A-Z GUIDE TO MOVIES AND TV SHOWS PARODIED BY MAD, CRACKED, CRAZY, ETC. UP TO 1996. THEY HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS. SPOILERS AND OTHER NON-SEQUITURS, TOO. SOMETIMES THESE THINGS HAVE WORDS OR SITUATIONS WE DON'T USE ANYMORE. YOU KNOW, 'CAUSE THEY'RE OLD.
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MAD #266, October 1966
w: Dennis Snee
a: Mort Drucker
“Will they or won't they?” sitcom about Tony Micelli (Tony Danza), en ex-ball player, who leaves Brooklyn with his daughter Samantha (Alyssa Milano) and moves to Connecticut to be a live-in maid for Angela Bower (Judith Light) and her son Jonathan (Danny Pintauro). Rounding the cast is Angela's mother Mona Robinson (Katherine Helmond. An older horny woman named Robinson. You get it?)
1Benchley was a newspaper strip Drucker was doing in the late eighties that he'd plug in every MAD piece. He's pictured later.
WHAT'S THE BEEF?
Cracked #220, July 1986
w: Joe Catalano
a: John Reiner
“Where's the beef?” was a slogan for Wendy's that became the “Whassup?”/”Yeah, Baby!”/”My wife” of the mid-eighties. Even those references are just as dated. What's the equivalent now?
Richie's brother Chuck was in the first three or four episodes of Happy Days, then disappeared and was never mentioned again.
BURIED WITH CHILDREN
MAD #292, January 1990
w: Dennis Snee
a: Sam Viviano
Sitcom about a white-trash family that became more of an exaggeration of the sitcom genre over time, considered really dirty when it aired, but pretty tame by today's standards. It was closer in content to The Cosby Show but didn't have the “awww” moments, but didn't have the shock of Family Guy either (which is also guilty of redemptive “awww” moments).
Al Bundy (Ed O'Neill) was the father of the family, and his wife was Peg (Katey Sagal). The two children were Bud (David Faustino) and Kelly (Christina Applegate). Neighbors were Steve (David Garrison) and Darcy (Amanda Bearse). Buck was the Bundy's dog that often delivered punchlines with his thoughts.
Terry Rakolta was a suburban housewife who started a boycott and letter-writing campaign against the program, which ironically made it more popular. Andrew “Dice” Clay is still popular though more as an actor than as a comedian. He was taken too seriously as a threat then because fear of filth in media was the late 80s and early 90s equivalent to reefer madness.
Roseanne and Dan from Roseanne were the new white trash sitcom family, but more realistic.
The German edition featured the Bundys on the cover.
MARTYRED WITH CHILDREN
Cracked #239, October 1988
w: Murad Gumen
a: Rob Orzechowski
The Li'l Abner character of Fearless Fosdick was known for see-through bullet holes. Bill Cosby as imitated by Eddie Murphy was portrayed as the spokesperson of morality, and Married: With Children was kind of the “anti-Cosby”.
They put King Kong Bundy here because he has the same name, though he actually did play a supporting character on the show later.
Rupert Murdoch was and is the head of Fox. References are made to the other shows the Fox Network had in its infancy when it was on only one night, such as Duet, The Tracy Ullman Show, It's Garry Shandling's Show, Werewolf, 21 Jump Street, and the George C. Scott sitcom Mr. President.
Cracked did another spoof of the show focusing on Terry Rakolta's campaign against it.
HARRIED: WITH CHILDREN
Cracked #248, October 1989
w: Rick Kriegel (Lou Silverstone)
a: Rob Orzechowski
Jokes about the Bates Motel. Charles Manson called his entourage his “family”. Al Bundy would always refer to his high school sports days on the show.
I hate when they stretch things out to be proportioned for today's TV screen, but this is what I found.
REPRIEVE IT FOR BEAVER
MAD #262, April 1986
w: Dennis Snee
a: Angelo Torres
Sitcom about American family that's become the generic defenition of “1950s American household”, the mythical white suburban picket fence family. It was parodied in their feature A Bad Case of the Re-Runs they had briefly in the eighties when Nick at Nite first started.
