It's Your Move
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| It's Your Move | |
|---|---|
 It's Your Move title card |
|
| Genre | Sitcom |
| Created by | Michael G. Moye Ron Leavitt |
| Starring | Jason Bateman Caren Kaye Tricia Cast Ernie Sabella David Garrison Garrett Morris Adam Sadowsky |
| Theme music composer | Rik Howard Bob Wirth |
| Opening theme | "It's Your Move" by Mark Riddles |
| Country of origin |  United States |
| No. of seasons | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 18 |
| Production | |
| Executive producer(s) |
Michael G. Moye Ron Leavitt |
| Producer(s) | John Maxwell Anderson Kathleen Green Fred Fox, Jr. |
| Running time | 30 min. |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | NBC |
| Original run | September 26, 1984 – February 23, 1985 |
| External links | |
| IMDb profile | |
| TV.com summary | |
It's Your Move is a short-lived television sitcom starring Jason Bateman, Tricia Cast, Caren Kaye, Ernie Sabella, David Garrison, and Garrett Morris. The show originally aired on NBC from 1984 to 1985.
Contents |
[edit] Premise
The show centered on Matthew Burton (Bateman), a teenage scam artist who lived in a Van Nuys, California apartment with his older sister Julie (Cast) and widowed mother Eileen (Kaye). Matt ran various underhanded dealings with his high school friends, especially his sidekick Eli (Adam Sadowsky), such as term paper sales, exam answer keys, and blackmail.
The status quo of Matthew's world changed forever in the series' pilot, when Norman Lamb (Garrison) moved into the apartment across the hall. A quick-witted but impoverished writer from Chicago, Norman struck up a friendship with Eileen and the two were soon dating. Dismayed that his mother had chosen someone so far beneath her, Matt set upon sabotaging their relationship, but soon finds he has met his match -- Norman reveals himself to be cut from the same cloth as Matthew, and foils plot after plot.
Matt and Norman's cat and mouse game continued and escalated for thirteen episodes, fighting relentlessly while always shielding the aggressively gullible Eileen from one another's true nature.
[edit] Series changes
In episode 14, the series was retooled via the plot device of Eileen finally catching Matthew red-handed during an ambitious (and, somewhat unusually for the show, purely illegal) scheme to prove Eileen's value to her boss. In the remaining five episodes of the series, Matthew's scams were almost completely excised from the show, and It's Your Move became a much more conventional sitcom. These changes did little to improve the ratings, and the series was canceled.
[edit] "The Dregs of Humanity" episode
A notable episode was a two-parter entitled "The Dregs of Humanity". In the first half of the episode, Eli loses the school's money that had been trusted to Matt for hiring a band for a school dance. To cover the loss, Matthew crafts the rise and fall of a band -- The Dregs of Humanity -- and as their manager. The fictitious band, which actually consisted of four skeletons stolen from the biology lab, is a little too successful and Matthew soon finds himself agreeing to allow Norman an interview with the band for Music Press magazine, figuring that if the truth ever comes out, Norman will be humiliated.[1] The interview only fuels the Dregs' popularity, and this sets up the cliffhanger: the Palladium calls and offers a $20,000 gig for the Dregs. While heretofore willing to let the Dregs retire, the money is too enticing and Matt agrees to the gig.
The second installment of the two part episode was scheduled to air the following week, but was preempted by a speech by then-President Ronald Reagan].[1]
In second part of the episode, Matt has decided to dress four bums in the Dregs' costumes, "give them some cheap wine, and send them to the Palladium." Eli notes that they'll be booed off stage, which Matthew expects. "The Dregs never work again and we're in Rio with twenty grand."
While waiting for the Palladium gig, Matt is confronted with the drawbacks of sudden fame. Fans mob his apartment, leading an irate Donatelli to threaten eviction. Further, the Dregs' rising star has attracted a laundry-list of frivolous lawsuits from musicians who claim the band stole their songs, their alleged original manager, a hotel chain that claimed the Dregs trashed their hotels from coast to coast, and, most amusingly, a paternity suit. To make matters worse, Norman, whom Matthew has refused a follow-up Dregs interview for Rolling Stone, has begun to suspect that the band doesn't exist. Armed with $10 in bribe money, Norman uncovers the skeletal origins of the band and threatens to expose Matt. However, Norman's strategy is checked by the reminder that he did, after all, write the interview that made the Dregs a sensation.
Forced to work together, Matt and Norman hit on the brilliant idea to send the "band" to a watery grave by concocting a story that the Dregs drove off a cliff into the ocean, using the band's costumes and the car Norman bought with his $200 payday from Music Press. The episode ends with the nation mourning the Dregs of Humanity and Matthew promising a book in an MTV interview with Nina Blackwood (who naturally claims to have met the band).
In a later episode, it is revealed that the fake band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.[1]
[edit] Syndication
The show gained a cult following when it was rerun (albeit in edited form) on the USA Network from 1989-1992.
[edit] Producers
The show's creators were Michael G. Moye and Ron Leavitt, who some years later would take the harder tone of the It's Your Move concept and put it in an entirely different context--Fox's Married...With Children, in which Garrison starred for four seasons.
[edit] References
- ^ a b c Childs, Mike T. (2004). The Rocklopedia Fakebandica. St. Martin's Griffin, 59. ISBN 0-312-32944-X.
