Fridays

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This article is about the ABC television program. For the day of the week, see Friday. For the Cartoon Network series, see Fridays (Cartoon Network). For the similarly named restaurant, see T.G.I. Friday's.

Fridays was the name of ABC's weekly late-night live comedy show, which aired on Friday nights from 1980 to 1982. The show was originally 70 minutes long before being expanded to 90 minutes.

The program was ABC's attempt to cash in on the success of NBC's popular Saturday Night Live. Like SNL, each week, Fridays featured music acts and, in the second season, celebrity guest hosts, as well as fake newscasts and spoofs of television shows and commercials.

The cast included Mark Blankfield, Maryedith Burrell, Melanie Chartoff, Larry David, Darrow Igus, Brandis Kemp, Bruce Mahler, Michael Richards, and John Roarke. Writer Rich Hall appeared in some segments on the series, but was not a regular cast member. Head writer/producer Jack Burns occasionally appeared.

Contents

[edit] Background

Blankfield and Kemp (who were husband and wife) were recruited from Low Moan Spectacular, a comedy group which had briefly been considered as a ready-made cast for the series. Mahler—a gifted pianist and violinist—made several bizarre appearances on TV before joining the Fridays cast, including performances on The Gong Show and Fernwood 2Nite. Igus had co-starred in an obscure CBS series called Roll Out, and had also appeared in the motion picture Car Wash. Chartoff had been a cast member on the soap opera Search For Tomorrow in 1976, and had also appeared in 1978's American Hot Wax. Burrell had been a member of a well-known L.A. comedy improv group, The Groundlings, which had also launched the careers of Paul Reubens, Robin Williams, and Phil Hartman, to name a few. For his part, Roarke had performed comedy in Boston. Larry David—who specialized in angry characters—was discovered at Catch a Rising Star in New York City. Michael Richards was discovered similarly at The Improv in Los Angeles.

[edit] Differences Between Fridays and SNL

The humor of the show differed from Saturday Night Live as much as it included stronger drug humor, stronger sex humor, stronger political satire and sketches that were more dramatic than comedic.

Fridays did not have a guest host during its entire first season, though it did feature musical acts. During the second season the show began featuring guest hosts (the first was SNL's first host, George Carlin). There were some odd host/musical act combinations. The episode which aired on January 16, 1981 featured Shelley Winters as the guest host and The Plasmatics as the musical guests.

The selections of musical guests were more adventurous, as the show featured many punk and new wave artists (see the "Memorable musical guests" section below). The production values for musical segments were higher, using colored concert style lighting, as opposed to SNL's flat white illumination.