The family was father Ward (Hugh Beaumont), mother June (Barbara Billingsley), and kids Wally (Tony Dow), and Theodore a/k/a “The Beaver” (Jerry Mathers). They had various friends but for this there were Larry Mundello (Rusty Stevens) and Eddie Haskell (Ken Osmond).
The neighbor here is Ozzie Nelson from The Nelson Family. The man from Mars is, of course, Bill Cosby, back when we liked him.
This was Mathers' and Dow's obligatory celebrity letters to the editor.
This was the Columbia House ad parody they mentioned, which co-incidentally had a Beaver joke.
MATE & ALIMONY
MAD # 257, September 1985
w: Dennis Snee
a: Mort Drucker
Sitcom about two divorced mothers, Kate McArdle (Susan Saint James) and Allie Lowell (Jane Curtin) living in a New York apartment with their three children. The show always began with the two of them walking through the city on the way home.
The newspaper headline refers to Bernhard Goetz, famous subway vigilante from final days of New York's reputation as “crime city #1”
Emma (Ari Meyers) was Kate's daughter and Jennie (Allison Smith) was Allie's. Chip (Frederic Koehler) was Allie's son.
The sign in the second panel refers to Chico Esquela, a Latino baseball player Garrett Morris played on Saturday Night Live that would interact with Jane Curtin.
I get the oxymoron part of the Kosher ham joke but I don't know if the cardboard box is an additional joke or just their ignorance. Charles (Paul Hecht), Allie's ex-husband, occasionally appeared.
“Jane, you ignorant slut” was another Saturday Night Live catchphrase. Benchley was a newspaper strip Mort Drucker was doing.
MacMillan and Wife was Susan Saint James' first show with Rock Hudson, “Not Ready For Prime-Time Players” was the original name for the cast of SNL.
From TV Spinoffs Yet to Come by Tom Koch and Angelo Torres in #269, March 1987
FEARLESS BULLER'S DAY OFF
MAD # 268, January 1987
w: Dennis Snee
a: Mort Drucker
I could go on all day with what I find wrong with this movie, but I'm not here to editorialize. I'll just try to present the parody objectively.
The movie is about Ferris Bueller (Matthew Broderick), a high school senior, playing hooky for class again. Tagging along are his best friend Cameron (Alan Ruck) and girlfriend Sloane (Mia Sara). His sister Jeanie (Jennifer Grey) is upset that he gets so much attention. Ed Rooney (Jeffrey Jones), the dean of students, is on to him, and vows to prove by the end of the day that Ferris is faking his sickness. Ed's secretary Grace (Edie McClurg) is neutral in all this but remains at his side.
Ferris talks to the audience a lot and at the beginning explains how he feigns sickness. In this, the other students at the school know he's sick, but in the movie they think he really is, as do people outside the school, raising funds and ads for him, in gags without closure. Ed Rooney calls Ferris' mother telling her if he's absent again he'll be left back. Cameron is sick and Ferris convinces him to come along and he impersonates Sloane's father to get her out of school, telling them her grandmother's dead. They drive into Chicago in Cameron's father's Ferrari.
The Twist and Shout poster on the wall refers to how this song features prominently in both this and the Rodney Dangerfield vehicle Back to School. More on that film later.
The three of them look at the city from the Sears Tower and catch a ball game at Wrigley Field. They get into a fancy restaurant by Ferris posing as a wealthy businessman. At the school, Mr. Rooney decides he's going to the Buellers' house to expose Ferris' charade. Ferris is one step ahead, as he's rigged the doorbell to set off a tape recording of him and set up the door to his bedroom to set off ropes and pulleys that move a mannequin under his sheets (they don't show how his mother also checks on him as well).
Ferris goes with Cameron and Sloane to the Chicago Museum of Art and crashes a parade lip-synching Danke Schoen and Twist and Shout. There's a musical number where everybody breaks out dancing and his father sees the parade from his office window. (He doesn't actually see Ferris like here).
