Hollywood's Herstory

Don't touch that clicker. Keep it tuned right here for a special episode of Strangers With Kittens. This week, Eileen and special guest Cynthia Bemis-Abrams, host and creator of Advanced TV Herstory talk TV. Discussing feminism through the 60s, 70s, 80s, and even the 90s. Moments that we watched together, shows that captured time in a bottle, and the people that kept us watching.

Together, these two revel in some of television's most iconic women, both on screen and behind the scenes. Remember the moments that forced you to pause, empowered you to be yourself, or see life through another lens
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"Cynthia Bemis Abrams is a dynamic force in the realm of media and cultural analysis, known for her insightful exploration of how television reflects and shapes societal norms. As the creator of the popular podcast Advanced TV Herstory, Cynthia delves into the feminist narratives and undercurrents within television history, bringing to light the often-overlooked contributions of women creatives. Her work is a testament to her belief in the power of storytelling to drive social change and expand cultural understanding." -AdvancedTVHerstory.com

Transcript

Eileen Kelly (00:00)
Brenda and Dylan having sex on prom night. That was like the world stopped. You know, that was not something that was ever portrayed.

Eileen Kelly (00:36)
Hi, welcome to Strangers with Kittens. I'm Eileen Kelly and I'm really glad you're here. Have you ever thought about how much time we spent watching TV? For a lot of us, it was our babysitter, our companion, our best friend, sometimes our tormentor when it was scary commercials and stuff. But TV really shaped our generation

I feel that no other generation was influenced as heavily as Gen X was by what we saw on television. We had windows into families that maybe we had never come across, like the Jeffersons and Good Times.

the short-lived sitcom Love Sydney with Tony Randall, that never came out and said he was a gay man, but it was pretty clear that he was a gay man. There were so many human stories that we were not familiar with, that we became familiar with through television. It also shaped, particularly girls.

in the way that we thought of ourselves and what was possible for us. My next guest studies just that and has a podcast called Advanced TV HERstory Please welcome Cynthia Bemis Abrams.

Eileen Kelly (01:55)
Hello.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (01:58)
Greetings this morning from Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Eileen Kelly (02:02)
It's greetings from New Jersey. It's so nice to see you.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (02:05)
I just have to say thanks for having me and I was trying to explain to my husband how it is that you contacted me about this and a woman who we both know who was listening in to a conversation that I was having in a in a cafe about helping a friend do more on LinkedIn for her business. So it's it's an interesting world. Yes, yes.

Eileen Kelly (02:26)
Christy Bellecomino, yeah.

Yeah, so just so our listeners know, after we recorded an episode, Christy recommended you. So I love this synchronicity. Yeah.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (02:38)
Yes.

Eileen Kelly (02:40)
we had a brief conversation before this, but so you host a podcast called Advanced T V.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (02:45)
Mm-hmm. Advanced TV Herstory and we connect the dots

of TV and feminism to American culture and politics. And been doing it since twenty fifteen.

Eileen Kelly (02:57)
It's such a brilliant concept. And when we were chatting, we just planned on having like a quick couple of minutes chat. And we could have gone on and on and on. And I was like, What about this? What about that? What about this? And you were like, Yes, and I'll add to it that this, this, and this. And I was like, my gosh, we have to stop because we could seriously talk for hours.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (03:17)
it's not where I thought it was gonna go when I started, but then again, podcasting has changed so much in technology and and the business of podcasting. And I'm not really in the business. I am doing this purely because I believe that the women who have created the very best T V and even still are doing it, we all recognize that they are not getting the credit they deserve. They don't get the salaries that and the and the paydays that they deserve.

Eileen Kelly (03:43)
Mm-hmm.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (03:44)
And we need to talk about that, but do it in such a way that we're also celebrating their work because in many cases th they've passed on. I mean, you know, T V's been around now in really high quality mode since, you know, kinda nineteen fifty five. So it's a it's a very long runway to try to cover some of this and then bring forward how it is that T V helped advance feminism and and bring forward so many of the the rights.

Eileen Kelly (03:58)
Yeah.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (04:11)
And the and the knowledge and the equity that we had up until recently, which is now starting to recede. And that's scary.

Eileen Kelly (04:19)
Yeah,

it is scary. I look to TV to show me other windows into other ways to live. And so before social media, television was really our only window into the rules in my house and the roles in my house and the limitations that are placed on women, they're not the only way that you can exist in the world.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (04:47)
Right.

