The Nielsens: May 6-12, 1985

These days, pretty much everyone walks around with a TV in their pocket, and there are so many viewing options that pretty much every show — no matter how popular it might be in the current definition of the term — is broadcast for a niche audience. But for decades, the small number of networks and the relative lack of options for rewatching anything meant that Americans watched a lot of the same stuff at the same time — and even programs that have largely been forgotten today drew what would now be considered massive ratings. In this recurring column, we take a fond and often somewhat mystified look back at the Nielsen ratings from long ago.

Malice in Wonderland (CBS)
Before the internet gave rise to TMZ and around-the-clock paparazzi "news," celebrity gossip was chiefly the realm of catty doyennes who traded on Americans' enduring fascination with the rich and famous by filling up column inches with the latest updates from high society (some scandalous and/or thinly sourced, some not). Trying to wrap your head around the era of the gossip columnist might be kind of difficult if you weren't there for it, but some of them were almost as famous as the people they covered, with rivalries that created gossip on their own. This is the basis for the CBS TV movie Malice in Wonderland, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Jane Alexander as real-life frenemies Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper.

Like most of these things, the chief value today lies in playing "spot the future celebrity," and Malice doesn't disappoint on that front — the large cast includes baby Tim Robbins, baby Nancy Travis, and future Star Trek vet Denise Crosby. If you end up watching it and enjoy the music, thank Charles Bernstein, whose lengthy credits run the gamut from Love at First Bite to Cujo.

Newhart (CBS)
The Bob Newhart Show is the Newhart series that gets most of the love and attention, but my favorite will always be Newhart, the long-running CBS sitcom about a mild-mannered author of handyman books who runs a Vermont inn with his wife while being perpetually beleaguered and/or confused by the cast of wacky characters who populate the town. The Mancini theme song! The bucolic opening credits (consisting of B-roll footage from On Golden Pond)! They didn't call CBS the Tiffany Network for nothing, folks.

This week's episode, the penultimate installment of Season 3, focuses on a rift between local brothers Larry, Darryl, and Darryl that starts with them collaborating on a jingle and ends with one of the Darryls taking off for parts unknown. If you've watched the show, you're probably already chuckling and remembering the magic phrase "I'm Larry. This is my brother Darryl and my other brother Darryl." If you haven't, then it's long past time to repent.

Kate & Allie (CBS)
We can't get through one of these columns without covering a show that had an ampersand in the title. This one falls under the "wacky '80s sitcom reflecting changing American attitudes toward divorce" heading, which contains many more shows than one might suspect; in this particular instance, the setup revolves around the titular lifelong pals (played by Susan Saint James and Jane Curtin) who decide to bring their respective broods under one roof after their marriages fall apart. I never really watched it, but I probably would have if Ari Meyers had been a bigger part of the show.

This week's episode, the Season 2 finale, finds Kate and Allie ruminating over their love lives after attending a wedding, because lord knows no woman on TV could even hear the word "wedding" without bursting into tears and sobbing about being an old maid.

A Death in California, Part 1 (ABC)
It's a tale as old as time: Woman gets engaged, man murders woman's fiancé and sexually assaults her, woman enters into what the IMDb synopsis charitably describes as "a love/hate relationship" with the rapist who killed her would-be husband. Before the internet came along and gave people easy access to porn, lurid junk like A Death in California was ratings-grabbing fodder for countless movies of the week; the sole distinguishing factor for this one is the cast, which pairs Cheryl Ladd and Sam Elliott. Ladd's Charlie's Angels fame had cooled to the point where she was no longer hosting her own TV variety specials, but she could crank out small-screen movies and miniseries with the best of 'em; Elliott, meanwhile, somehow ended up signing off on this hooey the same year he appeared opposite Cher in Mask.

