Before I, uh, gave up on this series for almost two years I was going through and “finishing up” things related to other shows. Like doing all of the Disney Afternoon shows (only one is left I believe). Another “set” of shows was the Teen Sitcoms of the 1990s famously started by Saved by the Bell. I feel that Saved by the Bell was the best of that lot. Sure it was cheesy and goofy but at least that was a personality. California Dreams and Hang Time just tried to recapture that but without the personality. I was not a fan of either of those shows. So we finally end this series with City Guys. Will this be the one that I enjoy watching? Who knows!
I started writing this crap thirteen days ago. And now it’s one day after my 40th birthday and I decided after watching a really really really bad movie that it was time to finish this off. I figure since this is the last show I’m going to be talking about of his I’m goign to talk about Peter Engel. Also this might not be the last show of his because I found two others, one I cannot find the Final Episode for and one that I can. I do not believe they aired on TNBC so I will put them off for as long as I can because I’m not in love with these shows. Peter Engel was born in 1936 and started his career in TV in 1971 apparently with some show called The Ice Palace. It was slow going until Good Morning Miss Bliss, which didn’t completely work but Petey knew he had something so he tinkered with it and that’s how we got Saved by the Bell for NBC. This shit did so well that NBC just yeeted all of the cartoons off Saturday Morning sometime in the 1990s. Peter then ran to the nearest Xerox machine and made the same show several different times. Seriously, California Dreams and Hang Time were just Saved by the Bell without the charm. Still they made it long enough and were popular enough that I heard about them and were interested in seeing them. I don’t know how to end this paragraph so I will mention that Frank Bonner, Herb Tarleck himself (I really should have talked about WKRP in Cincinnatti instead of this show but whatever) directed just about every episode of this show. Wild!
So the wikipedia article for this show said that they refered to this one as the “urban” show. Do you think they did that because this show had not one but TWO black guys in it? I mean didn’t all of the other shows take place in like uh, cities and not rural areas? I think that’s the case. Anyway, like usual I’m going to talk about a bunch of other episodes along with the Final Episode as this is a show I’ve never seen before. I don’t even know why I do this, I’m sure I had a reason at one point but I just do. Why because I can? This pile of shit blog is mine and I CAN DO WHAT I WANT WITH IT!
The first episode is entitled Prom-Lems. Get it becuase it’s Problems related to Prom!!!! woah!!!!!! Anyway two of these problems were literally lifted from the other shows. One is that two kids are going to different schools. OH MY GOD WOWAH and the other is WOAH two characters don’t realize that the other actually wants to go to prom so they make up fake prom dates!!!!!!!! woah!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I haven’t seen that already! Woah! Did you know I didn’t go to my prom….or even my last year of High School? Wild huh? Uh. Where was I? oh yeah, the two black dudes got a limo and I wonder what their problem will be!!! Oh, they forgot to get a reservation. Wow. Such drama. Oh wow the girl thinks the guy wants to marry her!!!! I think my biggest problem is well two things. the actors are all uh not very good and two none of this is even remotely amusing. I could take these done to death plots if at least one of those things were there. Oh well. Can I just say everything gets fixed up at the Prom? Okay. I can. Well everything gets fixed up at the prom! Woo!
The actual Final Episode is a clip show, so I’m not watching it. Why the hell did people think “Oh I know I’ll jam a bunch of clips together from previous episodes for the FINAL EPISODE instead of an actual fucking story involving the characters of the show. Seriously as someone who lived through the era of clip shows (well not the entire era but the end of it) it was always a time when you went “well I’m gonna see what else is on” If you were a regular viewer of said show you already saw that they were going to show you, and if you weren’t it just never felt like a good showcase of the show really. You want to sit down and see how an actual episode from beginning to end worked out. Every time, no matter the show, (except Webster) a Clip show just felt like a wasted opportunity to tell an ACTUAL final story with the characters of any show. I really don’t know how so many people were able to sell the idea of a CLIP SHOW FINAL EPISODE as a good thing. It’s wild. I’m glad Clip shows are dead.
The Final Episode is one called Al’s in Toyland. It was totally not meant to be the last episode but it aired last. I don’t care to talk about OH MY WOAH WOAH WOHHHHHHH another graduation episode. I can’t do it. I have a copy of it. I just can’t physically put it on. I’m sorry but we are going to talk about this episode and if you are really sad about it just bitch at me in the comments. Anyway this episode has the lowest stakes I’ve seen in any tv show. The characters……………….HAVE TO JOIN THE SCHOOL BAND OH MY GOD AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH HOW WILL THEY GET OUT OF IT!@!#!!!!!
Yeah, I’m not doing this. I’m sorry but I can write ten thousand words on the final episodes of Doug and Sabrina the Teenage Witch but I just can’t give a single second more of my time to this. I don’t know what Saved by the Bell had that these shows didn’t. Maybe it was the cast, maybe it was because it was somewhat original for the time. I don’t know but it had something. It’s like your favorite fast food hamburger. It’s probably not good for you but fuck it you still like it. City Guys (and the other two shows) were like a smelly rotting dollar store hamburger that was left behind the dirtiest toilet in town.
FINAL THOUGHTS: I can remember being disappointed when NBC stopped showing cartoons. I have no idea when that totally happened but it did and it disappointed me. It was even more disappointing when I found out that they replaced them with like four copies of something a lot more memorable. Like these shows aren’t even cheesy fun. These are just boring. I know that I try my best to write something about a Final Episode but I just can’t do it. OH NO WE HAVE TO JOIN THE MARCHING BAND is just so low stakes and pointless that I could not, would not, spend the time writing about it. You beat me City Guys, congratulations.
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