[edit] Recurring sketches and characters

  • "Drugs 'R' Us" - "The Crazed Pharmacist"--Blankfield as a strung-out pharmacist who (sometimes accidentally) uses the products in his pharmacy to get high (drinking the liquid contents of a pregnancy test, taking strange pills that he thinks is aspirin, and sniffing glue that he mistakes for nasal decongestant) and thinks his weird customers are hallucinations caused by the drugs he takes. Catchphrases: "I can handle it!" and "Take a pill!"
  • "Nat E. Dred" - Darrow Igus plays a Rastafarian chef who prepares—and smokes—food items heavily dosed with ganja. Catchphrase: "Is it turmeric? No no NO no, gimme ganja! Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!". Similar skits included "Rasta-Claus".
  • "Battle Boy" - Michael Richards as a hyperkinetic young boy who stages elaborate war scenarios in his backyard with toy soldiers, mutilates his sister's dolls and gets yelled at by his lazy mother.
  • "Dick" - Michael Richards as an overzealous would-be ladies' man.
  • "Pitkinville, Montana" - Rich Hall narrates footage of a fictional small town of tiny model people, usually at the mercy of household implements such as an electric hair dryer simulating a hurricane.
  • "Latin DJ" - Bruce Mahler fills time between records by reading radio commercials entirely in mock Spanish. Catchphrase: "La musica, la musica de los Talking Heads..."
  • "The Three Stooges" - Bruce Mahler, Larry David and John Roarke portray Moe, Larry and Curly as drug-addicted troublemakers. Reportedly these sketches were halted when Moe Howard's family threatened to sue.
  • "Live and Be Well (also known as Matzoi)" - Bruce Mahler and Larry David as two particularly earnest rabbis co-hosting a TV show. Mahler's "Rabbi Glickman" character on Seinfeld was a reprise of his character.
  • "Howdy Doody" - A running gag on Fridays was that Howdy Doody was such a huge star that he could always jump the line ahead of anyone at restaurants and nightclubs, no matter how famous they were (Frank Sinatra, for instance). Kramer's "Right this way, Mr. Doody" line in an early Seinfeld episode was Michael Richards' tribute to this now-obscure running gag.
  • "Pastor James Babbit" - Mark Blankfield portrays a pulpit-bound preacher intending a meaningful sermon, but whose twisted perceptions and obvious repressed insecurities would lead to paranoid ranting and the divulgence of personal references of humiliation.
  • "Dancing Chickens" - Bruce Mahler would play piano accompaniment to a raw chicken stuck on his hand and wearing little black plastic shoes. The sketch always ended with the chicken in a pot of boiling water next to the piano.
  • "The Golden Boys" - Larry David and Mark Blankfield would play two egotistical, posturing wrestlers, presaging SNL's "Hans and Franz". Catch Phrase: "We're young, we're goodlooking and we'll be there!"
  • "The Brotherhood of Men Who Hum Between Words" - A monastic order with the odd habit of humming between every word. Later skits had brothers who only hummed between every third or fourth word, and at least one who refused to hum at all (he was considered to be Reformed).

[edit] Memorable One-Shot Sketches

  • "Diner of the Living Dead" - A couple (played by John Roarke and Maryedith Burrell) visits a diner run by and catering to zombies. The zombies are seen eating human body parts and killing a living human (played by Mark Blankfield) who screams for help in the diner's kitchen, as it's implied he is being cut up with a chainsaw (all the viewer sees of him is his terrified face and a greenish-black hand pull him away from the door window as chainsaw noises are heard). Because of the sketch's depiction of extreme violence, gore and cannibalism, an apology was made on the following week's show by Melanie Chartoff (who played a zombie waitress in the sketch). The sketch was so offensive that six ABC affiliates stopped airing "Fridays". ABC affiliates that didn't pull the show from their schedule (and episodes that aired on the cable channel USA in reruns) merely reaired the episode with the "Diner of the Living Dead" sketch removed.
  • "The Ronny Horror Show" - A sprawling 17-minute send-up of the incoming Reagan Administration based on The Rocky Horror Picture Show. In the sketch, Ronald Reagan (played by John Roarke in Dr. Frank N. Furter drag) plans on creating the ultimate Republican, but inadvertently creates an angry black militant (played by Darrow Igus) instead. To this day many consider this sketch to have been the series' tour de force. Like "Diner of the Living Dead", this sketch was shown when it first came on and subsequently edited out in all reruns. Unlike "Diner of the Living Dead", "The Ronny Horror Show" was edited, not because of content, but because the producer of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" protested against the film being parodied without his permission.
  • An emotional sketch in which a son (Richards) visits his father (Roarke) who protests that he "doesn't know him" and "has no son". The son, thinking this is alienation and the consequences of the generation gap, begs him to let him in and accept him for who he is until he realizes that he's in the wrong apartment. Richards claimed later that this sketch was edgy enough that it was placed last in the show.
  • William Shatner appeared in a sketch where he plays a man who reacts violently to minor pain. The man takes his date (played by Brandis Kemp) out to a dance club and while there, Kemp steps on Shatner's foot and Shatner reacts so violently that he tosses Kemp onto the ground, causing her skirt to fly up and her thong underwear to be shown. When this sketch reran, the brief shot of Brandis Kemp on the ground with her thong exposed was edited out.

