Fred and Loathing on The Internet

It’s not all chit-chat about comic books or old sitcoms here at the fredlambuth.com blog!

This time it will be my thoughts on all +1000 pages of Judgement in Tokyo by Gary J. Bass. A mammoth single volume, published in 2023, dealing with the convening of a court made to find ‘justice’ after the Pacific War ended with the Empire of Japan’s defeat. I read these heavy history books to cram the smartness found among the author’s words into myself. This book offers plenty to cram in. Plenty of studied exploration into the repercussions of Japan trying (and failing) to become a global imperial power. Oodles of thought provoking ideas that come up when applying the hard scrutiny of a courtroom on to the high minded ideals the victors of the war professed when cleaning up their victory abroad.

As has been mentioned on at least one blog post here (the one about the Shogun miniseries), my affinity for Japan is higher than for most countries. I probably mentioned back then that this cultural enthusiasm stops where most ‘Weebs’ would begin to be interested. WW2 is around where my interest hits a deadend. Sure, my curiosities as a political science student and a Navy vet have had me peer into what Japan is up to geopolitically. WW2 is that crossing point in Japanese history that changes from ‘samurais’ to ‘crucial factor to the Pacific realm of the USA’s global hegemony’. My interest in Japanese history after 1945 is purely academic. Even though I am kinda...

Just who is Mary Tyler Moore? Who’s show is it? The titular character is Mary Richards. I suppose that means the lead actress is the ‘Mary Tyler Moore’ in question. An obvious answer I suppose, but one that confounded my simple brain when I was a child watching Nick at Night. Why not just use your own name instead of Richards? Perhaps Mary Tyler Moore had so much cache at the time that it was imperative to attach her name to what could be a good but not great workplace comedy.

I already had quite an impression of Mary Tyler Moore by the time I had even heard of this show’s existence. The Dick Van Dyke Show was another show I watched in heavy rotation on Nick at Night, where Mary Tyler Mooer made her first appearance to me. The curiosity of the show being called The Dick Van Dyke Show, starring Dick Van Dyke yet playing a character named Robert Petrie, who himself is a behind the scenes writer to a television comedy show called The Something Somethingson Show added meta layers that my young brain just could not appreciate. Anyways, name and titles aside, I had a juvenile crush on Mary’s character on Dick Van Dyke. When promos began for this show on Nick at Night, they had me somewhat hopeful for a whole new show starring her, or at least at the chance of seeing more of the actress.

These jumbles in actors playing themselves or versions of themselves had me believing that the Mary Richards entering Minneapolis at the start of The Mary Tyler Moore Show was...

Having me review the 1980s American TV series The Golden Girls can ultimately become a review of the sitcom format itself. The very observational tools I have for evaluating a sitcom comes from watching this show. Glimmers of that television show are some of my first viable memories. The timing of jokes, the din of the audience laughter, the reassuring music at the credits; all the components I expect from a sitcom all first instantiated in my brain from repeat viewings (or listening from the sound of the TV in the living room seeping through to my bedroom) of The Golden Girls.

Golden Girls exalts itself in my mind at the Ur of TV sitcoms in my thoughts for the very conditional response I have for hearing credits music to this show, and for the stories underneath this glowing sensational bank of memories. The soaring lyrics of ‘Thank You For Being a Friend’ at the end or beginning of the broadcast of The Golden Girls still puts a subtle electric tingle in my bones. This tingle touches the basest emotions I can ponder.

Possibly M.A.S.H. could take the crown as the very first imprint of a sitcom in my brain. If it may be the first, decades later I have more of a hankering to watch balmy Miami in the 80s for my cheap TV jokes, not The Korean War. The local TV affiliates where I grew up had plenty of M.A.S.H. episodes to broadcast and my parents were just the type to watch them; especially around my bedtime. The broadcast schedule of these two shows were...