October 5, 1998: “The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer” Premieres

October 5, 1998: The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer premieres on UPN. It goes down in history as one of the worst and most-hated TV shows of all time.

Kenneth "Chi" McBride played Desmond Pfeiffer -- and that's pronounced "Puh-FIGH-fer," whereas the name usually leaves the P silent -- a black English nobleman in the 1860s. Choosing to flee Britain for America due to gambling debts, he becomes the valet of President Abraham Lincoln, played by Dann Florek.

Christine Estabrook played First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln. In real life, Mary was mentally ill and what we would now call a shopaholic. The show exaggerated those traits. Kelly Connell played General Ulysses S. Grant. Later to become President himself, Grant had issues with alcohol. The show not only played up this trait, but suggested that Mrs. Lincoln was also an alcoholic. Max Baker played Nibblet, Pfeiffer's white assistant.

But the show was set during the American Civil War. People were afraid that it would make jokes about slavery. And people were outraged. The NAACP led a protest outside Paramount Studios in Los Angeles on September 24. Paramount Pictures decided they wouldn't air the pilot, and substituted a different episode for the premiere date of October 5.

The one they chose was titled "A.O.L.: Abe On-Line." Lincoln engaged in not phone sex -- the telephone wasn't invented until 1876 -- but telegraph sex. With a woman he'd never met. In real life, there is no record of Abe ever cheating on Mary, or vice-versa. But this episode was offensive even without counting the racial material.

The October 12 episode was titled "Up, Up and Away." Abe, Desmond and Nibblet got into a hot-air balloon designed for reconnaissance against Confederate troops. It got blown off-course, and they landed behind enemy lines, and in order to escape, they had to dress Abe in drag. Even a guest appearance by Jeffersons star Sherman Hemsley couldn't save this one.

The October 19 episode was meant to show a meeting between Abe and Britain's Queen Victoria. (In real life, there was never a meeting between a U.S. President and a U.K. monarch until 1919, Woodrow Wilson and King George V, although a pre-President John Adams did meet King George III, and a post-Presidency Grant met Victoria.) But Abe got sick, and Mary hired a body double -- and decided the body was too good.

As it turned out, there were no jokes about slavery. The show was a sex farce, designed to dovetail with the then-ongoing scandal between President Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. But this outraged people, too.

UPN impeached the series on October 24, and aired the last episode on October 26. This left 5 episodes unaired, including the pilot, and an episode where Confederate soldiers kidnapped Mary, so Grant retaliated by kidnapping Mary Lee (Mrs. Robert E.)

UPN President Dan Valentine was fired over the show. McBride rebounded to star on such TV series as Boston Public, House, Killer Instinct, The Nine, Pushing Daises, Human Target, and the rebooted version of Hawaii Five-0. Florek went back to the Law & Order franchise. Estabrook continued acting, including receiving a recurring role on Desperate Housewives. Connell and Baker both kept going as "character actors."

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October 5, 1998 was a Monday. Baseball was between the end of its regular season and the start of its Playoffs. The NBA and NHL seasons hadn't started yet. The only score on this day was on ABC Monday Night Football: The Minnesota Vikings beat their arch-rivals, the Green Bay Packers, 37-24 at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin.