Do I watch my old shows?

Here’s one of those questions worth an entire post. It’s from Nancy Knechtel.

Mash and Cheers and so many of your shows are on ALL the time. Do you ever watch the old episodes? Can you enjoy them or do the memories come flooding back? Does your family run out of the room? There really could be a Ken Levine Network....

That’s a pretty far-fetched idea but I imagine a Ken Levine Network would still garner better ratings in primetime than NBC.

To answer your question, there are some shows of mine I watch, and others I don’t.

For the most part I have a hard time re-visiting my MASH episodes. There are a few exceptions, but by and large I can’t watch them without saying, “Oh, we could do that better,” and “there’s got to be a better joke than that,” etc. We were very young when we did MASH. I would love one more pass at each of those scripts.

But some MASH episodes I still really enjoy including POINT OF VIEW, OUT OF SIGHT/OUT OF MIND, GOODBYE RADAR, THE BILLFOLD SYNDROME, and MERCHANT OF KOREA. And there are parts of the others I like.

Most of our CHEERS episodes I can watch without cringing. There are a few duds along the way (we wrote 40 total), but even those might not be too bad. I mentioned this story before – a few years ago while in Arizona for spring training I happened upon a CHEERS of ours that I hadn’t seen in ages and was pleasantly surprised. But I don’t know if it was just funnier than I remembered or the comedy bar has been lowered so it appears better than it is.

Certain episodes I can watch over and over. TO ALL THE GIRLS I’VE LOVED BEFORE, RAT GIRL, DEATH TAKES A HOLIDAY ON ICE, ANY FRIEND OF DIANE’S, FINALLY, and BOYS IN THE BAR are just a few. Usually, what makes them so re-watchable is the performance by the actors.

Maybe because we didn’t do enough of them to have clunkers, but I gladly will watch any of our FRASIER episodes.

And there are a couple of WINGS we did that I still have a fondness for. Brian getting a nose job for one. Same for BECKER.

I also find it easier to watch shows I directed than shows I wrote. Good performances and good camera angles don’t diminish over time.

But you’re right, Nancy, that all of these shows bring back memories – some good; some Vietnam flashbacks. What I recall most though are the jokes we didn’t use. They were so appallingly inappropriate. But funny. Sick, disturbed, and in many cases libelous, but really FUNNY.

The family never goes screaming from the room when I watch an old re-run. Just when I watch baseball.

I feel so privileged and lucky that work my partner and I did thirty years ago is still being seen and appreciated. I’m my own worst critic so I sometimes only spot the flaws, but I’m infinitely proud of these shows and hope they keep playing for another thirty years. So even if I don’t watch them, you should.