Eileen Kelly (04:47)
That's

what TV was to me anyway. For girls in the seventies, well probably sixties, seventies, eighties. You know, in the fifties I think it was still there was a real hard grip on how women were going to be portrayed. And it was the June Cleavers that were, you know, telling women how they should be. but then the sixties, seventies, eighties, I mean, it was evolving so fast and it was so eye-opening and such a

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (05:00)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Eileen Kelly (05:15)
Such a lifeline, I feel like, for young women.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (05:20)
absolutely what I have found is that women who are older than I, say women in their seventies, d they point to Marlo Thomas and that girl as the moment. And Marlo Thomas, who was a badass feminist to say the least, although you just don't think of her. Again, we don't recognize and celebrate her for that. If you are of a certain age, you might recognize free to be you and me.

Eileen Kelly (05:25)
Mm-hmm.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (05:43)
And some of that children's programming that she was into. but she sort of quit and Gloria Steinem kept the cause going and and a few others. But Marlo Thomas and Gloria Steinem and Bella Abzug and Betty Fridan, they were all in the thick of it. It was the two generations of at that point second wave feminism. And then you get these incredibly brave, I'll call them brave, showrunners like Norman Lear.

Eileen Kelly (05:43)
Right.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (06:10)
And and even i just as brave was Mary Tyler Moore, the MTM Enterprises and all of the different series that those two showrunners or those two entities developed and and they were very complementary. It wasn't like there was competition. there was just a a real sense that women wanted to see women on T V and it was a huge market gap that was existing. And they were right.

Eileen Kelly (06:32)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I watched that girl sometimes in reruns in the mornings, like if I was home, you know, in the summer or if I was homesick from school. So I it felt dated, different than I Love Lucy, but it felt like this was of a time that has passed. You know, even as a little kid, I could sense that even though I loved the clothes and I loved the

setting and the outdoor shots and you know there was something really wonderful about it. But Mary Tyler Moore felt very of the moment because I was a little little kid when I was in prime time. And and I feel like even now I'll go back and watch old episodes and they hold up in a lot of ways. I mean they're so sexist in some ways, but there's she's pulling them along, pulling them along, you know.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (07:12)
Mm-hmm.

And

Yeah, it she I mean it was sexist i i it was very normal for the time, as was sort of that girl. The big difference of course being that there were many more women writers on Mary Tyler Moore who went on to many other series. but the door was open and they just filled the writers room with women, as well as women doing, costumes and the development of Rhoda Morgenstern and that whole look.

Eileen Kelly (07:30)
Mm-mm.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (07:48)
That was a woman who had a had a very distinct style. Casting was a woman. And so, kudos to everybody involved, including Mary having such a a strong voice in the development of the series, because, initially they were thinking maybe she should be divorced, and you know, initially this and that, and they couldn't have certain things happen because the network was pushing back. But

Eileen Kelly (07:52)
Right.

Right.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (08:11)
Mary Tyler Moore and then and then you get into the eighties and it and it just blossomed. And then, you know, what I'm really learning is that the nineties kind of became a little jaded and and also women's T V was balancing second wave and third wave audiences. But you also had cable who was then starting to cater to what became third wave feminism and and then you get into Buffy and Beverly Hills nine two one and

Eileen Kelly (08:26)
Mm.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (08:37)
Melrose Place and things like that where you still had I'm convinced, I haven't done any surveys, but I'm convinced that younger women or kids, even as we were kids watching Mary Tether More, watched Melrose Place and Beverly Hills 902 and O with the same attention to detail and and relationships and the wise counsel that we were getting from the soap operas.

Eileen Kelly (08:50)
Mm-hmm.

Hmm. Yeah. thinking back too on those series, think about the groundbreaking episodes that happened, like

Brenda and Dylan having sex on prom night. That was like the world stopped. You know, that was not something that was ever portrayed.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (09:28)
Right. In prime time. I when you think now about what we saw on in soap operas, that was kinda happening we were an older audience would have not even batted an eye, but I think because the eighties and the and the early nineties sort of I still hung up on sort of abstinence education and sex education or whatever, but yeah.

Eileen Kelly (09:50)
Because of AIDS. There

was a huge backslide in the sexual revolution because of AIDS. And the Christian or whatever you want to call it, the the Christian nationalists grabbed that and used that as an opportunity to clamp down on women's rights, on sexuality, and it really rolled things back.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (09:52)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Eileen Kelly (10:15)
And I don't I don't think we talk about that enough that the effect that it had growing up during the AIDS crisis and safe sex and everything was affected. You know, it wasn't just health class in school, it was everything. That's what we were learning about in biology class and how the virus worked and it was just

You know, I remember seeing graffiti that said sex kills. Like that's the mindset that I grew up in.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (10:46)
Right. While as women, with Roe versus Wade, you know, a and all of the technology going into whatever sort of reproductive prevention you want it to take, women of certainly my generation and going forward were focused on and I say my generation 'cause I'm kind of this baby boom ex, I'm right on the right on the cusp, college.

Eileen Kelly (11:07)
Mm-hmm.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (11:07)
It was college. It was getting a job. I don't wanna have a baby when I'm twenty or twenty one or whatever. this is my choice and my body. And I guess that was another aspect that Beverly Hills more so even than Melrose place, really you know, they they they served this content up fresh and if you are of a certain age you look at it and go, Well, we had that back in nineteen seventy six or seventy eight or whatever. but this abstinence education and the and the

Eileen Kelly (11:12)
Right.

Right. Right.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (11:35)
e almost elimination of health class and sex ed. we've been we've been sorta paying a price for that I think ever since.

Eileen Kelly (11:41)
Yes.

Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. And they really did. I'm thinking back on episodes about Brenda thinking she was pregnant and what was she going to do and I feel like Melrose Place was more the episode I remember that really kind of pushed the envelope in terms of sexuality was the gay kiss, which they ended up chickening out on. And there was a character, Matt, and I forget who he was kissing, but he was going to kiss someone on.

screen and it was going to be the first same sex on screen kiss and then they ended up pulling the shade down or something and they chickened out.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (12:17)
thirty something had an HIV

episode Designing Women ha one of their most powerful episodes, written I'm sure by Linda Blood Thomason, was about a teacher at the junior high or whatever, who was gay and I think had announced that he had HIV and, you know, you can expect the sugar bakers and and it was an Annie Potts, I think she was the one who really delivered the the monologue on that one. it was everybody was trying to understand it.

Eileen Kelly (12:46)
Right. And it was such fuel for the fire of homophobia and the Christian nationalist agenda that it really set us back, like decades.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (13:01)
Mm. Yeah. So it was

one of the things I guess I try to do in my episodes is sort of bring up where some of this stuff was in the zeitgeist, what we were thinking, how it is that episodes came to be. And the HIV episodes, you know, I wouldn't even be surprised if to some degree they've been pulled when episodes go streaming. i it's known that the Maud Abortion episode

did not go into syndication. And that was from nineteen seventeen

Eileen Kelly (13:29)
Really?

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (13:33)
I think it was. yeah. I mean they they aired it once and that was it. And I b but I do believe it is on the DVDs.

Eileen Kelly (13:33)
Eight? five, okay.

Wow.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (13:41)
So lots of decisions are being made right now and that you know, this is another one of my rants, but lots of decisions are being made by rather conservative corporate white men about what is gonna air on streaming, what continues to go into the DVD for the physical media, which I'm a firm believer in the physical media. I wanna be able to watch it whenever.

Eileen Kelly (14:02)
Right.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (14:03)
and don't get me going on my conspiracy theory about women showrunners and Murphy Brown. we're doing it the amazing part about Instagram and social media is everybody starts to have, you know, kind of they put in their little two cents. And my two cents is that it just feels very

Eileen Kelly (14:08)
I w get going. I want you to get going.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (14:24)
Very intentional that the women showrunners get a series or two or maybe even three, and then they sort of get taken off the map. And they get taken off the map in rather cryptic ways. I mean it's not the Russians pushing people out of windows, but it's kind of close. and these series sometimes they vanish or the or the showrunner just pulls back and doesn't create anything more. And when she doesn't create anything more, she's not teaching the next generation. So there is a big fall off between

Terry Louise Fisher of LA Law, basically. You know, she'd come out of Kegney and Lacey as a writer. LA Law d and Stephen Botco kind of just shoved her out the door by the second season. Linda Bloodworth Thomason is is kind of there in Missouri somewhere and doesn't do a whole lot. and she came forward saying that she had gotten an NDA and a big payoff from Les Moonvez. This all happened in two thousand eighteen that she

probably broke her NDA to say that Les Moonvez did not sexually harass her. He was the head of CBS at the time, did not, harass her, but definitely was a misogynist. And then Diane English and Murphy Brown and the fact that we can't watch Murphy Brown and how did that come to be? Because these are some of the smartest lawyers in the country. Entertainment law who had to know that VHS and D V D was all coming. So,

