Word: bandstand
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...looking to capitalize on this trend with new comedies and dramas that look back to the Kennedy and Reagan eras. On NBC's drama American Dreams (Sundays, 8 p.m. E.T.), set in 1963 Philadelphia, 15-year-old Meg Pryor (Brittany Snow) achieves her dream of dancing on American Bandstand. Fox's Oliver Beene (coming this winter) takes a comedic look at the same era. Two forthcoming shows set in the '80s are a strange manifestation of TV's collective unconscious. In both ABC's drama That Was Then (Fridays, 9 p.m. E.T.) and the WB's sitcom Do Over (Thursdays...
Dreams, on the other hand, is old-school nostalgia: a misty-lens look at the past that shows how the '60s' social change roiled one blue-collar family: Mom is dissatisfied; Dad feels the patriarchy slipping away; daughter Meg is seduced by the forbidden libidinal beat of Motown. The Bandstand story line, with archival footage courtesy of co-producer Dick Clark, provides a baby-boomer-friendly sound track. (On TV, American history is the history of TV.) Plots about feminism and civil rights flatter us about how far we have come. And the blue-collar, Catholic setting is free...
Perhaps. But Dreams' cloying earnestness makes jadedness look attractive. If you weren't convinced kids were different in 1963, we see the spun-sugar Meg actually skip across a hopscotch grid on the way home to watch Bandstand. The historical references are clumsy: a son arguing with his father declares, "Kennedy says it's time for new dreams and new frontiers!" Speaking of J.F.K., the pilot begins on a snowy day in November, setting up the hackneyed loss-of-innocence climax so obviously that you half expect a TV to crackle, "And in other news, President Kennedy will be assassinated...
Based on John Waters' 1988 cult film about a chubby teenager who dreams of winning a spot on an American Bandstand- like TV dance show, Hairspray takes us back to the era everyone loves to make fun of, the early 1960s. In theater-coiffure terms, we're in the sweet spot between Grease and Hair. Movie composer Marc Shaiman (South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut) makes his Broadway debut with a score that skillfully mimics the era's perky pop ditties, and director Jack O'Brien has put together a slick, high-spirited production. Add to that a politically correct story...
...remember another Lewis manifestation, on Dick Clark's "Bandstand." It was Thanksgiving Day 1957 and, as Tosches notes, the other guests were the teen duo Tom and Jerry, later Simon and Garfunkel. For the kids in Philadelphia, Pa., Lewis sang his follow-up hit, "Great Balls of Fire." He tore through the number and, toward the end, shook his long, slicked-back blond hair until it fell forward, like a toupee attached at the brow line, virtually covering his face. He was suddenly a peroxided version of the Addams Family's Cousin Itt, and for a moment I could feel...