Left to right: Tom Villard, Teri Copley, Matt McCoy
September 8, 1983: NBC debuts a new fall schedule. It includes a panther, an orangutan... and five turkeys.
The sitcom We Got It Made, a play on the word "maid," is basically a gender-bend of Three’s Company. Teri Copley plays Mickey Mackenzie, a shapely, not-very-bright blonde who takes the job of a live-in maid for 2 New York bachelors: David Tucker (Matt McCoy), a conservative attorney; and Jay Bostwick (Tom Villard), a goofy, idealistic salesman.
Both men already have girlfriends, who are skeptical about the arrangement. Oh yeah: It turns out that Mickey is a sleepwalker.
Copley was not as dumb as her character. Both she and Villard appeared as panelists on the same season's revival of 2 classic game shows, The Match Game/Hollywood Squares Hour.
We Got It Made was cleaned off the schedule after 1 season, 22 episodes. But, in a real rarity, was brought back in syndication in 1987, again lasting just 1 season.
The new NBC sked also included Manimal, with British actor Simon MacCorkindale as a shapeshifting private eye, with a preference for shifting into a black panther. The Peacock Network promoted the hell out of this one. It was put to sleep after 8 episodes, and became a running joke.
It included Jennifer Slept Here, with Ann Jillian as the ghost of a movie star, who sees a new family move into her old house. Since the character, like Jillian herself, was a gorgeous blonde, only the teenage son could see her. Yes, it was intentionally a comedy. It didn't have a ghost of a chance, and was exorcised after 13 episodes.
It included The Rousters, in which Medical Center star Chad Everett played a descendant of Wyatt Earp, who ran a carnival with a Beverly Hillbillies-esque family that included Jim Varney, star of the "Ernest P. Worrell" commercials. It lasted 13 episodes. (In real life, Earp had no descendants. A later science fiction show, Wynonna Earp, also chose to ignore this, with considerably more success.)
And it included Mr. Smith, about an orangutan that gained superhuman intelligence. Don't ask. This also lasted just 13 episodes.
There was also Bay City Blues. Steven Bochco had created the acclaimed police drama Hill Street Blues. While not a flat-out turkey like the preceding, he couldn't achieve the same quality in this drama about a minor-league baseball team. It was waived after 8 episodes.
Part of the problem is that the baseball season and the TV season have very little overlap. This is why there have been successful TV shows about football teams (Coach, Friday Night Lights) and basketball teams (The White Shadow, Hang Time), but not about baseball teams (a TV version of The Bad News Bears barely made it to a 2nd season).
Pretty much everybody in the ensemble cast of Bay City Blues would later receive plaudits for their appearances on other Bochco-created shows, like Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law and NYPD Blue. One who didn't was Sharon Stone, who also went on to bigger and better things.
There was Boone, not about Wild West pioneer Daniel Boone, as 2 previous TV series had been, but a struggling country singer in 1953. It lasted 13 episodes. And there was The Yellow Rose, the Peacock Network's attempt at copying CBS' Dallas and ABC's Dynasty. At least it had a superb cast, most with Western experience: Sam Elliott, David "Hutch" Soul, Eddie Albert, Cybill Shepherd, Chuck "the Rifleman" Connors, Noah Beery Jr. and Jane Russell. Alone among these series, except for We Got It Made, it lasted something like a full season: 22 episodes.
Eight new series. Total: 112 episodes, or roughly 5 seasons' worth of material -- combined. This schedule went down as one of the worst in TV history, along with NBC's 1979 summer-replacements that included Supertrain and Hello, Larry.
Luckily for the network, by the 1983-84 season, they already had Cheers, Hill Street Blues and St. Elsewhere. The next season, The Cosby Show would debut, and they would be on their way to becoming the Number 1 network.
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September 8, 1983 was a Thursday. Only 5 Major League Baseball games were played:
* The New York Yankees beat the Milwaukee Brewers, 6-5 at Milwaukee County Stadium. Bob Shirley, usually a reliever, started, and outpitched Mike Caldwell, a lefthander with a very effective curveball, who usually pitched very well against the Yankees.
Dave Winfield went 1-for-5. Don Mattingly, a rookie playing right field and wearing Number 46, went 3-for-5, including an RBI triple. (The next season, he would be switched to 1st base and Number 23.) For the Brewers, Robin Yount went 1-for-4 with a walk and an RBI, and Paul Molitor went 0-for-3 with 2 walks.
* The Chicago White Sox beat the California Angels, 8-5 at Comiskey Park in Chicago. Harold Baines and Greg Luzinski hit home runs for the South Siders. Reggie Jackson did not play, but Rod Carew went 2-for-3 with 2 walks and an RBI.
* The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Cincinnati Reds, 5-2 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Johnny Bench, in his last month as an active player, pinch-hit, and did not reach base.
* The Houston Astros beat the San Diego Padres, 3-2 at Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego. Denny Walling doubled George Bjorkman home with the winning run in the top of the 10th inning. Tony Gwynn went 1-for-4.
* And the Atlanta Braves beat the San Francisco Giants, 12-9 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.
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