Do it, seriously.

Sonofabitch it ran from '91-'99 and I don't even remember ever seeing this.

I believe this was a USA Network exclusive.

I thought it was HBO.

It originally aired on CBS, as part of their experiment in late late programming, "Crimetime After Primetime", where late in the night they aired a series of different crime dramas through 1991 to 1993. It was their way of finding something to fill in the late night programming bloc after Pat Sajak's late night talk show bombed.

It lasted two seasons on CBS before ending up on USA until 1999 and it was the longest running series produced by Stephen J. Cannell.

CBS dropped this particular bloc after they signed Letterman on for his talk show, of course.

You never knew what would show up on "THE CBS LATE MOVIE" Old episodes of Lou Grant, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Stanley Kubrick's "Lolia" with James Mason and Peter Sellers, Hitchcock's the 39 Steps, The Monkee's in "HEAD", Rod Steiger in the Illustrated Man, A Marx Brothers Movie, and Golan-Globus's Masterfece, "The Apple" These are al;l things I watched personally. I don't think it was letterman who took over the Block. I think it was Pat Sajack, who was about as funny as cancer, and who introduced Rush Limbaugh to America as his occasional replacement host.

I think I was confusing it with Red Shoe Diaries or something.

This was USA you rubes.

It's an amazingly high bar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfBmqLSRzWU

It was a halcyon age when tv show openers kicked the crap out of the shows they opened for.

I think this smacks of late 80s influences more than early 90s.

God damn you! I had forgotten about Viper.

You think they pitched this show like: "It's Airwolf, but on the ground baby!"

The 90s were a Golden Age for Saturday afternoon syndicated programming, stuff you could leave on in the background while doing housework and feel entertained without having to pay attention.

For a long time everyone associated the pop culture of the 90s with the whole Seattle "grunge" anomaly of '91-'93, but the true soul of the 90s is to be found in the terrible, pastel, Memphis-lite, post Pee Wee's Playhouse, So-Cal, Pauly Shore dreck that was dominating in late '89 and '90, and rose again in various forms (albeit many not California-related) after Cobain died and the media moved on.

The 1990s were also the decade that marketers fully co-opted irony, robbing us of one of our last real methods for coping with living in a culture of constant advertising.

Also, although the 80s were already setting the pace, it was the 90s when character franchises and "synergy" and constantly remaking the same script over and over really became the dominant model for mainstream cinema, faux-indie Tarantino knockoffs notwithstanding.

"The 1990s were also the decade that marketers fully co-opted irony, robbing us of one of our last real methods for coping with living in a culture of constant advertising."

... good point. But was it inevitable? Marketing co-opts everything given time.

Yeah, the more I think about it, it all comes down to the eternal problem of honesty: you can never actually prove when you're being honest, and all a liar has to do is conceal his intentions well enough to fool the other guy. Turning that around, anything can be co-opted for sales with the right pitch; not even idealism is immune, nor is cynical detachment, nor irony. There's probably even a way to market world-weary honesty.

Fishing is just marketing to fish.

For some reason, I wanted to punch the TV the other night when I saw a commercial for the Graze Box, an overpriced box of natural snacks that they'll send you by mail. I think my visceral reaction came from a perception that they're claiming to offer a healthier snack and a better way to live, when in reality they're mostly just exploiting people's desire for something better and also, perhaps, a wish to perceive themselves as a cut above. But in the end they were selling nuts and Sun Chips for a pound.

Oh, I fully agree, the 90s is just when it happened to the coping mechanisms people like me who were born into the peak years of Postmodernism and grown up relying on.


It's why "horror comedy" went from being a pretty fruitful film subgenre throughout the 80s to being a big "DO NOT WATCH THIS IF YOU HAVE ANY TASTE WHATSOEVER" flag by the late 90s. It's how we declined from Return of the Living Dead to zombie marches.

"Oh, I fully agree, the 90s is just when it happened to the coping mechanisms people like me who were born into the peak years of Postmodernism and grown up relying on."

I know a guy who say Postmodernism exists because we can't simply move west any longer. Used to be that, if you weren't happy with society, you'd just head out to the frontier and live the way that suits you. Not so much an option any longer, so the rejection of society has to be a mental activity rather than a change of location. (Dude was born in Oregon so he was already about as west as he could be.)

Postmodernism died 20 years ago, the trouble is it blew up like a purified whale corpse and we're all still soaking in the entrails.

Yes thanks for bringing back a forgettable opening theme.

When I first watch that movie, I didn't get why every character was announcing how drop dead gorgeous she was. Pretty much every girl in their high school was cuter.

Maybe it was just the hideous 80s hair.

I remember Kelly LeBrock as being really gorgeous, but somehow you didn't care.

She had a famous commercial where her lne was "Don't hate me because I'm beautiful."

I'd always think: "No, that's not it."

