Herb Tarlek
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Herb Tarlek was a character on the television situation comedy WKRP in Cincinnati (1978-1982). He was played by actor Frank Bonner.
Herb's full name is Herbert Ruggles Tarlek Jr. He is the sales manager at the radio station WKRP, but he is unable to get any major advertising agencies to buy time on the station, partly because of WKRP's poor ratings and partly because the advertising agency people loathe Herb personally. The clients Herb does get for the station are often disreputable or sleazy, like Shady Hills Rest Home, Gone With the Wind Estates, Ferryman Funeral Homes, and Dave Wickerman, whose "diet pills" turned out to be a legalized form of speed. Herb's most reliable advertising client is Red Wigglers (the Cadillac of Worms), though the owner of Red Wigglers, Harvey Green, pulled his commercials off WKRP after the Religious Right threatened a boycott of the station's advertisers ("a lot of religious people fish"). Herb's only real skill is knowing how to collect money from deadbeat clients, often by blackmailing them. He admits to program director Andy Travis that it took time to develop that skill, saying of one client: "He did that to me [failed to pay up] twenty times. Then I got smart."
Herb is best known for his atrocious taste in clothes. He always wears a white belt and white shoes; most of his suits are made of polyester and are covered in loud plaid patterns. He claims to get his suits in a golf pro shop in Kentucky; no one else makes his kind of clothes anymore due to anti-pollution laws. While Herb's co-workers mock his fashion sense ("Somewhere there's a Volkswagen without seat covers"), Herb claims that his suits put his clients at ease, conveying the message "trust me, sign my deal!" He is proven right in the episode "Changes" when he switches over to a tasteful wardrobe; his lowbrow clients don't trust someone with such a highbrow wardrobe, and Herb quickly returns to his old way of dressing.
Herb's father, Herbert R. Tarlek Sr. (Bert Parks) is a traveling salesman with a similar wardrobe and outlook on life. Herb is married to Lucille (Edie McClurg) and has two children: daughter Bunny, a smart girl with an interest in animals and the environment, and Herb III, a shy boy who likes to play with dolls, much to Herb's chagrin.
At WKRP, Herb is considered a troublemaker and "general jackass" by his co-workers, but they all have a certain grudging affection for him. He constantly hits on the station's receptionist, Jennifer Marlowe, and tells every man he meets that he and Jennifer are a couple, but when he actually got to go on a date with Jennifer, he couldn't do anything except hyperventilate; though he doesn't like to admit it publicly, he has always been faithful to Lucille; the closest he ever came to adultery was during the episode "Hotel Oceanview", where he got drunk and began kissing a woman he thought he knew from high school...who turned out to be a man he knew from high school instead, who had undergone a sex-change operation.
Herb also tends to drink too much, and at one point his three-martini lunches with clients led him to the brink of full-blown alcoholism, though station manager Arthur Carlson convinced him to get the problem under control before it was too late.
Herb sometimes tries to make money by doing other things on the side, like selling life insurance or running a numbers racket. He also collects kickbacks from his advertising clients and from the disc jockeys (for getting them endorsements and other outside work); in the pilot he boasts that "they don't call me 'Mr. kickback' for nothing." He has a fondness for pornographic movies with titles like "Kiss Me, Kill Me," and in one episode he sneaks out of the hospital to take Les Nessman to a theatre where they show adult films in 3-D. He sometimes writes letters to Penthouse magazine, though they are never published. He was once arrested on a morals charge, though he maintains that "it's a complete lie -- I don't even know the names of those girls!"
The writers of WKRP did many episodes focusing on Herb; in the third season of the series, no less than six of the twenty-two episodes were Herb stories. One writer, Peter Torokvei, said that horribly flawed characters like Herb were more interesting to write for than a more self-assured character like Jennifer Marlowe. Another staff writer, Steven Kampmann, recalled that he liked writing for Herb because he was one of the few characters on the show with a wife and family, which added more dimensions to his character.
Probably the most famous Herb episode is "Real Families," where Herb and his family are profiled on a network TV reality show. Herb tries to convey the impression that he is a hard working, clean-living all-American guy, even convincing his colleagues to tell the camera crew that "Herb Tarlek is a hard worker, a loyal husband, and an all-around fine person." As the episode goes on, the TV hosts systematically expose Herb's incompetence as a worker and as a family man. At the end, Herb throws the camera crew out of his house, but still remains so desperate to be on television that he accepts an invitation to fly out to Hollywood and meet the hosts.
Other memorable Herb episodes include "Never Leave Me, Lucille," where Herb and Lucille briefly split up; "Put Up or Shut Up," where Jennifer decides to call Herb's bluff by accepting a date with him; "Frog Story," where Herb causes the death of his daughter's pet frog by accidentally spray-painting it.
Frank Bonner, who played Tarlek, directed many of the episodes.
