Among the many forgotten television projects in the oeuvre of legendary television producer Norman Lear, Fernwood 2 Night It stands out as one of the most underrated works. Martin Moll And Fred WillardThe satirical chat show was a rare gem in the otherwise barren landscape of 1970s television. While the idea would seem at home in any network writers’ room today, it was too much for audiences in 1978. Ratings may not have indicated it was a hit, but forty-five years of tradition speak to its enduring legacy, with David Letterman citing it as one of his main inspirations.
While Moll's host character pretended to be professional, revealing his incompetence in the process, his assistant blurted out every inappropriate thought that came to mind. Running with the same idea, The Colbert Report Stephen Colbert's rise to stardom a quarter century laterplay what's current Late Show CBS News described him as a “well-meaning, ill-informed, high-status idiot.” In other words, he's a carbon copy of Moll's Barth Gimbel, but with a political axe.
Similarly, Eric Andre was dining out long after he became famous. His show, which featured mock interviews on Adult Swim, is basically a modern version of the same idea.The same goes for Garry Shandling, who took the idea and ran with it for several seasons. Larry Sanders ShowWhether it's Jiminy Glick, Ali G, Alan Partridge, or Philomena Kunc, anyone who calls a fake interviewer is following in the footsteps of a tried-and-true comedy formula used by brilliant satirists who are trying too hard to come off as stupid.
None of these shows might have existed without Willard and Moll's snarky take on talk shows and the second-rate celebrities who fill them with blank stares, cheesy jokes and smirks. Now remembered mainly as a proof of concept that later comedians would return to again and again, it is just a footnote in Moll's prolific career, best known for his guest appearances on shows like Roseanne And development haltFred Willard, beforespinal tap And News Anchor He also managed to nail his character on this politically-bending show. His fans kept the show burning, but unfortunately, no amount of critical acclaim could save the iconic classic from the indifference it received from television audiences in the 1970s.
Celebrities Trapped in Small Town USA
A recurring joke on the show was the cruelty of fame and the lengths people will go to achieve and maintain it.This was one of the most popular sitcoms, with its characters clinging to their careers at the lowest rung of the corporate ladder. Most viewers probably didn’t get it. Frank DeVohl, a real-life film composer, played the beloved bandleader Happy, another inside joke. Barth Gimbel, played by Moll, was exiled from Miami to Fernwood, Ohio, after a scandal ruined his career. His assistant Jerry Hubbard, played by Willard, balanced his honesty with a low IQ, building a career through nepotism. He botched every interview, which included a man in an iron lung playing the piano and scientists in tiny mouse leisure suits.
Drawing on their experience—all three of the lead actors grew up in eastern Ohio—they believably recreated a dull country setting devoid of high culture, glamour, or legitimate celebrity, and a studio audience willing to submit to the slightest form of entertainment. Gimbel's character originated in Norman Lear's satirical series Mary Hartman, Mary Hartmanwhich was filmed in a dramatized version of the real Fernwood. This spinoff took that idea and went in a whole new direction, focusing on two arrogant idiots who, without a trace of self-awareness or empathy for the misery of their guests, aspire to be the next Johnny Carson and Ed McMahon.
The thirty-minute comedy successfully appealed to the sensitive side of the average American television consumer, and it succeeded because few people realized they were also in the line of fire. This was the case with real interview shows. Talk show hosts at the time were held to a high standard, and it was expected that presenters like Dick Cavett would be able to engage in a lively conversation with a Swedish art house manager one day and an astronomer the next. Fernwood 2 Night Show what happens when the reins are handed over to the idiots instead.
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A bold experiment that was a generation ahead of its time.
Although fake TV media was nothing new, this show was the first to relish the surreal stupidity of the terrible hosts with more awkward, pretend-to-be-stupid questions for our enjoyment. Fernwood 2 Night He is, for better or worse, the pioneer of the awkward, fake interview format. – Hello, Sacha Baron Cohen. Episodes have covered topics as diverse as a daredevil seeking to raise money to pay his legal expenses after a stunt goes wrong, to the issue of racial tolerance.In the “Talk to a Jew” segment of the pilot episode, Gimple and Hubbard demonstrate the kind of casual bigotry they were trying to condemn from their pulpit, alienating an ordinary man for the sole reason that he was a minority in a sleepy Midwestern town.
Passages like this delve deeply into the informal mores and customs of American life. Oddly enough, the show “moved” to Southern California (in fact, it was filmed in Los Angeles for its entire short run) in the latter part of its run to justify interviewing real celebrities instead of actors playing random Fernwood locals. It has changed the flavor of the show, maybe not for the better.Ratings failed to justify the series' initial concept to executives, who scoffed at the idea of opposing talk shows.
As author Vincent LoBrutto points out, Television in the United States of AmericaThe show was among the first to fully exploit the old format for comedic value, presenting absurd interactions that could be mistaken for real conversations as mainstream viewers of the time were accustomed to:
“It gave this weird reality because the celebrities had material written for them, not like their normal banter on a real talk show. […] In its own strange way, Fernwood 2 Night influenced future talk shows…”
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The summer show finally succumbed to the forces of network television despite being reorganized and It was cancelled after only 65 episodes.rebranded to America 2 night In 1978. The name change was supposedly made to remove any possible confusion about whether the show was a small-town production since most of the cast were unknown actors at the time. They were replaced by “real” guests such as Charlton Heston. True to its reputation, Lear's show surprised viewers, was too clever for its own good, and was eventually lost in a sea of obscure old shows. True to its reputation, Fernwood 2 Night bombed in the ratingsIt was so bizarre that no network could even attempt to tackle it, and Cartoon Network and Comedy Central were still years away from doing so.
The Rise of Mainstream Talk Show Parody
Stephen Colbert and Sacha Baron Cohen copied the same routine, though not always with the same degree of accuracy, we might add. As viewers became more aware of how entertainment media works and increasingly dissatisfied with the nature of these shows in general (most of the interviews are pre-scripted, we hate to point that out), Content and Format Fernwood 2 Night She has proven to be aged like wine.while maintaining a large fan base. In the early 1990s, the group made a comeback, airing again on Nickelodeon's Nick at Nite, as baby boomers yearned for a duo that had long since moved on to bigger things.
Lear, Moll, and Willard, all of whom are now sadly deceased, are best remembered for other projects, but This parody deserves more credit because it set the trend we see now in unconventional parody.The Gimple and Hubbard stunt wasn’t over, it was just tweaked for the Twitter generation. The baton was passed to new fake shows: Eric Andre ShowBetween Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis, Comedy Bang! Bang!and the character of Jiminy Glick played by Martin Short. Not to mention countless others. Saturday Night Live Plays copied in a slave way Fernwood 2 NightEndless homework. Hell, Ms. Peggy even had her own fake talk show at one point..
At a turbulent moment in television history when network chat shows were largely rejected by younger audiences, Norman Lear and his writers and artists were already satirizing the emptiness and pretentious nature of the form. From Fernwood 2 NightFrustrating absence from Entertainment WeeklyAlthough The Hill magazine's list of “Favorite Fictional Talk Show Hosts” has faded from the memory of even those who cover the industry for a living.
On the bright side, he got a second chance thanks to YouTube’s inexplicable recommendation algorithm, where modern viewers stumbled upon the genre’s scumbag progenitor behind a coffee table. What can we say? Viewers who grew up in the zombie era love the video’s crunchy, grainy aesthetic and slapstick sense of humor. Better late than never. It took comedy fans forty years alone to catch up with Lear’s sarcasm. As of this writing, Fernwood 2 Night Available to stream on Apple TV+.