[edit] Musical guests

Although Saturday Night Live had featured a number of punk rock and New Wave acts in its first few seasons, Fridays took that ball and ran with it. Acts which appeared on Fridays include:

[edit] The Andy Kaufman incident

The most memorable moment on the show was when comedian Andy Kaufman was hosting the show on February 20, 1981. During a sketch about couples at dinner sneaking away to the bathroom to smoke marijuana, Kaufman, who loved causing trouble on live TV, broke character and refused to read his lines. Richards got up from the table, grabbed the cue cards and threw them down on the table in front of Kaufman, who responded by throwing a glass of water on Richards. Some of the show's cast and crew members became angry and a small brawl broke out on stage. Since the show was broadcast live, home viewers were able to see most of these events transpire on their television screens until the network cut the cameras off. Kaufman returned the following week in a taped apology to home viewers. This incident was planned by Andy and meant as a prank. Some of the cast members were in on it, but none of them have ever admitted to them helping Andy in his prank. This incident was recreated in the 1999 film Man On The Moon.

[edit] The end of Fridays

The series ended in 1982 following ABC's decision to expand Nightline to five nights a week, which forced Fridays to air at midnight instead of 11:30. By the end of its first season, Fridays was outperforming Saturday Night Live in the ratings (admittedly at a time when Saturday Night Live's ratings were at their nadir), the later timeslot hurt the show during its second season. One final attempt was made by ABC to save the show by putting it on in prime time. However, the one episode which was broadcast in prime time was scheduled against Dallas, which was then the #1 TV show in the country. The ratings for this prime time episode were dismal, broadcast on April 23, 1982, and it was the last of the series.

[edit] Post-Fridays careers for the cast

Richards, David and Chartoff today are the most active and successful ex-members of the cast.David would go on to help create Seinfeld, one of the most popular television shows in American history. Richards became one of the stars of that show with his performance as Cosmo Kramer. Other former Fridays cast members also turned up occasionally. Mahler made four appearances on the show as "Rabbi Glickman," Burrell appeared twice, as did Chartoff. In addition, former Fridays writers Larry Charles, Elaine Pope and Bruce Kirschbaum later became writers for Seinfeld. David now stars in the successful Curb Your Enthusiasm.

  • Following the demise of Fridays Richards played small roles on TV and in movies, most notably in 1989's UHF. Following the end of Seinfeld (for which he won three Emmy Awards) Richards starred in a short-lived sitcom, 2000's The Michael Richards Show, in which he played detective Vic Nardozza. He is known to be a 33rd degree Scottish Rite Freemason.
  • Chartoff co-starred for three seasons in the early '90s TV series Parker Lewis Can't Lose and today is a very successful voice actor (best known for her work on Rugrats) and acting coach, also doing theatre and TV work.
  • Roarke, a skilled impressionist and celebrity impersonator, is active as an entertainer at corporate functions, and occasionally works on TV and in the movies. Ironically, one of the characters who he impersonates is Richards' Kramer character on Seinfeld.
  • Mahler retired from acting in 2001 to focus on his Florida-based production company and was an assistant production manager on Bruce Almighty and Freddy vs. Jason. Besides his work on Fridays and Seinfeld he is also widely known as Douglas Fackler in the Police Academy movies.
  • Blankfield, Kemp, Burrell and Igus have continued appearing on TV and in movies in recent years, mostly in small roles.

[edit] DVD release and revival possibilities

No DVDs have been released yet from the series, reportedly because Richards was the only cast member who had the right to approve any home video releases from the series written into his contract. To date, he has not signed off on a DVD release, though some clips of Richards on Fridays appear on the Seinfeld Season Three DVD.

Episodes of Fridays edited to a sixty minute length appeared in syndication and on the USA Network later in the 1980s, but the series has not been aired since then.

No reunion of the Fridays cast has ever occurred. The closest thing to a reunion to date was the 1998 series finale of Seinfeld in which Richards, Chartoff, Mahler and Burrell all appeared, and which David directed.

There have occasionally been vague rumors over the years that ABC has sometimes considered reviving the series with a new cast. However, this seems extremely unlikely given the success of Nightline and Jimmy Kimmel Live.

[edit] External links

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