#you must remember this

[sammaggs]

1x11 You Must Remember This // 3x01 Burning Down the House // 4x10 Say Amen | Lightning

Red ships and green ships of the jury, I would like to present into evidence the central thesis of Benton Fraser’s journey: learning how to love, and be loved in return.

They’re gay, your honour

[soracities]

...the beehive / that replaced my heart / with all that pulsing / making honey from the loss

Michael Bazzett, from “After Machado”. You Must Remember This: Poems

[ladyofdecember]

So House is so worried about Wilson's health and well-being and happiness that he's dismissing and ignoring Cuddy over it? 🤔 Also obsessively interfering in Wilson's life to make sure he's happy and not self-sabotaging his own life. 😅

[bitter69uk]

“Merle Oberon, the durable Anglo-Indian beauty born Estelle Merle O’Brien Thompson in Tasmania (1911), made her film debut as an extra in a 1930 British B film, but soon her dramatic if one-dimensional beauty caught the eye of the Hungarian-born British producer Alexander Korda, who groomed her for stardom and was her husband for a time. In 1935 he sold a half-share in her contract to Samuel Goldwyn, another famous star spotter, who oversaw her transition from exotic to all-American. Never a top star but a popular actress in a number of prestigious films, Oberon continued to make periodic starring appearances until her death.”

/ From Hollywood Colour Portraits by John Kobal, 1981 /

Born on this day: exquisite golden age Hollywood leading lady Merle Oberon (19 February 1911 - 23 November 1979). Of course, we now know that Oberon was actually born in Bombay, India rather than Tasmania, but that wasn’t common knowledge when film historian Kobal wrote his book in the early eighties. In her lifetime Oberon took painful efforts to conceal her mixed-race heritage (when even an onscreen interracial kiss – then called “miscegenation” - was strictly forbidden by the Hays Code), including the use of toxic skin-lightening make-up containing mercury. (A few years ago, the reliably excellent and addictive You Must Remember This podcast devoted an instalment to Oberon – look it up!). In her romantic lead heyday Oberon specialized in period dramas (she’s probably best remembered for playing Catherine Earnshaw in Wuthering Heights (1939)), but I like her best in the movies that forced her out of her primarily decorative and ladylike comfort zone like the sordid Temptation (1946), the nymphomania-themed melodrama Of Love and Desire (1963) and especially the obscure 1956 film noir The Price of Fear, in which she plays a prim high society woman whose life unravels after a hit-and-run incident.

[anyagee]

I can't believe I didn't think about this earlier, but if you're enjoying @hotvintagepoll and think early Hollywood history is interesting, check out Karina Longworth's podcast, You Must Remember This "the podcast dedicated to exploring the secret and/or forgotten histories of Hollywood's first century"

It's on hiatus at the moment, but there's a season on MGM specifically, Hollywood during the second world war, the blacklist, and a whole bunch of interesting stuff!

She also does history later than the poll covers, but I do recommend the two most recent seasons on sex in Hollywood in the 80s and 90s!

[forthegothicheroine]

“This would kill a Victorian child”

Yeah, well, Gone Girl would kill a 1990s film critic appalled by Thelma and Louise, and I’m not even a huge fan of Gone Girl.

[hildyj]

Podcast Recs: History & Culture

In Our Time is a discussion programme on BBC Radio 4 that's been going for 25 years, where a host, Melvyn Bragg, and three researchers/lecturers/professors from various UK universities discuss and illuminate their specialist topic. Very informative and wide-reaching, but can become a bit dense at times. When it's at its pinnacle, it's like attending the best university lecture you've ever experienced.

Past Present Future is a fairly new podcast, but it's already very promising. It just finished a summer season where the host goes through various influential essays in the Western canon (from Montaigne and Thoreau to James Baldwin and Susan Sontag) and enters into a sort of essay of his own, placing them within their time but also making up a sort of dialogue between them, so that the great minds can communicate and discuss ideas across centuries. It's partnered with the London Review Of Books, so it's centering its discussion of ideas on both non-fiction and fiction books.

