was also the one who got a dark laugh at the Dark Shadows reboot.
He's dead now.
Booze got him.
*Wave of sadness*
Goodbye, Greg. :-(

I should've lumped this in with the other MTV cartoon shows.
My bad.


Upright Citizens Brigade (1998-2000)

I'd put this right up there with "The State".
Weirder in style like "Mister Show", though, and had a fictional universe book-ending it like MST3K.

Who knew how famous Amy Pohler would get?
I mean, you see these talented people, and know they've got it in them, but they don't always get their break.


Howard Stern (1994-2005 E!)

I only got to see it from 2000-2005 because of the crappy cable company not getting E! until they were forced to by gunpoint by being bought out by Time Warner.

If they had a really crazy guest, or a cool celebrity on, it was great, but the daily grind of them interviewing dipshit models, and dipshit pornstars got tedious.

Episodes of his new show leak out onto Youtube, and I peek in sometimes out of curiosity, and it's still the same.
Eh, it was fun for awhile.
Glad I got to see it.


Stargate SG-1 (1997-2007)

Together with Farscape, and Babylon 5, one of the big three upstarts to Star Trek.
Of the three, probably the most Trek-like.
Except instead of flying a ship to a planet, and beaming down, they "beamed", directly to a planet by stargate-ing.
Although later on, they acquired ships for space battles.

Nifty little show.
Sorry to say I didn't follow it to the end though.


Farscape (1999-2003)

Old review here.

Hmm...I'd have to say this was the best of the three Trek upstarts...and easily better than Trek was at the time.
Largely because they had no holodecks, replicators, or transporters to bail them out of problems.
And no Federation to back them up.
Their Federation analog was evil, and they were always on the run from it.
It forced the writers to use their imaginations.
The characters were a million times more interesting too.
It is dearly missed.


Lexx (1997-2002)

Old review here.

Said most of it there.
Neglected to mention however, season 2 had as its main villain Dieter Laser who would later become famous for "The Human Centipede".

I'd have to say, this was my second favorite after Farscape, because it was so goddamned weird.
The weirder sci-fi gets, the more I dig it.
It's not one of the big three upstarts, because it leaned more into humor, and there was so little of it.
But, I still put it up there.

Well, Red Dwarf is a satire, but you can still dig its fictional universe and characters too.
Same thing.

We've got "The Orville", coming this weekend, let's hope that's good.


Tekwar (TV movies and show) (1994-1995) 

The only thing that makes this Trek connected, is that William Shatner (ostensibly) created it.

About a bright and shiny future with a seamy underbelly where people take virtual reality chips (the titular Tek) as drugs.
Greg Evigan plays a cop who got sent to freezer prison for dealing Tek, then gets thawed out, and has to clear his name.

The novels were better, but even they weren't high art, or nothin.
Just fun fluffy entertainment.
No one believes Shatner wrote 'em.
I'll dig deeper into this universe in the next chapter on novels.
Whoops, spoilers!

This whole phenomenon, the show, the books, have all vanished into dandelion fluff in a hurricane.
Its like it never happened.
But while it was going on, they REALLY tried to make it happen.
From a marketing perspective, it sounds like a winner.
The next big SF franchise created by Captain Kirk?
What uber-capitalist gamble-holic wouldn't bite that bait?
Turns out, nerds are harder to trick than normies.


Politically Incorrect (1993-2002)

And, that was the last time network TV had anything socially relevant on, and they chicken-shittily handed that market share completely over to basic cable, and shows like The Daily Show.
They have only themselves to blame.

Maher went to HBO, and the rest is history.


The Charles Grodin Show (1995-1998) 

Kind of a clunky rickety prototype to "The Daily Show", now that I look back on it.

Actor Charles Grodin (IMDB him, millennials) would sit around bitching about the OJ dream team, especially Alan Dershowitz, and then would have guests on so they could either bitch along with him or fight him.

Oh, he hated Geraldo too.
He had him pegged long ago.
He got Dershowitz to come on, but Geraldo was chicken.

It was wrestling for nerds.
I loved it.


TV Nation (1994-1995)

In that brief shining moment in our culture where it looked like Michael Moore was going to be a true hero of the people, and that the revolution was coming.

*Sad trombone*
*Fart*

Fun while it lasted, but in hindsight, I should have known it was doomed out of the gate.

Turns out sponsors get fidgety when you're ostensibly anti-corporate.
Surprised they didn't shoot him for ratings like in "Network".

Its closest spiritual successors are "Penn & Teller: Bullshit", and "Adam Ruins Everything".


MonsterVision (1991-2000)

With Joe Bob Briggs!!
8 times out of 10, his hosting segments were better than the flick.

He also did the second commentary for "I Spit On Your Grave", which is awesome.

He's still around, doing magazine articles, interviews, live drive-in shows, and the occasional commentary track or two.

But I miss this goddamned show.
Goddammit.


TNT 100% Weird (Same as Monstervision...roughly)

Late at night, long past Joe Bob packed it on for the night, there'd be a third film that was "100% Weird".

It was through VHS timer-recording this segment I saw "Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter", "Billy The Kid vs. Dracula", "The Twonky", and "The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T".

Watching "The Twonky", eating a three flavor popcorn bucket, and flipping through "Howard Stern: Private Parts", the book.
That was a magical Christmas.
*Is warmed by the memory like a hug*
:-)


USA Up All Night (1989-1998) 

Hosted by Gilbert Gottfried (on Saturdays) and Rhonda Shear (on Fridays).

