Battle of the Network Stars

And now it's time for the Most Awesome Thing I Saw On TV Last Week. The most awesome thing I saw on TV last week was definitely the multiple episodes of Battle of the Network Stars that were on Trio. But the best one was the first episode, from 1976. First of all, because it was the first one, it was totally unpolished and even more ridiculous. Howard Cosell was the announcer, and during the relay race, he kept saying that people "breasted the tape" at the end, which was kind of awkward when the winner was a woman. Although, according to Cosell, none of the female participants were women. They were all "girls." And speaking of girls, there was this horrific interview with Farrah Fawcett-Majors where she talked about how she loved being married to Lee Majors and she hurried home from filming Charlie's Angels every day so that she could make him dinner and then she actually said, "It's something I need to do as a female or a wife" and then Howard said, "I know Lee and he is a male and he likes to dominate," like, how does Howard know that? And then during the swimming competition, the bathing suits were totally see-through and I think I saw Ma Ingalls's nipples, which was fucking creepy, and then I saw everything Tim Matheson has to offer, which was quite a bit, frankly. And when they introduced all of the contestants, I had heard of most of the people except for the people on NBC's team. I had never heard of the people or the shows they came from, which makes me think that NBC's 1976 line-up was pretty fucking lame. And the most awesome part was when Bob Conrad's team was penalized during the relay race and he totally had a meltdown and started yelling, "Like hell! Like hell! Like hell!" and puffing away on a cigarette and finally he had a tie-breaker race with Gabe Kaplan to decide it and Gabe Kaplan actually won! You go, Mr. Kotter! God, there were so many more awesome things, but I will conclude by telling you that they had characters from the ABC special Return to Oz demonstrate the obstacle course, so the Cowardly Lion belly-crawled under the net and then the Tin Man ran through the tires and then the Scarecrow did the monkey bars and the music playing during this demonstration was "The Hustle." I swear to God. And that's just one episode. They showed five this week! And there's a marathon on Sunday, which you should totally watch if you are a fan of awesome television, as I am.