I understand the criticisms and I've heard the jokes, but I have to admit that The British Museum is one of my favourite museums in the world, mostly because it's a testament to the magnificence of the whole of humanity, of how inventive and how creative we can be, and how we've been like that since the beginnning. Listening to A History of the World in a 100 Objects is like a trip to the museum with a knowledgable guide. The host has chosen one object found in The British Museum and uses that for fiteen minutes to illuminate a small part of human history, going from the earliest tools found in Africa to a solar-powered lamp of today. It covers the entirety of the world and all ages, as much as that can be achieved in 100 fifteen-minute episodes. It's ambitious but it pulls it off.

You Must Remember This is just the thing if you want to learn more about Old Hollywood. It covers a wide range of topics from the history of the blacklisting of suspected communists in the film industry in the 1950s, to the feud between Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, and a thorough history of the Manson Family Murders. The seasons are all extremely well-researched and professionally presented, and it's easy to pick and choose whatever sounds the most interesting to you. A personal favourite is "Dead Blondes", which is a history of Hollywood blonde sex symbols from the 1920s to the 1980s and their often tragic ends.

[monstrousdaughter]

if you care about film history and wonder about why current mainstream hollywood is so sexless you GOTTA read this karina longworth profile:

[california-112]

- Someone’s parked in a fire zone. - So? - Well for one thing it’s dangerous, for another it’s disrespectful of the law.

Due South Rewatch | S01E11 ‘You Must Remember This’ (12/67)

[marybeatriceofmodena]

Are there episodes of You Must Remember This that you recommend in particular? I don't know where to start tbh haha

All right - so I wouldn't recommend starting with the "heavier" seasons, namely the ones focusing on the Hollywood Blacklist/Red Scare of the 1950s, Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons, and the people surrounding Disney's Song of the South. Not that they're bad seasons, quite the contrary (I LOVE the Hedda/Louella one in particular), but they're... a lot, and I think you need to know a few basics before going in because they're very packed.

Six Degrees of Joan Crawford is about... Joan Crawford, yes, but also the people in her life, and it gives you a good idea of what being a movie actress in the Old Hollywood era was like. It's a good intro, it's easy to get into, and it's a good palate cleanser after Feud.

MGM Stories focuses on Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer in its heyday, from the silent era to the beginning of the 1960s. Again, it gives you a good overall glimpse at what being a studio star was like.

Jean and Jane is about Jean Seberg and Jane Fonda, and they had two different yet similar trajectories that gives you a good glimpse into what being an actress post-studio era was like. It also made me a Jane Fonda stan - she's pretty neat.

Bela and Boris is a double biography of both Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, who had very similar yet very different careers? It also gives you a glimpse into what b-list movies and poverty row production companies were like, but I have to say, while Boris Karloff had more of a bittersweet ending, Bela Lugosi is... kind of sad? Just so you know going in.

Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon is... long, but it's pretty easy to follow and it concerns a long time span covered by Kenneth Anger's infamous gossip book while explaining what is true and what is false. And it's easy to pick and choose who you want to learn more within the season - obviously, I like all of the episodes but it's not something you need to listen to in order.

[spockvarietyhour]

Susan Gibney

[postguiltypleasures]

Thoughts on The X-Files as it turns 30 Years Old

I have not written much about The X-Files here because I have not revisited it in many years. The last time I rewatched any episodes was way back in 2015, after the revival was announced. I had no intention of watching  the revival, but I wanted to see how the series had aged. My reactions were kind of mixed. I didn’t continue to rewatch it was that I didn’t feel the spark that I got from it watching during the original airing. The show’s influence is such that there has always been something regularly on air that has been doing what a contemporary version of TXF should do, and doing it without the show’s baggage. And these later shows have all been unique programs that stand on their own. Only now there really is one show that does that I watch that fits this description, Evil. Do to world changing circumstances, including the COVID pandemic and the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, it does not air that regularly. So I find myself looking to who is posting about TXF now. What do they think? Do the things that made me not want to watch the revival bother them? How do they relate to the context in which it was made? How is that different for people who did watch it during the original run and bring hindsight vs. those who were too young or not born? What does any of this have to do with a potential reboot?