Eileen Kelly (15:41)
Right. And there's money to

be made. When there's money to be made, it's hard to believe that someone is powerful enough to stop it.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (15:48)
Right. But when it's Candace Bergen with that hair and those shoulder pads and some incredibly well written, skewering at that point from a very progressive standpoint. I think there were people who decided that they really did not want to have that power continue and be ceded to the next generation.

Eileen Kelly (16:00)
Right.

Wow. And so that's why she was pushed out altogether? They just didn't want her in television? Yeah.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (16:13)
Diane. you know, I'm sure

they wrote her a very healthy check. And you know, it's a little bit like my so-called life. What a fabulous series. Two and I and I did a podcast episode on it. It's called The Women of My So-Called Life. And initially I was just like, you know, wasn't it great? You know, Angela and her mother, and then

Eileen Kelly (16:20)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (16:33)
Ray Ann and her mother. And so it was these sort of yin and yang or, less structured and more structured. And that was kind of the episode that I thought. And then I was laying in bed one night thinking about it wasn't great ratings, but they'd also gotten moved around a lot. and

Eileen Kelly (16:38)
Mm.

Right, I remember that.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (16:50)
Claire Danes was you know, this is like her first big role, but Bess Armstrong, the woman who played her mother, was kind of a gold standard. And it's my belief that the whole Ricky being gay, a high school, gay person of color.

Eileen Kelly (17:01)
Mm-hmm.

Boy.

Mm-hmm.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (17:05)
who i

who is being kicked out of his house by his family and is choosing in the last episode or the second to the last episode that the gay English teacher or the gay teacher and his partner will take Ricky in so that he can complete at least the school year. And so then I was like wow, well I can imagine that there were some people who freaked out about that.

Eileen Kelly (17:30)
Right.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (17:31)
And when was this again? You know, and then you get into Clinton and Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and Who Wanted to Take the Risk on that. Now the woman who was the showrunner of my so called life is Winnie Holtzman, who has gone on to do lots of other

film, but Winnie is not doing a whole lot of TV anymore. Or else if she is, it's streaming, you know, for a a totally different set of standards. she doesn't have to deal with a network, she just has to deal with the producers and everything. I think that a lot of very, very bright women, up until Shonda Rhymes came along, a lot of bright women, hit the wall and then they just they couldn't handle the concussion.

Eileen Kelly (17:53)
Mm-hmm.

Wow. That was reminding me of the show The Fosters. Do you remember that show? So it was a lesbian couple who one woman had a child already, like she had left her marriage, and then they had some foster kids. And there was a whole movement to try to get this show taken off the air. I think it may have started on ABC, then it moved to

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (18:13)
No.

Eileen Kelly (18:37)
their kind of young adult spin-off called Freeform. And was so good and it was really well written.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (18:43)
sure. Mm-hmm.

Eileen Kelly (18:48)
'Cause there was just so much representation. every character, was a different human being from a different set of circumstances with a different orientation or motivation, there was a trans kid. that was like a huge thing with this whole boycotting of ABC. So, yeah.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (19:08)
is it this is us that was kind of the our long drama that had a lot of diversity and representation. And again, getting to the point of representation and being able to see yourself on TV, whoever you might be, is something that honestly when I started podcasting in two thousand fifteen, maybe that term existed in academia, or maybe it did if you were in a non-majority population.

Eileen Kelly (19:10)
Yeah.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (19:35)
whether it was disabled or a person of color or which ethnicity and all of that. And then slowly but surely, by 2018, people understood what representation meant. And when I say people, I mostly mean white people. Because we are the ones who can sit and watch cheers and you're just delighted, right? And it feels so it feels so good. And it's like, well yeah, it feels so good because there's not a single person who isn't white

Eileen Kelly (19:49)
Right.

Right.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (19:59)
and a sarcastic man in there.

Eileen Kelly (20:01)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, so true. And it really is so important.

when my kids were little, when my I have I have 22 year old twins, then I have a 15 year old son. And when my twins were little, I always brought them to a female pediatrician. We had one and then she ended up closing her practice, and then we moved to another one. And my son was maybe he was pretty old.

He might have been like ten, and he's sitting in the back of the car, and I don't know if we were on our way to the doctor or what we were doing, but all of a sudden out of the blue he goes to me, Mom, can boys be doctors?

That's how powerful representation is. That's not anything I even thought would be a question, because that's mostly what you see. I mean, especially, you know, when we were growing up, that's all you saw. But he didn't. And so he wasn't sure. And when you put that into every other situation, right? Like Cheers, for instance.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (20:46)
It really is.

Eileen Kelly (21:13)
you're a person of color watching this show. Huh. I don't see anyone that looks anything like me, you know?

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (21:20)
Right.

And and the two women who I could sort of relate to in nineteen eighty two, one was a woman who was really quite bright, who was underemployed and insulted most days. And then the other one was very blue collar, high school degree, just sort of sarcastic and biting Yeah, yeah.

Eileen Kelly (21:31)
Mm-hmm. Constantly.

and cold and bitter.

Yeah.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (21:41)
And and it's like that wasn't that's not where I went to see myself. But then at that same time and again that's in the comedy realm, but then you had Hill Street Blues and the fact that Betty Thomas as a uniformed woman police officer, and then Veronica Hamill as the very, professional and smooth

Eileen Kelly (21:50)
Mm-hmm.

I don't know.

Ernie.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (22:03)
Public defender. very different characters, and yet they really propelled that series. And I mean I've gotten feedback. I did an early episode on the Hill Street Blues Women, and people women lawyers in particular said Joyce Davenport helped them make a decision to go into law. I mean, people today need to understand that we would take almost anything you could get and and sort of hang

Eileen Kelly (22:25)
Yes.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (22:26)
our hat on. I can do that. And actually one of the episodes, an interview I've got coming up is with Linda Kelsey, Minneapolis or you know Minnesota's Linda Kelsey, who was the reporter on Lou Grant. And Lou Grant ran from 77 to 1982 and it was the it was a drama and it was set in a California

Eileen Kelly (22:28)
Yes.

Lou Grant, I'm thinking Mark Mary Taylor Moore. Yes, yes.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (22:48)
newspaper. every single one of any of those women f late basically from the late seventies all the way through past Cagney and Lacey and all of that, very, very powerful and really brought along then

the third wave of feminism, kind of managed the transition from the second to the third because they were showing that these women could exist in the workplace and could fight for their rights and and fight for advancement.

Eileen Kelly (23:14)
Right, and it was more, we're just here and we're doing our job, deal with it. And less asking permission and educating and dragging their coworkers or superiors along. I remember feeling noticing that as a kid, watching Cagney and Lacey and loving it and feeling so empowered by it.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (23:34)
There's so far still that we have to go to get to something that looks like equity that we can't waste a single voice or a single opportunity.

Eileen Kelly (23:38)
Uh-huh.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (23:43)
I did one episode on that and then I've done some follow up on sort of what came about from all of that. But there were really only two episodes that rolled out of it. And one was a designing women episode, where the women are just sort of up in arms, but it's a very point counterpoint approach. And then the other is a different world.

Eileen Kelly (23:56)
Yeah.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (24:02)
A Different World is just such a transformational series and was so genius.

Eileen Kelly (24:08)
I caught a couple of episodes of a different world, but I didn't really get a sense of it.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (24:14)
it's worth picking up in syndication it airs on BET or Ion, I think. kinda consistently. Very well written and Debbie Allen knew exactly what she was doing and she just it is now truly classic and I just give them a lot of credit for tackling race issues from the black perspective as it should be done.

from the younger person black perspective, at a time when we were on the cusp of being able to just really solidify the change. So

Eileen Kelly (24:48)
feel like that there was such a backslide is in the late 80s, early 90s when Spike Lee was making Do the Right Thing and and weirdly, Fox, and maybe this is before Murdoch owned it, I don't really know what happened, but Fox was the young person's station. Beverly Hills 90210, 21 Jump Street, living single.

they were groundbreaking shows Living Single was four black women. Where else were you gonna see that? They really were yeah, go ahead.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (25:22)
Right. And it was and it started

a year before Friends. Yeah.

Eileen Kelly (25:27)
Yeah.

And it was I mean, I didn't miss it. It was hilarious. they had a much smaller budget than friends did. And they made it work. It was great.

