Great TV of the Last 20 Years Trivia Quiz

Answer: Archie

The parallels ought to be obvious: Parker=Archie, Mikey=Jughead...The BIG giveaway, besides Parker/Archie is Jerry, who is a dead ringer for Dilton Doily, as well as Kubiak=Big Moose, Lemmer=Reggie/Miss Grundy and Grace Musso=Veronica. Annie had to be good old, regular girl Betty Cooper, the girl who always pined for Archie, but had to watch him date spoiled, temperamental Veronica Lodge.

This was, for my money, perhaps the cleverest show about teenagers since "Dobie Gillis", a show it owes a lot to, to appear on American TV. Even "Dobie", however, owes a lot to good ol' Arch!

Answer: Vice President Danforth Quayle

Dan Quayle, one day, took it upon himself to criticize Candice Bergen's beloved sitcom character, "Murphy Brown", as an example of the breakdown of American morals brought on by bad examples in the media. It turns out the Murphy Brown character, an ace TV journalist with a legendary reputation, had a child out of wedlock on her show.

This went on for the better part of a year until, on her show, Bergen's character dumped a truckload of potatoes in front of the vice presidential mansion, razzing 'him' for blatantly misspelling the word "potato". Earlier that year, Quayle had erroneously told a kid to add an "e" to it in a schmoozing circuit incident, something that already made him a major laughingstock. How another Bush got into office after that, only the electoral college knows for sure...

Answer: Colleen Dewhurst

Yes, the late Colleen Dewhurst portrayed "Slugger"'s mom on the show, one of the cleverest shows on TV. It was the last, major, nationally known role for the actress, and one of the few TV roles in a series on a recurring basis.

Answer: Arnie Becker

Becker, the conceited "bucks-acuda" at McKenzie-Brackman, the law firm on the show, had people giving him Dodge Vipers as payment for services rendered and wasn't the least bit averse to making time with the pending exes of his divorce clients, and grinning like a Cheshire cat while he did it. Believe it or not, the character the actor who plays him played in the film "Hello Again", plastic surgeon Jason Chadman, was even worse!

Answer: Mildred Krebs

"Remington Steele" starred Pierce Brosnan, Stephanie Zimbalist, Doris Roberts and others over the course of its five year NBC run, starting in 1982. Mildred, played by Roberts, was the faithful and grandmotherly eminence that Laura hired to be their "go-to" girl on this cute, semi-sophisticated detective show, obviously patterned after "The Thin Man". Most of the trio's best adventures involved her, Laura (Zimbalist) and Remington (Brosnan) trying to extricate themselves from some fix one of them has gotten all three of them into. It was usually either Mildred or Laura that did, since Remington was essentially just a figurehead. Two of the best episodes of this show were the second and third from the last of the series, specifically "The Steele Who Would Not Die", an episode actually honored with a nod to one of its scenes in Brosnan's Bond film "Die Another Day".

Murphy Michaels was Laura's first male cohort, and he resented the heck out of "Remington" from the word go. He was gone after the first season. Bernice Foxe was the assistant that preceded Mildred and was often seen after Mildred was hired. "Rocky" was a recurring character in the second and third year who, unfortunately wanted to be a singer, but was so off-key it wasn't funny! She, nonetheless, got work in Vegas... lord only knows how.

One of the neat features of the show, was "Remington's" catalogic memory of movie scenarios from film noir and other types of movies, with him usually bringing up the name of one whenever a situation reminded him of one of them. However, as clever as "Remington Steele" could be sometimes, it inspired a very similar show that was actually much funnier and a little more daring. By the way, it never 'was' revealed exactly who "Remington" really was!

Answer: The Blue Moon Detective Agency

"Moonlighting" was the very inventive show inspired (if not spun-off) by "Remington Steele". Two producers of the older show (Roger Director, Glenn Gordon Caron) created this one, probably due to creative differences with MTM or NBC. What we viewers got as a result was a show that broke all the rules. Instead of trying to emulate William Powell and Myrna Loy, Dave Addison and Maddie Hayes, played by future action star Bruce Willis and model/actress Cybil Shepherd, went for the guffaws, parody and major slapstick. In-jokes, the likes of which never exited Bob Hope's mouth in all those "Road" movies, were written into the scripts of this unique show, which, nonetheless, owed a heckuva lot to "Remington Steele".

Landmark episodes were "Atomic Shakespeare", which was essentially "The Taming of the Shrew" seen through the zany eyes of "Moonlighting's" writers, and "The Dream Sequence Always Strikes Twice", a funny take on classic late 40's film noir movies, with Shepherd playing the Lana Turner role and Willis playing John Garfield's. The mid-to-late 80s were a great time for iconoclastic TV, since it saw the prime examples "Max Headroom", "Wiseguy", "The Equalizer", "L.A. Law" and "Moonlighting" in America and "Red Dwarf" and "Blackadder" in Great Britain. We may never see a period like this in television again, especially domestically.