Much More Under the Cut

I remember TXF becoming uncool. It’s bizarre to me that it has any cultural presence because being disenchanted with it as it lost it’s cool was so painful. That said, I was a teenager at this time, so my emotions around it were stronger than they would be if I watched at another time of life. I am certain of this because of how much I hated the original series finale, and how I have been fine with a lot of controversial series finales since then.

Speaking of endings, these days discussions of television are too focused on ending. The idea that for most of the existence of television, shows were just supposed to go on until they became too expensive to produce and/or lost their audience seems to have vanished from people’s comprehension. This is a result of more television becoming more serialized and with short seasons. When an episode doesn’t work as something self contained, it has to lead to something. While it aired, TXF was celebrated for helping television become more serialized, making bigger, more epic stories. Now when it’s celebrated it’s for some wonderful self contained episodes, the kind they don’t make anymore. Even in 2015, when I had Person of Interest and Grimm satisfying the sci-fi/fantasy procedural itch for me I could see that. 

I know that there is too much tv for anyone to watch in one life time, but many the shows that TXF was compared to in it’s original airing seem notably absent in comparative discussions now. For instance, it was nominated for Outstanding Drama Series in 1995, 1996, 1997, and 1998. The other series nominated those years were NYPD Blue, Chicago Hope, E.R., Law & Order, and The Practice. While there is good reason to see TXF as more closely related to Twin Peaks or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, those fellow nominees provide some necessary context about how TV was made, in particular the alternating goals of making something for the syndication market and making something edgy that could elevate the medium. Also notable, most these shows went through a lot of cast changes over the years. It makes more sense that TXF would try to do that kind of transition in seasons 8 and 9 when you think of the series they considered their peers. 

Also worth considering earlier shows it was compared to, but the producers would likely discourage the comparison. I am thinking of Moonlighting and Remington Steele. At the time TXF aired people still talked about the “Moonlighting curse” as if it was just a given that once the couple on a show where the male and female leads solved mysteries while maintaining a will they/won’t they flirtation, would fail as soon as they got together. TXF writers were divided on whether or not it was a will they/won’t they, and definitely didn’t want to invite comparison to shows that had huge nosedives in popularity during their run. But in a lot of ways that was unfair to the earlier series. It denies how clever, inventive and experimental they could be. It also ignores how much behind the scenes strife contributed to on screen failings, especially on Moonlighting, where that has been better publicized. (And occasionally become newsworthy again such as when creator Glen Gordon Caron was fired from his job as the show runner of Bull.) I think there are episodes of Remington Steele and Moonlighting that are worth watching on there own just to get what the big deal was. But as always, how to bring knowledge of some behind the scenes study to it, is a difficult question to answer.

Another show people associated with TXF probably didn’t want to be associated with is Touched by an Angel. But for a while they both aired on Sunday nights and I know I watched it and TXF back to back a few times. A parental figure would have turned on 60 Minutes, and the ads for TBAA could be very intriguing. Then I’d watch the episode and be underwhelmed, especially because of the deus ex machina resolutions. So I didn’t make it a regular thing. But still as cases of the week that played on the news of the times with supernatural notes, they made an interesting case study.

I also sampled a few episodes of JAG: Judge Advocate General, a different CBS show that was frequently compared to TXF. The comparison had a sort of precursor to today’s periodic “why don’t publications write about shows people actually watch?” flair ups. It often had better ratings than TXF and a lot in common structurally, but had an older audience who was less likely to seek out writing about their show. It had a huge affect on the development of CBS procedurals from the late 1990s on, which is one of the areas where you can (arguably) see a lot of TXF’s influence.

I recently came across a post saying that David Duchovny wanted TXF to move to Los Angeles to facilitate his movie career. This is not true, he wanted to move to LA because he was with Téa Leoni at the time and she was staring in The Naked Truth, a sitcom that was shot in LA. The show was about a news photographer forced to work at a tabloid after an ugly divorce. It lasted three seasons, the first on ABC, the other two on NBC where it was essentially noted to death over two seasons. I am not surprised that it doesn’t have much hold on the cultural memory, but Duchovny was always open about this being his motivation so I am kind of surprised that it has been erased from TXF historic memory. 