I don't know what happened. I don't know if Murdoch didn't own it then or what, but Fox was like young, progressive, cutting edge I mean 21 Jump Street, there were I think two women in it, Holly Robinson, Holly Robinson, Pete now, and I don't remember

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (25:49)
Yeah. yeah.

I I I'm I have a list of some of the writers because some of those writers went on then to other series. there is a lot of information out there about Fox, which then was the WB because it was also where the Simpsons started. and that was the Simpsons actually started as little shorts out of the Tracy Ellman show, which is genius.

Eileen Kelly (25:56)
The other woman.

Right, right.

Yes.

Yes. And in living color. Amazing.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (26:18)
and yeah.

So there's a lot out there.

How

it was available and why the decisions were made to basically close the door on it because it's a part of understanding, we live with streaming and we live with sort of T V being able to come at us and if you can't get it that Yeah, and that somebody can if nothing else toss it up on YouTube or whatever. and they also hear us y you know

Eileen Kelly (26:36)
A la carte.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (26:43)
of a certain age just talk about the fact that we had the three broadcasts, the three networks and then maybe you had public television or maybe you had the local

channel which was mostly syndicated, you know, Hogan's Heroes and Green Acres kind of thing. So, there were a few years where that the power of the independent the UHF networks also then original cable programming and premium cable programming changed everything.

Eileen Kelly (27:09)
I feel like for Gen X, Fox was so pivotal to our young adulthood. And then it was just kind of gone, but I feel like it was not the same as MTV, but it was important in that way that MTV was important for showing us

these cultural phenomena, and exposing us to all this stuff. And mad TV and Living Color. I mean, you think about the huge stars that came out of these shows. And they wouldn't have found a home on SNL or on NBC Mussy Thursdays or whatever. That living single was not gonna be on a network like that.

Or Martin or Rock,

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (27:54)
And at that point the expectations of what it took to make money you got to a point where other than some of the police procedural franchises, everything else in the nineties and early two thousands was starting to become reality TV. Whether it was American Idol, Who Wants to be a Millionaire,

Eileen Kelly (28:09)
Yeah.

Big brother,

fear factor, survivor. Yeah. Yep.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (28:16)
Exactly. Because that was all so much cheaper to to produce. And

and yet also if you want to say, well, cheaper to produce, then why didn't you get an Austin City limits on the big networks or symphonies or whatever you could have done to at least increase Yeah. Yeah. At a at a cultural factor, please. So the economics

Eileen Kelly (28:29)
Mm. Right. It had to be the lowest common denominator. Yeah. Yeah. No, it was awful. Well who's that guy? Mark,

somebody? Yeah.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (28:41)
The economics

really was something where they did not want to take a chance because they were already starting to hemorrhage money and the mergers were starting to happen. But cable was such a threat. Yeah.

Eileen Kelly (28:53)
Yeah.

Yeah, I don't think I remember I was working at an ad agency when Survivor came on and Survivor modeled itself. The network started taking lessons from Fox. Because remember the way Fox, they were such a young upstart, they came in in the summer when there was no new programming. Everything else was in repeats. So people were, you know, weren't really watching TV because they'd already seen all the episodes.

And then all of a sudden, brand new episode of a new series called 90210 or Melrose Place or you know Living Single, whatever. It was in the summer. So everybody was like hungry for new programming. And they came in and then they continued on through the fall and kept that audience. And so the shows that people watched on NBC and CBS in the in September suffered because they were now people were hooked on Melrose Place.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (29:45)
Yes, and the demographic of who was watching weren't getting fed off of the ABC, NBC, and CBS anyway.

Eileen Kelly (29:52)
That's right.

They weren't watching Murder She Wrote and Matlock and stuff like that. Yeah, truly. I mean, you know, Party of Five, that was another one that was huge on Fox. And it just spoke to you as a young person. The music, the theme song was cool, like the it was shot on film, like it just felt elevated and intelligent and of the moment. And there was so little of that before.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (29:56)
Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

the the power of T V you know, I keep saying it, but it is so under appreciated.

Eileen Kelly (30:26)
Yeah. And I feel like our generation of women in particular, but b men too, boys too, were shaped so much by what we saw on television. And we were look, we spent a lot of time in front of TVs. We were latchkey kids, we were alone a lot, we were left to our own devices, and we were watching a lot of television and consuming a lot of this, these ideas and to hear

what was going on behind the scenes and the person behind these ideas or and also maybe what they were trying to do versus what they were eventually able to do based on the pushback they got from networks and things is really interesting.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (31:06)
Yeah.