Answer: Network 23

"Max Headroom" was an adaptation of a British show, using a Canadian actor, Matt Frewer, to play both Edison Carter, a one-man star news crew for Network 23, and Max Headroom, a computer generated version of himself, initiated by a snotty, very young R&D employee of the network after he has an accident trying to escape from his own network's thugs in the very first episode.

This had to be one of the most original concepts for a prime-time show since Ernie Kovacs first premiered in the late fifties on ABC, the network the Americanized version of "Max" ran on for less than two years. Max stuttered, gave sly, cryptic comments on the goings on on the show and generally became Edison's conscience.

Edison worked with Theora Jones, played by Amanda Pays; Murray, played by Jeffrey Tambor and Bryce Lynch, the "young employee" that was originally an enemy, played by Chris Young. His in-house adversary was the network president, Grossberg, portrayed by the late Charles Rocket, who played him as crassness personified. His corporate ally (sort of) was Ben Cheviot.

The British version was almost exactly the same as the American, with different actors playing Grossberg, Cheviot and Bryce, as well as various supporting actors. I have to say, I liked the British Bryce better. Charles Rocket, however, was the definitive Grossberg!

Answer: Henry Cho

Henry Cho, a comedian of Korean extraction, hosted the showcase for the latest music videos in its last year on NBC. Though Korean, Henry spoke with a pronounced southern American accent, and, guesting once on "Designing Women", described himself as being "oriental, but still just a bubba..."

Funny, personable guy...I wonder what happened to him? Anyway, the other three mentioned all worked as hosts earlier in the show's long run.

Answer: "Psycho Dad"

"Married With Children" was a show about the truly hilarious adventures of a poor shoe salesman's family on the outskirts of Chicago. Poor Al pulled down $30,000 a year if he was lucky, and got constant ribbing for it from his wife, his neighbors, his kids and even himself! Played by Ed O'Neill, Al was the ultimate, put-upon everyman, trying to deal with inflation, yuppie attitudes, disrespectful kids, and a wife who couldn't cook.

Katey Segal played Peg, his tarty wife who dressed like it was 1965 with hopped-up hair, too tight pants and five-inch stiletto heels. His daughter Kelly, played by Christina Applegate, actually started out the show being about as clever as her kid brother, Bud, but was eventually turned into a complete bubblehead by the show's writers by the third year. Bud, played by David Faustino, was about as put upon as Al, because no one took him seriously...in romance, family input, or anything else, though he was an excellent student in school.

Al's next door neighbors, and constant foils/best friends, were the Rhoades/D'Arcys, originally a yuppie couple, (Steve and Marcy,) but whittled down to just a yuppie wife (Marcy again) and a pretty-boy hubbo (Jefferson D'Arcy) when the original actor playing the first husband left the show. This left the neighbor wife with the name "Marcy D'Arcy"! The writing for this show was consistently funny, the actors all good, and the show itself ran for a record eleven years!

Actually, this is one of those shows that isn't rerun enough, if you ask me.

Answer: David Rasche

"Sledge Hammer" was the partially successful attempt to parody the "Dirty Harry" franchise made famous by Clint Eastwood in the 70s and 80s. His tagline was: "Trust me! I know what I'm doing!" The show ran from 1986 to 1988 on ABC.

Hammer was the kind of cop that would fire warning shots if you sneezed too loud in a hospital zone, and he even held conversations with his gun...comforting it if it was insulted or mishandled. He must have had at least 'one' poster of Charlton Heston on his bedroom wall, eh?

Answer: Chevrolet Corvair

Kevin's obnoxious brother, Wayne, drove a beater, early 60's Corvair, which, if I'm not mistaken, he inherited from his older sister. Wayne tormented Kevin by continually calling him "scrot", but his affection for him came through occasionally, though it probably wasn't enough for Fred Savage's Kevin.

The actor that played Wayne, Jason Hervey, also played the little guy (actually a future uncle) who said "You must be rich!", when Marty McFly mentioned his family had more than one television in "Back To The Future".

Answer: "Dimension Jump"

Starting off in an alternative universe where Rimmer is actually well-liked, "Dimension Jump" introduces us to unlikeable Arnold Rimmer's spiffy, charismatic doppelganger as he runs down the line of alternative versions of David Lister, who is a mechanic called "Spanners"; Katt, who is a priest; Holly, who is a receptionist and Kryten, another receptionist.

When he pops up in Red Dwarf's universe, piloting a plane made expressly for the purpose of visiting alternate dimensions, Arnold immediately takes a vehement dislike to him, especially as he becomes chummy with Lister. He refers to them as the poster boys for "Big Boys in Boots", and asks whether it'll "be a civil ceremony or a full church do for you two...?"

