SitcomsOnline.com News Blog

Full House is returning to Nick at Nite starting Monday (Oct. 25), but it should be called Nick at Morning, because it will only air every morning in the 6:00am hour. The series has been airing on sister network TeenNick since September 2009 and now will move back to Nick at Nite. Full House hasn't aired on Nick at Nite since April 2009 and incidentally it was airing at 6am then, too. The series will replace an hour of Family Matters on Nick at Nite in the 6am hour as that series will still remain in the Mon-Sat 5am hour (Home Improvement is Sundays at 5am).
TeenNick will air its last Full House airing this Sunday (Oct. 24) from 6am-9am. Starting Oct. 25, the timeslots will be replaced by an hour each of True Jackson VP, Zoey 101 and Drake & Josh.

It looks like we are not getting any national tribute marathons in memory of Barbara Billingsley or Tom Bosley, but of course Me-TV in Chicago will remember both greats with classic marathons this weekend! Me-TV Chicago is paying tribute to Barbara Billingsley, best known as June Cleaver from Leave it to Beaver, and Tom Bosley, who played Richie's dad Howard Cunningham on Happy Days, with special marathons this weekend.
Tune in this Saturday from 1-7 PM CT for "A Tribute to Barbara Billingsley" with select episodes of Leave it to Beaver. On Sunday from 1-7PM CT, Me-TV will air "A Tribute to Tom Bosley" with a Happy Days marathon.
Leave it to Beaver episodes airing are: "Ward's Baseball," "Wally and Dudley," "In the Soup," "Beaver's Long Night," "Lumpy's Car Trouble," "Wally's License," "Beaver, the Hero," "The Party Spoiler," "More Blessed to Give," "The Credit Card," "Lumpy's Scholarship" and "Family Scrapbook."
Happy Days episodes airing are: "Hardware Jungle," "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do," "Be the First On Your Block," "Richie's Car," "Howard's 45th Fiasco," "Marion Rebels," "Grandpa's Visit," "Richie Almost Dies," "Fonzie for the Defense," "Married Strangers," "The Hucksters" and "Father and Son."
Barbara Billingsley died on Saturday, October 16 and Tom Bosley died on Tuesday, October 19. Me-TV Chicago is on Comcast 223 in Chicago, RCN 14, WOW 17 (city), WOW 19 (suburbs), AT&T U-verse 23, DIRECTV 23 and Dish Network 23, all in the Chicago area only.


It's Friday, so it is time for "Sitcom Stars on Talk Shows" for the coming week. This is where we list what sitcom stars are appearing on talk shows for the coming week, the stars are both current and past sitcom stars (but we won't cover movie stars like Tom Hanks or John Travolta, since they won't be talking about their past sitcoms likely), so this is for all sitcom fans of all eras!
For the week of Oct. 25-29, 2010, we have many current sitcom stars and past sitcom stars on TV talk shows! So get your DVR's (or whatever you use) ready! Ready? Here is all what you need to know for the coming week!

Monday, October 25, 2010

• Molly Shannon (Kath & Kim/SNL) - Catch Molly on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon on NBC at 12:37am.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

• John Stamos (Full House/Jake in Progress) - Catch John on Jimmy Kimmel Live! at 12:06am on ABC.
• Danny DeVito (Taxi/It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia) - Watch Danny on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson at 12:37am on CBS.
• Michael J. Fox (Family Ties/Spin City) - Catch Michael on The TODAY Show on NBC sometime between 7-9am.
• Judith Light (Who's the Boss?/Ugly Betty) - Catch Judith also on the TODAY Show on NBC.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

• William Shatner ($#*! My Dad Says) - Catch the legendary star on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on ABC at 12:06am.
• Paul Reiser (Mad About You/The Paul Reiser Show) - Catch Paul on Tavis Smiley Show on PBS, so check your listings for time.
• Jon Cryer (Two and a Half Men) - Watch Jon on Lopez Tonight on TBS at 11pm.
• Debbie Allen (A Different World) -Watch Debbie on The Mo'nique Show at 11pm on BET.

Thursday, October 28, 2010

• Sherri Shepherd (Sherri/Less than Perfect) - Catch Sherri on an all-new Joy Behar Show at 9pm on HLN.

Friday, October 29, 2010

• Michael J. Fox (Family Ties/Spin City) - Catch Michael on The Late Show with David Letterman at 11:35pm on CBS.
• Rainn Wilson (The Office) - Catch the funnymany on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on NBC at 11:35pm.
• Jason Segel (How I Met Your Mother) - Jason appears on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson at 12:37am on CBS.
• Brandy (Moesha/Thea) - Catch Brandy on The Talk at 2pm ET/1pm CT-PT on CBS.
• Tina Fey (30 Rock/SNL) - Catch Tina on The TODAY Show on NBC sometime between 7-9am.

Leave us comments on our message board or Tweet/Facebook us to let us know what you think of this Friday feature! We do listen!

