http://www.dvdinmypants.com/features/03-06/beverly.php

My buddy Jim, co-author of A Year of Hitchcock, wrote this feature and I think it's hilariously absurd. It's a side-by-side feature of, you guessed it, The Beverly Hillbillies vs. What's Happening!!

For me, the humor comes in that he plays is complete straight. Jim is like this in real life, too.

So yeah, dig it.

(He doesn't know I'm plugging this.)

What impresses me the most is that he willingly watched an entire season of both The Beverly Hillbillies and What's Happening?

That had BETTER not be a diss of What's Happening.

After a recent round of viewing BH reruns on TVLand, it's clear that Max Baer Jr.'s Jethro was an invention of comic genius. No, really.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5CGgBVMyls[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_ipBRsemMM[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPObq_EvIg8[/youtube]

What's Happening!! always reminds me of late 70's - early '80s Marvel Comics. I'm not sure why. But it does.

I really loved that show when I was a kid. LOVED it. Even the dopey episode when Rerun was bootlegging a Doobie Brothers concert and was dancing around and the tape recorder fell out and oh no! the Doobies are disappointed in him!

Oh. "tape recorder." I had to read that like 3 times.

Thanks, Paulie.

I type too fast for my own good.

Don't we all.

whats happening

i dont really care for the Hillbillies

Rahj = Reed Richards
Rerun = Ben Grimm
Dwayne = Johnny Storm
Dee = Sue Storm

I was editor at the time when he did this. He was only supposed to do a review. When the company sent us those DVD sets, they sent them with the understanding that we'd provide a review. That's why he got them. For a review.

So he turns that in and at first I'm like, what the hell do I do with this? But it was so damn funny and clever I figured we would run with it and see how it shook down.

We got a call from the firm who supplied us with discs...


...


...


They LOVED it. Absolutely loved it. It ended up being one of our most trafficked pieces, and still gets a lot of hits to this day, as far as I'm aware.

Dammit, Taft, will you please quit being my Jersey Shore doppelganger already?

"...what Doobie do you be?"

I enjoyed the Beverly Hillbillies.
Seems to recall at least watching episodes of What's Happing

It must be a generational thing.

I have never seen What's Happening!!.I've never even seen it playing on TV.

IAWTP

While funny, I totally disagree with his assessment. BH is the awesome all the way through. What's Happening was just kinda meh after the first season.

Taft, bootlegging was one of the key problems faced in the inner cities of the seventies. And What's Happening was brave to address that problem with the help of a major music group.

In retrospect, it's funny that the dropping of a tape recorder would stop a show dead in its tracks and that everyone would go completely silent. Yeah, that happens at concerts all the time!

Al Dunbar should have hired Dee to do it -- she would have gotten the job done.

The bizarre part was having the band be the Doobie Brothers. Even as a kid, I thought it was an odd choice.