Traveling back home, they see the odometer of the car they stole from Cameron's father has more miles than it should, because the parking attendant took it for a joyride. They try to set the odometer back in the garage by running the car in reverse jacked up, so Cameron's father won't know they took it. When their plan doesn't work, Cameron gets angry and kicks the car, causing it to fall off the jack, out the garage window, and into the woods. He decides to take responsibility and stand up to his father.
In another scene they don't show, Jeanie also plans to expose Ferris' stunt, and when she gets home, runs into Mr. Rooney, and not knowing who he is and thinking he might be a masher, kicks him, runs to a safe place, and calls the police. Mr. Rooney also gets scared and runs away, and when the police get there, they see no sign of him and arrest her for making a false claim (There's Hughes bringing in a bit of his Lampoon misogyny). Mrs. Bueller now must pick Jeanie up at the police station. She gets there to find she's hit it off with a juvenile delinquent there (Charlie Sheen). Ferris rushes home to get back before the rest of his family so he can get back in bed and continue to pretend being sick. He gets home and to find Rooney waiting for him and is about to bust him but is saved at the last minute by Jeanie, who still hates Ferris, but hates Rooney even more.
The college Ferris Bueller plans to attend is Grand Lakes University from the far superior Back to School which also came out that summer, and coincidentally had one of the same writers as this parody. It was about Thornton Mellon (Rodney Dangerfield), a rich businessman who never went to college, so he goes with his son Jason (Keith Gordon). His bodyguard is Lou (Burt Young). He starts dating his English professor Diane Turner (Sally Kellerman). The dean at the college is played by Ned Beatty. Edie McClurg is in this too as Thornton's secretary. History teacher Turgeson (Sam Kinison) is the same character as his stand-up persona.
EVENING SHAME
MAD #313, September 1992
w: Dennis Snee
a: Angelo Torres
Sitcom about Wood Newton (Burt Reynolds), a football player who moved back to his hometown of Evening Shade, Arkansas to coach a high school football team. The show often centered around a local diner and the other characters were his wife Ava (Marilu Henner), Evan Evans (Hal Holbook), his sister Freida (Elizabeth Ashley), Harlan Eldridge (Charles Durning), Murleen Eldridge (Anne Wedgeworth), Ponder Blue (Ossie Davis), Fontana Beausoleil (Linda Gehringer), and Herman Stiles (Michael Jeter). The show was created by Linda Bloodworth-Thomason.
Early on in the show, Ava gave birth to another child and Evan was only dating Fontana initially.
-The deputy here is Barney Fife, a character Don Knotts played on The Andy Griffith Show, which was also set in the South.
-The 800 number was what Jerry Brown used in his campaign for President in 1992. Bill Clinton was not yet elected President but was still Governor of Arkansas when this was written. Gary Hart had been a politician also brought down by a reputation for infidelity. "Inhale this" refers to a quote by Clinton while he was running. Having smoked pot was considered disqualifying for a politician at one time and Clinton tried to work his way around the question of whether he had by saying "Yes, but I didn't inhale".
BLAH-SUM
MAD #318, April 1993
w: Dennis Snee
a: Angelo Torres
The opening two pages parody the opening credits of the show with Blossom (Mayim Bialik), her brother Joey (Joey Lawrence), her other brother Tony (Michael Stoyanov), Six (Jenna von Oÿ), grandfather Buzz (Barnard Hughes), and father Nick (Ted Wass),
Blossom's boyfriend is Vinnie (David Lascher) who the father doesn't particularly like.
One recurring feature on the show was that she would have fantasy scenes from celebrities, usually playing themselves, giving her advice.
Another celebrity in the letters column reading a parody of themselves, though not a mock outrage “you'll hear from my lawyers” reaction this time
BLOSSOMED
Cracked #284, October 1993
w: Steve Strangio
a: Walter Brogan
(Indecent Proposal was a movie from around the same time where Robert Redford approached a married couple with the proposition of paying them a million dollars of spending a night with the wife).
Only the Cracked parody got into the fact that Joey Lawrence in reality was a heartthrob on his own with his catchphrase of “Whoa!”