"Red Dwarf" was a howl of a series, equal parts "Dr. Who" and "The Odd Couple". Rimmer, portrayed by Chris Barrie, was a straight-laced, by-the-book anal retentive, oozing pretense with every breath, and Lister, played by Craig Charles, was pretty much just a regular, Liverpudlian fellow who was also a massive slob. Most of the comedy played off of the differences between the two characters, with Kryten, a prissy android, played by Robert Llewellyn; Holly (both Norman Lovett and Hattie Hayridge) the ship's persona computer program and Katt, played by Danny John-Jules, a creature evolved from Lister's pet cat "Frankenstein", as additional oddball foils. Later, Lister's unrequited love, Christine Kachansky was also added to the regular cast when Barrie, who played Rimmer, took some time off for another series. However, they used a very different actress, Chloe Annett, than the one who played her in the first four years (Claire Grogan).

Answer: Macbeth

Referred to as "the Scottish play", "Macbeth", which apparently has a curse associated with it in the days of King George III, causes the super-pretentious actors, whom Edmund has recruited to tutor Prince George on public speaking, to go into a noisy ritual every time he mentions the name of it. He does this several times for his own amusement, getting the same reaction every time. It sounds like they're saying: "Hot potato, over the shores! Butler make amends! Arrggghh!" with arm rolling and nose tweaking.

This episode, along with others from years two and three of the "Blackadder" series, are some of the funniest things your quiz author has ever seen committed to a recorded medium. The premise of the series is simple: In "Blackadder I", the ancestor of all the Blackadders-to-be, a prince, schemes to inherit the throne or at least a major parcel of land, from the court of King Richard III. This same ethic follows the series as it tackles other periods in England's history: the Elizabethan period in "BA II", the American colonial period in "BA III", and World War I in "BA IV", which is also very funny. "BA I", oddly enough, 'isn't' all that funny, and Edmund the First might even strike you as being a bit too much like Rowan Atkinson's nerdy "Mr. Bean" character. However, Atkinson lights up like a Christmas tree for II and III and is very amusing in IV. Hard to believe the same actor is doing the two characters, to be honest with you.

Answer: Jan Hammer

"Miami Vice" was one of those rare TV phenomena: an original idea! Mating good current pop tunes with the action taking place on a chic cop show dealing with the illegal drug trade in money-laundering, dope-dealing, incredibly wealthy Miami, Florida. The show was an immediate hit.

Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas played the two expensively dressed detective partners in a show that must have had 80's yuppies and "GQ" readers drooling at all the neat toys and clothes on display. As an undercover cop, Sonny Crockett (Johnson) drove a Ferrari (first a Berlinetta Boxer Spyder, then a gorgeous Testa Rossa) and wore elegantly casual apparel, usually a t-shirt with a designer sport jacket. His partner, Ricardo Tubbs, (Thomas,) drove a vintage 1964 Cadillac Coupe De Ville convertible. Both of them dressed to the nines in Armani suits, Bruitini loafers, Missoni sweaters and Omega watches.

Their boss was played by Edward James Olmos, in what was his second major role of note, after the detective in "Blade Runner". People like Miles Davis, Glenn Frye, Sheena Easton and Helena Bonham-Carter were guest stars on this unique show.

Answer: Kevin Spacey

"Wiseguy" was, hands down, perhaps the best crimes series ever on TV! Particularly the "Mel Profitt" arc that starred Spacey, William Russ, Joan Severance, Franklyn Pearce and Clyde Kusatsu, among others.

Spacey, who was made artistic director of the Old Vic theater company in Britain in 2003, acted his little method-trained posterior off in this arc of the show, easily the best arc of this better than average series. "Mel Profitt" was a "Malthusian", to use the character's own words, in the world of international arms dealing and recreational drugs, specifically cocaine. In other words, he was a monomaniac of the first order when it came to making money! He was aided and abetted by his sister, Susan (Severance) an absolutely gorgeous woman almost as devious as he is; Paco Bazo (Pearce) and Roger Lacoco (Russ) among others. According to Mel, 'she' (Susan) had "all the best ideas", and could practically read his mind as to what he wanted. It was often hinted, throughout this arc, that there was an unnaturally close relationship between Mel and Susan, something that made it very difficult for agent Vinnie Terranova, played by Ken Wahl, to initially do his job as a mole for the OCB department of the FBI. He, himself, developed a major mutual attraction to Susan Profitt.

Vinnie, you see, was very good at convincing his targets that he was one of them, which always gave him access to priceless info the FBI couldn't have gotten otherwise, and he got very, very close to Mel and Susan Profitt. In this arc, he was originally supposed to be investigating someone who 'worked' for Mel and Susan, Roger Lacoco, but it turned out 'he' was working for the US government as well! Lacoco took him to meet Mel and his knockout sister, and the rest, as they say, is TV history!

The show ran for five years on CBS.