Weird Science was about a pair of socially incompetent Gamergate nerds who used their superior computer skills to create an impossibly gorgeous female sex-slave, an object whose sole purpose in life was to fulfill the boys' every fantasy.

I see nothing wrong with that.

In fact, I might even go so far as to say that they need to revive the series, starring Catie Wayne as Lisa, Aurini and TheAmazingAtheist as her two nerd overlords.

I am glad to see you agree with me on this, Mr Holmes!

The TV show of "Weird Science" had to be better than the movie, if for no other reason than, the TV show could not possibly have aspired to have the message of the movie. The two nerdy kids accidentally create an omnipotent genie who gives them anything they want and rigs every challenge so they can't lose, and the message at the end is, "just believe in yourself and you'll be a winner"? Fuck you, movie. Fuck you, 80s. I want to see what happens the week after Lisa has gone away and mean ol' Chet realizes he can go back to picking on the two guys.

Then there's the problem with WS that tracks more with modern sensibilities: the implication is that the two nerdy guys were being picked on because they lacked self-confidence, and if they wanted to not be picked on, all they had to do was be more confident. See that, kids? If you're being picked on, it's your fault.

That's every bit as wrong-headed as Cool Cat, but at least Cool Cat is entertaining, and Cool Cat's mom is hot.

It's true, though. Kids tend to get picked on for reasons. That's not to say you necessarily "deserve" to get picked on, but it IS usually your "fault".

Oh that reminds me of even more 80s BS: the "be yourself" mantra, where there is apparently some fine print about "... so long as 'yourself' is confident and popular and likes all the stuff other people like".

As John Dolan once put it, "As so often in assessing post-Reagan culture, you’re left to wonder whether you’re dealing with stupidity, lies, or some horribly adaptive mixture of both." Of course in this case it's about the exact middle of the Reagan years, but the same principle applies.

The damage John Hughes did to the American psyche can't be overstated.

Well, no, you can be yourself regardless. However, if what "you" are is something that other people generally don't like, then you have to expect there to be some consequences, and you need to be willing to recognize your own agency or else things will only get worse.

That fine print is important. If you don't read it, then you miss the point of the lesson ("better yourself") and simply wind up feeling entitled (and increasingly frustrated by the fact that other people aren't giving you the respect you feel you deserve). By rejecting your own agency, you make yourself a victim and turn society at large into the villain. Make no mistake, sooner or later the Weird Science nerds would have tried to find a way out of their torment; the question is, would you rather they did so by striving to become better, more sociable people - or, thinking that everyone else is the problem, by going Supreme Gentleman on their school?

"better, more sociable people"

Not necessarily the same thing.

Not necessarily NOT the same thing, either. There's no harm striving for both!

Also, I'm not sure if I made this clear, but I'm not saying you *need* to aspire to be a more socially-fulfilled person! The important thing here is self-knowledge - understanding, and accepting, the consequences of your own actions. Plenty of people live full, meaningful lives without ever being burdened by social fulfillment; Isaac Newton, for example. He was a miserable, lonely asshole, and also one of the greatest human beings to have ever lived. There is nothing wrong with that. He was what he was. My point (and the point of Weird Science) is that IF you want something more than what you've got, you CAN change, but you need to work at it (such as by being more confident, and by cultivating a wider range of interests that other people might share in common).

Me and Catie's mom both think she's make a great Jeannie. I even bought her seaon 2 of "I dream of Jeannie" for her 20th birthday, five years ago.

I think that a third version of Weird Science should be gay themed. Just think abnout it for a while, i gotta go.

Queer'd Science? Sure, whatever, just so long as you don't listen to Bort, and the underlying message remains intact.

Speaking of Jeannie, did Catie actually get into that show after you bought the DVDs for her, or was this just something you and Boxxmom were dorking out about together? I want to say that I've seen Boxxy in a genie girl harem outfit, but that might just be my imagination.

Also, I'm sorry to say this, but if Boxxmom is imagining her daughter as Jeannie, that kinda plays into the narrative put forth by Encyclopedia Dramatica - i.e. that Boxxmom is trying really hard to pimp her daughters out like so many magical meal-tickets. I can't really imagine any other reason why a mom might fantasize about her daughter being a helpless, obedient pleasure slave.

That sounds good but I doubt it could hold up to the short-lived Comedy Central (I think the name change had happened at that point) show Drive-In Reviews, where young, impressionable minds such as myself were able to have the revelatory experience of seeing the severed penis keepaway scene from Street Trash play uncut on TV (not that I nor my friends hadn't seen plenty of shit like that on VHS by then, this was 9th or 10th grade, but seeing it on TV, even basic cable, with the slow motion closeups of the penis flying through the air fully uncut (the shots, I mean), seemed extremely transgressive at the time and frankly still would today.

Plus they used the snake transformation from Curse 2 for their opening credits and I think it was the first place I learned about Body Melt, although that could have been Psychotronic.