In January 2010, TV One aired four episodes of a new comedy called Love That Girl for a "test run," as we previously mentioned. Now it's back as TV One has ordered its first scripted series. Bent Outta Shape Productions/Hazrah Entertainment will reprise the show. TV One has ordered a full season of 26 episodes (13 have already been produced, reports B&C). The series, from Bentley Kyle Evans (Martin, The Jamie Foxx Show), is targeted for a first-quarter 2011 return. The series stars Tatyana Ali (The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, TV One Access) as a divorcee who returns home to Southern California to make a fresh start at life and a career, but one complicated by the arrival of her stand-up comedian brother (Alphonso McAuley).
Martin Lawrence will continue to serve as executive producer as well as appear in the series! We will have more information, such as a premiere date, in the coming weeks...so stay with us! Lots of original sitcoms are airing these days on basic cable (MTV, TV Land, ABC Family, CMT, etc). We will have even more original sitcom news tomorrow! So come on back!

First it was Barbara Billingsley, now it's Tom Bosley. Tom Bosley was a warm and comforting presence on American TV sets for decades. Bosley, best known as the often flustered but always fatherly Howard Cunningham on Happy Days, died Tuesday (Oct. 19, 2010) in Palm Springs, CA. Bosley died suffering heart failure at a hospital and also had lung cancer.
Bosley earned a place as one of the most memorable dads in TV history as the hardware store owner, father to Richie (Ron Howard) and Joanie Cunningham (Erin Moran) and landlord to Arthur "Fonzie" Fonzarelli (Henry Winkler) on the long-running sitcom. He played well with his TV wife Marion Ross as well. The sitcom was set in the '50s/60s but aired on ABC from 1974-1984. The series became the #1 show on television by its third season.
Angela Lansbury played Bosley's unfaithful wife in the 1964 Peter Sellers film The World of Henry Orient. Then decades later, from 1984 to 1988, Bosley played a recurring role in Lansbury's long-running TV series, Murder, She Wrote, as folksy Sheriff Amos Tupper. Bosley also played the crime-solving priest in television's The Father Dowling Mysteries, which ran from 1989 to 1991 on ABC.
But it was his fame from Happy Days that lead him to serve as a pitchman for GLAD trash bags along with other products on commercials. Among his many appearances on other TV series include Diagnosis: Unknown, The Law and Mr. Jones, Car 54 Where Are You, Route 66, Ben Casey, The Defenders, The F.B.I., Get Smart, The Virginian, The Mod Squad, Bonanza, Marcus Welby MD, The Bill Cosby Show, Night Gallery, Bewitched, Mission: Impossible, The New Dick Van Dyke Show, The New Temperatures Rising Show, Medical Center, Maude, The Paul Lynde Show, Love American Style, McMillan & Wife, The Love Boat, Streets of San Francisco, Joanie Loves Chachi, Finders of Lost Love, Hotel, Out of this World, Burke's Law, The Drew Carey Show, Boy Meets World, Early Edition, Walker Texas Ranger, ER, Family Law, Touched by an Angel, It's All Relative, Still Standing, One Tree Hill, Family Guy, That '70s Show, and more. He was also a regular on the short lived 1969-70 CBS comedy The Debbie Reynolds Show and the 1972 CBS sitcom The Sandy Duncan Show. He then voiced the character of Harry Boyle on the animated comedy Wait Till Your Father Gets Home from 1972-74 and after that of course came Happy Days. There were a few Happy Days reunion retrospectives as well. Happy Days Reunion Special in 1992 and Happy Days: 30th Anniversary Reunion in 2005, which both aired on ABC.
Tom will be DEEPLY missed. As far as on-air tributes on television, so far there are no marathons planned. But you can watch Happy Days Mon-Thurs on The Hub at 10pm & 10:30pm ET. If they, or any other network, do a marathon, we will let you know. Also, in memory of Tom Bosley, Bio TV will air the Happy Days 30th Anniversary Reunion Special from 2005 on Friday, Oct. 22 at 8AM & 2PM ET/PT. He just celebrated his 83rd birthday on October 1, so Tom was 83.

Welcome to another edition of mini-DVD reviews and our inaugural edition of Solomon's Weekly Rant. This week we take a look at Warner Home Video's Wait Till Your Father Gets Home - The Complete First Season. Wait Till Your Father Gets Home is the first-run syndicated animated sitcom produced by Hanna-Barbera that ran from 1972-1974. It featured the voices of sitcom actors Tom Bosley (Happy Days), Kristina Holland (The Courtship of Eddie's Father) and Willie Aames (Charles in Charge). This 4-disc set contains all 24 episodes from the first season and several special features. See my mini-DVD review of Wait Till Your Father - The Complete First Season:



Wait Till Your Father Gets Home - The Complete First Season (Warner Home Video, $44.98)

Confronting the Era's Issues - One Laugh at a Time

The Age of Aquarius dawned. Harry Boyle forgot to set his alarm. From the era of the live-action All in the Family comes the animated generation-gap comedy Wait Till Your Father Gets Home. Tom Bosley provides the voice of Harry, an affable, 40-something Everyman and suburban father of three whose daily routine is anything but when he faces the burning questions of the make-love-not-war era. Women's lib, civil rights, hippies, sexuality, communes, music and the Cold War are some of the hot-button petals in the series' flower-powered laughfest. They're all part of Harry's world, where a man's home is his hassle. In Season One, the Boyles (Harry, Irma and kids Chet, Alice and Jamie) have adventures Andy Hardy's family never dreamed of. Like the time Alice joins the commune. Or when Irma makes the astounding decision to get a job. Or the day Harry is mugged and his kids are overcome with sympathy.

