Paper picks best of TV’s bad bunch

Press, 10 January 1986, Page 22

Paper picks best of TV’s bad bunch

NZPA staff correspondent Washington

American television, with a few exceptions, excels at the banal and mediocre.

Now, looking back at 1985, the “Washington Post” has compiled a list of some of the best of the worst, those events that make it so special. Among the newspaper’s picks, with its headings: A question of priorities — A.B.C. delayed airing the democratic response to President Reagan’s State of the Union address for two days so it could show that week’s episode of “Dynasty” with Joan Collins as scheduled.

Most appropriate line of dialogue uttered all year on “Miami Vice” — “If there’s a point to this, let’s get to it, Don Johnson, October 18, 1985. Someone’s been waking him too quickly from his naps again — Ronald Reagan sent a tongue-in-cheek sympathy note, on White House stationery, to a character in an N.B.C. soap who was suffering temporary blindness. “Nancy and I are sorry to learn about your illness,” Mr Reagan said in the note to Augusta Lockridge,

played by Louise Sorel. “Our thoughts and prayers are with you.” Visual literacy — a Rockville company marketed cases for video cassettes designed to disguise them as books.

On the other hand, there are worse things than fruit fly infestations — on C.B.S. morning news, a host, Phyllis George, asked a convicted rapist and his alleged victim, who had since recanted her accusation, if they would like to hug each other. George later explained, "I wanted to get to the personal side.” Ickiest sweet nothing to be coo’d in a television movie — James Coburn to Glynnis O’Connor in “Sins of the Father” on N.8.C.: “I like peanut butter sandwiches, coffee ice-cream, sunsets in Puerto Vallarta, Count Basie, Mozart and you.” With scriptwriters like this, who needs critics? The A.B.C. mini-series, “Hollywood Wives,” included' the following lines of dialogue: “When you have no taste, you can do anything,” “When you’re head of a studio, you don’t need class,” and “I wouldn’t direct anything that was this badly written.”