USA's answer to Monstervision, except they had access to all of Troma's library.
And the hosting segments (especially by Gottfried) were fucking insane.
For example, one time, he sat next to a severed pig head from a slaughterhouse with makeup and false eyelashes on it, and talked to it like they were on a date.
*Sigh* they don't make TV like that anymore.

Through them, I saw (severely edited cuts of course) Waitress, The First Turn On, Toxic Avenger, Class Of Nuke Em High, Troma's War, A Nymphoid Barbarian In Dinosaur Hell, Fertilize The Blaspheming Bombshell, Pray For Death, Revenge of the Radioactive Reporter, Cherry 2000, Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, Hell Comes to Frogtown, Flesh Eating Mothers, Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama, Chopper Chicks in Zombietown, Ator The Fighting Eagle, and Yor: The Hunter From The Future.

You have Barry Diller to thank for pooping the party.
He wanted an "upscale", demographic, so now they marathon "Law & Order: Rape".
Classy! *Sarcastic "OK", gesture*


Weird Science: The Series (1994-1998)

Review of the movie it's based on here.

Speaking of USA Network!

No one I knew besides myself watched this.
Well, fuck you, I liked it.
Your loss!

Introduced the world to Vanessa Angel (see "Kingpin").

They could very easily reboot this now.
Two nerds make a sexy computer-genie?
It's timeless!


Sci-Fi Channel (1992-present)

Back when it was good.
Back when it was actually geared for nerds.
Before the dark times, before Bonnie Hammer.
Before the re-branding to "SYFY".

Although, word is they're rebooting back to a more sci-fi focused format, and they've got a line-up of weirder shows on the way.
Here's hoping.
We'll see how it goes.
I'm skeptical and cautious.

Anyhoo!
Back in the golden days, they had...

SF Vortex (1995-1997) 

A panel show discussing the sf shows/movies of the day with geeky guests like Robert Myer Burnett (who's now on Collider Heroes!!), the cast of MST3K, and several 2nd stringer Trek cast members.
At the end of every episode, Harlan Ellison was their Andy Rooney, and he'd crabbily bitch about something because that's what he does.
It was beautiful,

Right when the QVC shows died, this picked up the torch.
And then got cancelled, and there was nothing until Youtube became a thing.
Thanks, assholes.
Thanks.

Then there was Saturday Anime.
That didn't suck.

And then there were reruns of Incredible Hulk, Greatest American Hero, Outer Limits, Twilight Zone, Night Gallery, Sixth Sense, Tales From The Darkside, Monsters, and  Dark Shadows.
Plus, Stargate (started on Showtime), Farscape, Seasons 2-4 of Lexx (also started on Showtime), MST3K the final seasons, and a smattering of Troma movies (cuz Sci-Fi's owned by USA, so had access to the same stuff).

Course, now not only do USA/SYFY not play Troma, but Troma is blacklisted from all TV.
Yeah, you're so fucking moral, cable CEOs, hey, let's put a reality show on about a cult family with a million kids, and one of them is an incest rapist.
Or one about rich assholes who pretend to be hillbillies, and they're all fundie bigots, and one of them extols the virtues of child brides.
Or one about a morbidly obese woman who pushes her daughter into pageants, and her boyfriend turns out to be a pedophile.
And it can all be sponsored by Subway, who had a pedophile for their mascot for 15 years.
Yeah, you really "cleaned up", the airwaves by getting rid of that nasty awful Troma.
Who committed the terrible crime of telling imaginary stories, as opposed to the real criminals you gleefully paraded instead.
Yeah, let's get rid of harmless stories about boobies and monsters with an anti-corporate message, and instead tell America pedophiles are our idols.
That couldn't possibly prove Troma's point.
Behold, the superior corporate morality, folks!
Fuuuuuuck yooouuu!!


The Incredibly Strange Film Show (1988-1989)
(We got it in the US in the early 90's)

Old review here.

A bunch of these are on Youtube now.
All these filmmakers have mainstream exposure now, and to get more in depth, well, the bonuses on the DVDs of their films do the trick.
But, back in the day, this show was a godsend.

Hmm, I don't know if "the underground", is even a thing anymore.
If anything tries to be underground, but their product turns out good, the internet blabs it to the four corners of the world pretty quickly now.
And even if it turns out bad, like "The Room", they make a mainstream Hollywood movie about it.

The 90's were the last gasps of us having to rely on television.


Beyond 2000 (1985-1999)
(Again, we got it in the 90's)

Old review here.

2017, and we STILL don't have terabyte holographic hard drives!!

I'm starting to think it's part of the oligarchy conspiracy to never give us anything indestructible and perfectly useful, because it would fuck with profiting off planned obsolescence.


The Secret Life Of Machines (1988-1993)

Another British import we got in the early 90's.

Walked you through the basic operating principles behind every appliance in your house.
My favorite was VCRs.

A lot of these are on Youtube now.


Connections (TLC version 1994-1997)

Exactly as the title implies.
They'd start with some figure from history, get to the meal on his dinner table, follow the history of wars fought over a particular spice, connect it to some other historical figure, and a gadget he invented for sprinkling the spice that the ruler ate, and so on.

And it would all loop together in the end in this weird journey through history.

This, "Secret Life Of Machines", and "The Machine That Changed The World", I was in nerd heaven.

I think these are on Youtube too.


Hmm, yeah, this was more fun to write than the other one.
Still took awhile though...
Hope it's as fun to read.

We'll see how the next one goes.
Next up, as spoiled above, 90's novels!!
90's literature wasn't too shabby, its still shaping pop-culture today!
Stay tuned!