Wait Till Your Father Gets Home premiered in first-run syndication in the fall of 1972. It had first appeared as an one-time segment on Love, American Style called "Love and the Old-Fashioned-Father" on February 11, 1972. Lending their voices to the series were Tom Bosley as Harry Boyle, Joan Gerber as Irma Boyle, Kristina Holland as Alice Boyle, David Hayward as Chet Boyle, Jackie Haley as Jamie Boyle (episodes 1-11), Willie Aames as Jamie Boyle (episodes 12-48) and Jack Burns as Ralph. The second season featured celebrities including Don Knotts, Phyllis Diller, Don Adams, Rich Little, Jonathan Winters and Monty Hall. A total of 48 episodes (plus the pilot) were produced over two seasons.

The cover art features a cast photo of the Boyle family. The show logo is at the top of the box. A wood panel type background is used. On the back of the box, there is an additional cast photo and four other photos from the episodes. A synopsis of the set, a listing of the special features and the DVD specs are given. The main Digipak slides out from the right of the box. It features the same cast photo as the cover art. The episode titles are listd by disc on the inside panels. An orange and flower background is used. It would have been nice to have some type of episode guide included. The discs feature a different character and colored background on each one. Disc 1 has episodes 1-6, Disc 2 has 7-12. Disc 3 has 13-18. Disc 4 has 19-24.

The main menus feature a photo of the cast in a circle. There is a wood panel background, so the photo looks like a picture that you would hang on the wall. The catchy opening theme song is played in the background. There are options for Play (Play All) and Episodes on each main menu. When you select Episodes, it takes you to a sub-menu where there are different photos of the characters. Unfortunately, there are no chapter stops available within the episodes. You can't use the "next" button on the remote either. You can only fast forward through the episodes.

For being over 30 years old, these episodes look quite good. They probably have been remastered for the best picture quality possible. The colors are generally bright and vibrant. There is some dirt and debris present, but it's not overwhelming. I did notice that one episode (#15 "The Prowler") looked to have a picture that was much darker than the rest of the episodes. I'm not sure what happened there. All episodes appear to be unedited, running around 23 1/2 minutes in length. The total running time of the set is 589 minutes. The audio track is your basic Dolby Digital Mono track. The dialogue is at a good level and easy to understand. You'll notice that they used a laugh track on the episodes like a typical live-action sitcom. Closed-captioning is available on all of the episodes but not the bonus material. For the closing logo enthusiasts, there is orange and black logo for A Hanna-Barbera Productions - A Division of Taft Broadcasting Company.

A couple of short but interesting and informative special features are found on the fourth disc. Animation for the Nation (10:03) features interviews with Governor Gray Davis (Ret.), cultural historian Mary F. Conrey, author Michael Mallory ("Hanna-Barbera Cartoons), pop music icon Leif Garrett and actor Gary Owens. This featurette focuses more on the 1970's in general than the show itself. There is some stock footage of various historic events. They talk about the writing of the pilot, hippies, the characters on the show, the sexual revolution, women's liberation and the neighbor on the show, Ralph. Illustrating the Times (6:34) features interviews with production designer Iwao Takamoto, Michael Mallory and character designer Marty Murphy. They talk about the general history of the show and the style of chracters. This show was done with a low budget and a lack of a lot of action. They often omitted the floors, so it would look like the characters were floating on the screen. Various storyboards and sketches of the characters are shown. This featurette was dedicated to the memory of legengendary artist Iwao Takamoto who passed away on January 8, 2007. Three trailers are available for Popeye the Sailor 1933-1938 Vol. 1, Classic Cartoons from the Vault, and Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain Vol. 3.

Wait Till Your Father isn't terribly dated, and it's fun to hear all the pop culture references of the era. It was quite a groundbreaking series. Although a bit controversial at the time, it would be considered pretty tame by today's standards. It paved the way for other primetime animated sitcoms like The Simpsons, Family Guy and American Dad. If you like those types of shows and All in the Family, you'll probably enjoy this series. If you have never seen the show before, you can watch it on Boomerang or AOL's In2TV Service. Warner Home Video has done a very good job with the first season release. Unfortunately, the pilot episode was on Love, American Style, so the rights for that are owned by CBS DVD/Paramount. Maybe we'll see that on a "Best of" Love, American Style set in the future. Let's hope the second and final season is released to complete the series. This set would make a nice Father's Day gift for the dad in your family.

-- Reviewed by Todd
(4/5 stars)

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SitcomsOnline.com Full DVD Reviews Page
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Wait Till Your Father Gets Home Internet Movie Database Page
Wait Till Your Father Gets Home Wikipedia Page