Yeah, just that point alone. And I I can go through every decade of television where s somebody has told a story on the podcast about something that they tried to make happen, so you know, the wish, the whatever. The most the earliest one and the one that is truly is a story of podcasting is that last December I interviewed Donna Reed's daughter, Mary Owen. Donna Reed for

People who don't know, you know, the Donna Reed show was so different in terms of the depiction of a woman because this was, yes, a homemaker, but the T V series revolved around Donna Reed, who had been, prior to T V a huge film star, including It's a Wonderful Life.

Eileen Kelly (31:39)
Yeah.

It's a wonderful life. She was Mary, a female

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (31:54)
So

Eileen Kelly (31:54)
lead.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (31:54)
Mary and I are chit chatting and and I mean the the that the fascinating conversation with her had also to do with how do you preserve a legacy of your mother who has now been gone since nineteen eighty something, and who had such a body of work and still has a following of people who are in their, you know, now in their, you know, seventies, eighties and nineties. so we're talking a little bit about the T V series 'cause I went and, you know, watched a bunch of episodes and there are is

Eileen Kelly (32:18)
Right.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (32:23)
a definite feminist strand. She is through body language, through the the scripts themselves, just the fact that they were choosing some little conflict that was happening in their household gave you an indication that this is a working woman and this is a woman who is producing her show and she's not gonna be made the butt of her own show. And then Mary says, yes, she was made aware of an interview with a journalist

That Donna Reed had conducted in 1984, 85 when she was doing Dallas, she replaced Barbara Belgeddies shortly on Dallas for just a short period of time. And Donna was telling this journalist that back in 19 the early, the ear the first after I think the first successful season.

Eileen Kelly (32:59)
Mm-hmm.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (33:09)
that they were having conversations with the network and they wanted to have a little black neighbor boy be the kind of kid that could just, you know, tap on the screen door and then come in and have cookies and milk after after school. And the network said no.

Eileen Kelly (33:22)
Mm-hmm.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (33:25)
And the journalist, you know, again in the eighties did not press her anymore. That w she told that story and it is so muffled that I couldn't even use that audio when I was sitting at the New York Public Library

Eileen Kelly (33:25)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (33:38)
listening to it. I was like having to transcri you know, I was writing down every single phrase because it was just such poor quality. But it was there, and that's Donna Reed. And that's Donna Reed saying that in nineteen fifty nine, nineteen sixty one, whatever it was, no, the networks did not want to have a little black boy show up at the doorstep. I just I'm like, I got a few more questions. So

Eileen Kelly (33:47)
Mm.

back to Murphy Brown, it just doesn't you can't find it on streaming anywhere.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (34:07)
So they initially it was in syndication and again this is undoubtedly some part of the contracts that were created, through the course of its nine year run.

And I'll be the first to admit that the later years weren't as good. they had Murphy get breast cancer and just lots of different things and the the sta the cast turned over a little bit. But the first season is available on DVD and then the rest aren't. And and a lot of times the excuse is the amount of music and how expensive it would have been to get the music rights to put on DVD.

Eileen Kelly (34:23)
Mm-hmm.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (34:45)
Well, I mean that that ship sort of sailed with China Beach and WKRP, although th and they were able to substitute some WKRP music. It's it's

Eileen Kelly (34:56)
Right. And I was just

gonna say, like I remember the show Charmed had this song by Love Spit Love as their theme song. And then when the license expired it just went to some weird, kind of generic y something that someone threw in there.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (35:15)
And you know, and so then now that we're at the stage of streaming and and I I did an interview back earlier this year with the executive vice president at Weigold Broadcasting, who creates Start TV and Me T V and they are carrying all of these really great series and bringing them back into format. And the the negotiations with

what seasons are available of the Donna Reed Show and every season but the last season because somebody had the the production changed and the rights aren't available and a streaming network isn't necessarily gonna want to work too hard to get it. it's mistakes that were made forty years ago in some cases, not that they were necessarily lazy, but perhaps they weren't necessarily at the top of the game.

Eileen Kelly (36:00)
Right. Right. It was going to go and to just have it locked down tight. It's kind of messy now.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (36:00)
in media law to understand where technology was going.

