jf_moran49

It is just poor planning for the delivering of the reboot of "Mad About You" that the series will only be available via a limited cable television service to which many people may not even have a chance to subscribe, to say nothing of the fact (but I shall) that it would cost an additional $100+ to subscribe to this Spectrum service, on top of whatever other utility bills a person may already have, including one's already-established cable TV service.

Also, the "Mad About You" reboot is, out of the gate, going to have an older demographic viewing it. So it really doesn't require any more impediments to further limit its viewership. Just ask the producers and entertainers who were involved in the miserable failure that was the "Murphy Brown" reboot, about how successful older viewers watching older actors may be. But that reboot at least had going for it that it aired on an over-the-air (OTA) broadcast TV network, namely CBS.

So my advice to fans of "Mad About You" who would really wish to watch the reboot but can't or won't shelve out $100+ per month to do so, is to wait until episodes are available on a DVD set, assuming that happens, which would make sense for the older fans of the series, that it also be available in a 20th Century viewing format. Either that or link up with some viewer, perhaps via a Craigslist ad (which still exits for non-adult personals), who has a Spectrum subscription and trade with that person from your own video collection in exchange for the person recording (with a DVR device or software) the 12 episodes of Season 8 of "Mad About You." It is stil perfectly legal to record off-air with a DVR or VCR (if one still has one of those antiquated 20th Century video-recording devices) for personal use, so long as no profit is being obtained for video. That is why a fair trade of one video for another video is allowed, but paying for a DVR/VCR recording to another person is not.

Lastly, of course the logical question is why the original distributor of "Mad About You" would not wish to also air its reboot? And unless I am mistaken, "The Peacock Network" isn't exactly fighting off its viewers with sticks these days, so many years is it now removed from its heyday of "Must See" viewing, which involved such other bygone series' as "Cheers," "Seinfeld," "Frasier" and "Friends." And given the relative success of the "Will & Grace" reboot, one would think NBC might have at least considered taking a chance on another of its past successful series'. The fact NBC passed on a "Mad About You" reboot means probably it couldn't or wouldn't meet the exorbitant salary demands of Paul Reiser and/or Helen Hunt, and also possibly that NBC feared the viewer demographic would skew too old and too thin to warrant the investment. NBC may also have looked upon the failure of Reiser's eponymous 2011 NBC series as a barometer of how the fan base would be for even a "Mad About You" reboot.

It has been awhile since the original series was widely available in broadcast syndication. Still, if old fans were not willing to shelve out extra $$ to see older-but-proven episodes of a favorite TV series on a streaming platform (such as Hulu or Netflix), unlikely those fans would be willing to pay extra funds for an added cable TV bill either to see untried new episodes of that once-favorite series. So I guess it remains to be seen just how mad about "Mad About You" its old fans really are.

I have never seen this television series inspired by the non-fiction book allegedly authored by 35th President of the United States of America John F. Kennedy. Although I intend to search for some episodes of the TV series among video collectors. But I have read enough about the Kennedy political family of Massachusetts to know research has been done to show President Kennedy never actually authored the book "Profiles in Courage," for which his father, Joseph P. Kennedy, the former Ambassador to Great Britain and the first chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, helped to obtain for his second eldest son a coveted Pulitzer Prize.

The research shows the book was actually authored by Kennedy aide and speechwriter Theodore Sorensen (who was paid for his services), with assistance from Jacqueline Kennedy's history professor at Georgetown University, Jules David. in fact, so well-known was Kennedy having utilized the services of a ghostwriter for which he fraudulently received the 1957 Pulitzer of Letters and Drama in Autobiography and Biography that an anecdote circulated about the affair, to wit, "I wish that Kennedy had a little less profile and more courage," later revealed to have been made by former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.

Actually, the first television series (in 1975) with two, recurring homosexual male characters ("George" & "Gordon") was the Norman Lear-produced "Hot L Baltimore." The gay men resided at the titled locale. This series was based on an off-Broadway play by Lanford Wilson which starred Conchata Ferrell (best known as "Berta" on the CBS-TV sitcom "Two & A Half Men") as the scene-stealing prostitute "April." Norman Lear caught Ferrell in the play and then came up with a TV version of the production, in which Ferrell re-created her off-Broadway role.

