TV SNIDE

After finishing my last Halloween Head, I was looking for another project to work on. I thought I would continue with monsters, but a likely creature did not leap to mind. I kicked around a bunch of ideas trying to think of something that disturbed or gave me the creeps. What would it be?

Bonnie Franklin.

This is a subject that will take a lot more space and thought than I’m going to dedicate to this article at this time, but, to put it succinctly, I found the transition from the 1960s into the 1970s to be disconcerting and entirely disappointing. The world that my wonderfully indulgent, older brother introduced me to was full of astronauts, commandos, secret agents, super-heroes, action and adventure. It was all so very colorful despite it being piped into me via a black-and-white television. In complete and stultifying contrast, the decade that followed was beige, taupe and brown suede Earth Shoes. The ’60s were MG coupes and muscle cars. The ’70s were Chevy Vegas and Ford Pintos. The ’60s were Jonny Quest and Gigantor. The ’70s were Kids are People Too and Zoom. The ’60’s were Yvonne Craig, Julie Newmar and Sharon Tate. It was the girls on Dean Martin’s show. The ’70s was Bonnie Franklin — helmet haired, less than statuesque, earth-tone-wearing Bonnie Franklin. God, I hated that era.

…and I really hated One Day at a Time. I was a kid. We had three networks and maybe four UHF stations. It was on. I watched it. The canned laugh track enjoyed it more than I ever could.

So I started in on Ms Franklin and it ended up being a TV SNIDE magazine cover.