Hail to the Chief (ABC)
This show probably deserves its own posts, because there's so much going on here — when you combine the underlying themes with the casting choices, you end up with a fascinating blend of nostalgia-driven pandering and clumsy attempts to be down with women's lib. Hail to the Chief, which aired for less than two months, starred Patty Duke as United States President Julia Mansfield, whose efforts to run the country are comically complicated by her staff (one of her Secret Service agents is gay, ha ha ha) and her home life (women be raising kids!). Despite the involvement of some of the folks behind the beloved Soap, and the curiosity factor that went along with Duke's return to TV — not to mention That Girl vet Ted Bessell co-starring as her husband — strong early ratings eroded fairly quickly, and the show was off the air by late May.

99 Ways to Attract the Right Man (ABC)
I can't find much about this, uh, program – not so much as a screencap turned up when I went looking — but I'm including it here anyway, and here's why: 99 Ways to Attract the Right Man was, in the words of Washington Post TV critic Trustman Senger, "an hour of pure trash that's embarrassing, ridiculous and occasionally entertaining." Here's how ridiculous: Hosts Susan Lucci and Tony Danza (yes, you read that right) spent the hour... well, fuck it, let me just have Senger break it down.

[Lucci and Danza] ask single men and women for their answers to earth-shattering questions like "What's the best place to meet men?" Answer: department stores and supermarkets, of course. So off they go to "report" on the final exam of a class in which women are let loose in Bloomingdale's to shop for men and then head for a supermarket, where the married Lucci is somehow persuaded to take a stab at attracting guys who pass by the rutabagas.

I'm so pissed that this isn't on YouTube, you guys. Come on.

Under One Roof (NBC)
Hardcore fans of TV ephemera will know right off the bat that Under One Roof is notable for one reason and one reason only: It started out as a show called Spencer, starring Chad Lowe as high school student Spencer Winger. Six episodes into the series' run, Lowe bolted (and had to face a lawsuit from NBC); unwilling to throw the baby out with the bathwater, the network replaced him with Ross Harris, better known as Joey from Airplane!.

Changing stars and series names rarely works, but I feel like a network is asking for even more trouble if they do it with a show that's only been on for a month and a half — and the results here certainly bore that out, as Under One Roof found itself evicted from the lineup after this episode, which focuses on Spencer's grandfather contemplating a nose job so he'll be able to pick up more chicks. [Studio audience does not laugh]

Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer (CBS)
There were plenty of hard-boiled cops on TV in the '80s, but none of them captured that old-fashioned trenchcoat vibe quite as well as Mike Hammer — owing chiefly to the presence of Stacy Keach in the title role. Keach always looked like he couldn't decide whether to say his lines or storm off the set, which made him much more interesting than, say, Robert Urich or Fred Dryer, but Hammer just sort of paddled along in the ratings, leading CBS to publicly threaten to cancel the series if it couldn't at least come in second against a competing network's reruns. The show's goose was finally cooked when Keach got popped for cocaine possession while he was overseas on a Hammer shoot — but the fedora'd phoenix rose again after he served his prison time, leading to The New Mike Hammer launching in 1986.

Half-Nelson (NBC)
Four years after earning an Oscar nomination for his work in Raging Bull, and six years before winning an Oscar for his work in GoodFellas, Joe Pesci played the lead in Half-Nelson, a blink-and-you-missed-it dramedy about a New York City cop who moves to Beverly Hills and becomes a private investigator. (This premise would be loosely reused a few years later for the Hill Street Blues spinoff Beverly Hills Buntz, with roughly equivalently disastrous results.)

Half-Nelson aired a grand total of nine episodes, with the series finale landing on this particular week. Its demise was no great loss despite the impressive array of talent involved — Pesci's co-stars included Fred Williamson, future SNL mainstay/right-wing wacko Victoria Jackson, Bubba Smith, and Dick Butkus, the latter of whom later achieved sitcom glory as part of the My Two Dads ensemble. I'm sure Pesci would sooner throttle an interviewer than talk about any of this, but it really does go to show you that the difference between a short-lived embarrassment and a career-making role often comes down to things that have nothing to do with the folks you see onscreen.