Speaking of Duchovny and LA, the current season of the podcast, You Must Remember This, focus mostly on erotic films of the 1990s, but also included an episode about erotic TV from the era that focused on The Red Shoe Diaries, an anthology series in which Duchovny’s played a character named Jake, who was essentially the framing device. I didn’t quite appreciate that for the first four seasons of TXF he was flying to LA on weekends to shoot his parts in TRSD back-to-back. Between that and Gillian Anderson having a very young child at the time, it’s no wonder they developed reputations as cold and standoff-ish. It sounds exhausting.

Other places I have come across TXF referenced lately: 

finally reading Bruce Campbell’s memoire Hail to the Chin in which he declare that it is best to be a guest star in one of the first seasons of a show, mentions that his late in the series stint on TXF the whole cast and crew was tired of it; 

learning that there is a show on the History Channel called The Proof is Out There;

the Only Murders in the Building episode where Mable flashed back to watching the show with her father near the end of his life; 

Maureen Ryan in her Burn It Down reminisced about visiting TXF set in Vancouver as her first trip to a TV set, saying two important people were awful to her, one of whom gave her nightmares;

Some how the show coming up in a lunch conversation at work.

Jennette McCurdy mentioning in I'm Glad My Mom Died that her first job as an extra was on TXF 

Ryan’s book is as good a place as any to segue into discussing the show’s legacy via former writers and producers. It’s worth noting that Chris Carter has been unable to get another series off the ground. While TXF ran he tried to launch three other shows, Millennium, Harsh Realm and The Lone Gunmen, and only one of them got to a full season. There was an Amazon pilot that didn’t go anywhere. Frank Spotnitz was the writer with the second most credited episodes of the series and most high profile gig since was the not well received Amazon adaptation of The Man in The High Castle. Kim Manners’ time with Supernatural is something of an anomaly, in that it feels directly related to TXF and ran a much longer period of time. (I’ve only seen one season of Supernatural. It was fine, but I was late to the show, felt I’d never catch up and gave up.) Glen Morgan and James Wong wrote some of my favorite episodes, but between them they have the Final Destination film franchise, some one season series and American Horror Story, which is more attributed to Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk than Wong. (I’ve never watched AHS.) Darin Morgan was something of a special star on the show, his episodes being singled out for awards and fan favorites. But he never got this kind of response to any of his subsequent work, including on Fringe where he was a consulting producer early on. The most high profile shows that feature alumni from TXF are the ones that feel most like they were made for a era of television that wanted to distance itself from the procedural aspects of TXF. Among the most famous are Breaking Bad created by Vince Giligan and its spinoff, Better Call Saul, which he co-created with a non-TXF alumn, Peter Gould. Also notable is Homeland, whose creators Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon worked on early seasons of TXF. Most of the shows that I think of as sharing a lot with TXF in the outline for, don’t have much of a direct connection to the series alumni in writers/producers/directors. 

Earlier this year I briefly wrote about how I liked seeing both William B. Davis and Nicholas Lea in Continuum. While thinking of that series as a successor to TXF is interesting, I don’t generally think of the cast’s later roles as directly related to the show. Maybe this is because I watch so little of what they’ve done since. The greatest impression any of them is Anderson in Sex Education and Bleak House, both of which were pretty far away from TXF. 

When news came out that Chris Carter was working with Ryan Coogler on a potential reboot I decided I did not know enough of Coogler’s work to say if he’d be a good fit, or have any idea what his take on the subject matter would be. But I am familiar with Disney, TXF current owner, and in particular there current “milk all recognizable IP for ever and ever” ethos, so the probability of a reboot seemed inevitable. I mostly hoped the new crew would take the title and try to create something very different under it. Then the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes started and nothing seemed inevitable about a reboot. Hollywood as it’s been known, feels like its ending. All I can say is that I hate the idea of TXF being made with AI, or for that matter, scabs.

When I did my rewatch back in 2015, the episodes included “War of the Coprophagens” and “Syzegy”, episodes that are both are partially about mass hysteria. They’re comedic, but I didn’t find them funny. I thought this is probably something that didn’t age well. In the nineties, just pointing and laughing and people getting upset over stupid stuff sort of felt like enough to defang the danger. By now that seems hopelessly naive.