"Hot L Baltimore" also starred James Cromwell, who was better known as "Jerome 'Stretch' Cunningham," best workplace (the loading dock, before "Archie" bought "Kelsey's Bar") friend of "Archie Bunker" on the sitcom "All in the Family," and best known as that guy in the "Babe" pig movies.

Coincidentally (or not), Ferrell would also play "Rita Valdez" in the episode of Lear's "Maude" that said goodbye to housekeeper "Florida Evans," when the character and its star (Esther Rolle) were spun-off into "Good Times." Ferrell's "Valdez" was a funny and flippant Spanish-speaking job applicant for the position in which "Maude" ultimately chose the feisty, booze-swilling "Mrs. Nell Naugatuck" (played by the terrific Hermione Baddeley).

And the first TV series to feature a "gay" male as a regular, starring character was, indeed, NBC-TV's "Love, Sidney," which starred Tony Randall and Swoosie Kurtz. The pilot of the series was the film "Sidney Shorr: A Girl's Best Friend," which clearly mentioned the sexual orientation of the title character, while in the series that fact was assumed but never mentioned.

Kurtz didn't portray "Laurie Morgan" in the pilot film. That role in the film was played by Lorna Patterson, whose best-known role was as the title character (originated in the film by Goldie Hawn) in the TV version of "Private Benjamin." And the spelling of the surname of the lead character in "Love, Sidney" was changed from "Shorr" to "Shore," perhaps to further create a differentiation between film pilot and series, thus providing a claim to advertisers the two were different characters.

But, come on, we all know Paul Lynde was having himself a fabulous time, whether sitting in the center square trading barbs with Peter Marshall on "The Hollywood Squares," or playing "Uncle Arthur" in the long-running ABC-TV sitcom "Bewitched." As "Uncle Arthur" really was a semi-recurring character, I suppose he may be considered TV's first continuing gay male character. Does it always have to be stated to be so? Aren't some characters' natures implicit? And if one raises the issue of subtext, "Bewitched" and homosexuality were inextricably linked; the witch keeping her supernatural powers a secret from all but one mortal (the Down-Low or gay-friendly "Darrin"), symbolic of many homosexuals (then) remaining in the closet with most heterosexuals.

So, Norman Lear ("Hot L Baltimore"), Witt-Thomas-Harris ("SOAP"), and George Eckstein ("Love, Sidney,"), you may all defer to Sol Saks and William Asher (and Elizabeth Montgomery), as "Bewitched," thanks to "Uncle Arthur," may be considered the first TV series with a regular gay character.

This is also not forgetting Dick Sargent (the second "Darrin Stephens"), Maurice Evans (who played the dad of "Samantha Stephens," and was also a renowned Shakespearean stage actor--a lot of 'em are "light-in-the-loafers," must be those tights), and Lynde, were all homosexual males in real life, and the possibility Agnes Moorhead ("Endora," the mother of "Samantha") was a closeted lesbian (she was coy when specifically asked her orientation). But even in her role on "Bewitched," you just know "Endora" had to be a great fag hag.

The first made-for-TV film with gay characters, at least that I recall watching, was "That Certain Summer," which starred Hal Holbrook and Martin Sheen as the gay couple, Scott Jacoby as the Holbrook character's son, and Hope Lang as Holbrook's character's estranged wife. This film debuted on November 1. 1972 as an "ABC Movie of the Week." Do you remember when the broadcast television networks aired originally-produced films on a regular basis?

In conclusion, "official" first television series with regular "gay" characters--"Hot L Baltimore" (debuted January 24, 1975); figurative first TV series with a regular "gay" character--"Bewitched" (1964), with Paul Lynde making his debut as "Uncle Arthur" in the October 14, 1965 episode "The Joker Is a Card." As country-western singer Collin Raye once sang, and stand-up comic Colin Quinn used to say, on the "Weekend Update" segment of "Saturday Night Live": "That's my story, and I'm sticking to it."