Well, this is it! The penultimate episode, and the only one to air outside of March 1980. You know, it seems easy to judge Pink Lady and Jeff. After all, it was a dying format, based around music that people didn’t listen to anymore, featuring an obscure comedian as a host and older pseudo-celebrities taking part in corny sketches involving lame puns. No wonder it only lasted a few episodes.

Well…

I can see where you would think that, but I’m reminded of another show. A game show, matter of fact, that came out in the early ‘90s (when game shows were out). It also starred an obscure comedian as host, who regularly did silly sketches with an older actress who was best known for a bit part in a cult classic from over a decade earlier, and which had a doo-wop group as the house band.

Same basic concept, right? Except Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? ran for five seasons, had almost three hundred episodes, won a Peabody Award, and was the second longest running children’s game show of all time. To say nothing of the fact that it was what inspired me to become the successful internet comic I am today.

So, really, Pink Lady and Jeff have nobody to blame but themselves. And everything else that went wrong. Still, NBC was bound and determined to get their money back somehow, whether that meant whoring the girls out to another of their failed variety shows…

…Or by pulling out all the stops. Trust me, you’ve never seen stunt casting this bad.

Red Buttons, Alice Cooper, Jerry Lewis, and fucking Robby the Robot!

1. Red Buttons was a comedian back in the day, who actually won an Oscar for a movie he did where he married a Japanese woman. Incidentally, the actress who played his wife, Miyoshi Umeki, was the first Asian to ever win an Academy Award. You would probably know him best from The Poseidon Adventure, or the villain’s sidekick from Pete’s Dragon. Also, his voice reminds me of Mel Tormé.
2. Alice Cooper is, frankly, the greatest rock star ever. Unfortunately, his career wasn’t doing so hot in early 1980, his credibility all but destroyed after the double whammy of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Sextette. Fortunately, his career would pick back up and he would go on to inspire almost all of today’s heavy metal bands.
3. Jerry Lewis is… Jerry Lewis. Do I really have to explain this to you? The man’s a comedy icon. Without him, there’d be no Rat Pack, no Jim Carrey, no public awareness for muscular dystrophy. And no crappy direct to video CGI film with Drake Bell. Wait…
4. Robby the Robot was a character from Forbidden Planet that, for one reason or another, they kept trotting out for crappy TV shows, and became arguably the most famous mechanical man in pop culture. Until Johnny 5 came around. Oh yeah.

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