I know how people are now more willing to say that the plots of “Small Potatoes” and “Post Modern Prometheus” treat serial rapists as sympathetic outsiders, and rape as something to be brushed aside. Neither were part of my 2015 rewatch.

Some of my disenchantment during the original run was that while I was watching I was also becoming more aware of the movies that influenced the show. I hated how Fight the Future made the black oil alien possession turn into something that would claw its way out of the host body, reminiscent of the Alien franchises’s xenomorph. I also hated all of the Mulder and Scully as a couple teases from episodes like “The Rain King”, “The Ghost Who Stole Christmas”, “Arcadia”, et al because it was too much like things I was seeing in romcoms that I didn’t like. (I can’t remember any specific examples of these romcoms while writing this.) Any specificity as to what it meant to Mulder and Scully’s and their relationships at that moment was lost on me.  

I might as well admit, during the shows original run I was a NoRomo. I did not tune in to TXF hoping for Mulder and Scully’s relationship to become romantic, and I kind of hated when episodes explicitly flirted with the possibility. I tuned in because I wanted to have first hand knowledge of what it was like to watch my generations version of The Twilight Zone. (In retrospect, I don’t think its a good comparison.) As the relationship now feels like what people think of when they think of TXF, I have wondered if the show now only appeals to those on the shipper side of the debate. I was really surprised while listening to Not Another X-Files Podcast Podcast when one of the hosts of the TXF Preservation Society admitted to not being a shipper on an episode.

Similar to what I said about being fine with many controversial series finales, I am also fine with many controversial television series couplings. As long as the writing is direct, I don’t really care if the actors have chemistry or if the show “needs” to pair these characters. To the extent that what relationships on screen one likes reflects on what one wants to have in real life, I really want people to be direct with me, and make me comfortable being direct with them.

A few years ago started wondering if it would have been more emotionally healthy if I spent the years I watched TXF watching Beverly Hills, 90210 instead. I started wondering this while coincidentally coming across of couple of personal essays that reflected warmly on watching BH90210 and how it affected the writers at impressionable ages. As someone who doesn’t exactly reflect warmly on TXF, and has a hard time putting how I feel about things into words, I was kind of jealous. I know there was some overlap in the audiences. There isn’t a “If you were a teen in the 1990s you either watched BH90210 or TXF and it affected you in this way…” But coming across those essays does have something to do with why I am writing this now.

Around that time I also started worrying about how TXF’s popularity lead to today’s age of dangerous conspiracy theories. Before I gave up on the site formally known as Twitter, I’d occasionally look at who was still discussing it online with the fear that it’s been used by right wingers looking for ways to justify their persecution complexes. I didn’t find much. There was something of peak in these posts around the time Trump announced that the FBI had been searching for documents at Mar a Lago. This past decade has been wild as far as guessing how things will be read along partisan lines. If anything the posts were mostly about nostalgia and it’s appeal as a brand.

Given that I’m so uncomfortable with that potential aspect of the show’s legacy, a how did I end up watching so many shows that in some way are direct successors to the show? And the answer is, mostly not consciously. I was reluctant to start Fringe and Evil because from the outset their premises looked too much like TXF, though ultimately they’ve gone in directions TXF would never.  I still want something that can excite me, and has hints of the epic. And I am going to seek it in vaguely familiar formats. 

[ladyofdecember]

I like how no one on this show ever worried about money or getting a place to live or anything. I mean House gets out of the psych ward and moves in with Wilson. Then Wilson just goes and buys a condo because what is money right? 😅🤔😂

I mean I appreciate the realism because, you know, they are doctors so they make a lot of money presumably. It's like how Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory has endless money he doesn't need because he's a theoretical physicist 😮😊

So yeah, they all have money to rent new apartments, buy homes, buy condos, move about freely. It's interesting 🤔

[thoughtportal]

How did Poltergeist get that PG rating? Podcast legend Karina Longworth, host of You Must Remember This, takes us on a wild ride through a century or so of Hollywood history, and shows us what’s been left on the cutting room floor. Here's where to find Karina: Website You Must Remember This

[indy829]

Karina Longworth of the You Must Remember This podcast provides analysis on Audrey Hepburn's costumes in Sabrina (1954)

[thecommoncurator]