Yeah. and

you really you would probably really have to want it in order to get lawyers to focus on it. And that actually was some of the conversation I had with Sherry Lewis's daughter Mallory Lewis, because you had Sherry Lewis who died fairly rapidly after having announced that she had ovarian cancer. And at the same time

the basic the copyright and trademarking of Lamb Chop and everything else, i it lapsed and people on the backside of the business weren't paying attention. And then all of a sudden the people who owned the rights to everything that was then sitting there w did not really want to play ball and and it was Sony and it was, you know, it it's Sherry Lamb you know, Sherry and Lamb Chop, it that's nothing to them.

Eileen Kelly (36:42)
Mm.

Right, yeah. Yeah.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (36:56)
So

clawing back and getting this stuff to the point where it can even be put back into the public realm is hard, hard long work.

Eileen Kelly (37:11)
Sorry, I have a little dog next door that barks a lot. And then once she starts barking, then they get all activated by it. Quiet guys.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (37:23)
So do I get to ask you what was the T V show that

you saw when you were young that sort of made you see yourself? And did it have to do with comedy?

Eileen Kelly (37:34)
It did. Well, okay. So I didn't think of it as I wanna be her. I just knew I wanted to be in this space. Like I didn't think of it as an option for me, but I used to sneak down. I remember being in first grade and sneaking downstairs to watch Johnny Carson. And like I would fall like it's weird to fall asleep in class when you're in first grade. You know, like if you're a teenager.

Maybe. I used to fall asleep in class all the time in first grade and get in trouble because I was up watching Johnny Carson and I only wanted to see the comedians and I wanted to see Phyllis Diller and then Joan Rivers and then you know later in the eighties Roseanne Barr. But seeing women speak their mind and be funny.

And kind of outrageous, like Phil is stiller with her clothes and her wigs, and it wasn't about being pretty, like she made herself less attractive, which I found fascinating and magnetic. And talking about her husband and her mother in law, and it just was so powerful.

So that was, I think that had the biggest impact on me. And then the Dick Van Dyke show, I just loved Ama Libra. I am really into design. I've redone a lot of homes and I I just love the Pea Trees apartment. I loved their furniture. I really watched it mostly for that. kind of bugged me that I love Dick Van Dyke, but it bugged me that he didn't give Mary Teller more and more.

you know, space to to be as talented as she was. but she wore pants, which was pretty amazing. And and then Maritall Moore. Watching that as a as a little kid, like kindergarten, it would kind of be in the background and my older sisters would be sewing clothes and kinda had it on and, you know, my parents not around,

my parents would never watch a show like that. And I think if my mother had, she would have had a lot of negative things to say about it. But speaking of Hill Street Blues, I remember my mother hating Joyce, the character of Joyce. She was too big for her britches. Who did she think she was? And I remember clocking that and being like, yeah, that's who I wanna be, you know.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (39:47)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Eileen Kelly (40:06)
Anytime it was like I don't like her because she's too much, I'd be like, I wanna be too much.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (40:06)
Every

Yeah. that was a too much and then you had all of the women of LA Law because it wasn't that many years after Hill Street Blues started that LA Law rolled along. And and there were some who were too much and then there were sort of some who weren't enough. you we started being able to calibrate how you would show up in the workplace.

Eileen Kelly (40:22)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (40:34)
by these reactions, you know. That's so and I had the same thing. my mother I don't know that I ever actually asked her, but I find the whole Judy Garland show, nineteen sixty three to nineteen sixty four, twenty six episodes, it's fabulous. It's this time capsule and and the closing it was early Bob Mackey and and she's just you know

Eileen Kelly (40:48)
I love it. Yeah, I've seen my God. Some of those variety

shows. my God, gorgeous.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (40:55)
And I just I kind of feel like if I had ever said the word the name Judy Garland to my mom, I all I can expect is that she would have gone, Ugh. You know? and maybe that's just because what she remembered were the last years where she looked so incredibly, you know, sick, which she was. But it's like, Mom, you know, the judgment Yeah, yeah, right. The judgment.

Eileen Kelly (41:15)
How do you think she got that way? Yeah. They the

yeah, the decades of women judging women.

about how they are now and not questioning where they came from, what happened, what's the what was the catalyst to make them turn to drugs, to alcohol, to whatever, you know? I hope I'm

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (41:41)
Yeah. Well that was getting raped

by Louis B. Mayer when she was thirteen, and just kind of continuing on this this body thing for a second, or judgment, I should say. Just recently,

Eileen Kelly (41:45)
Yeah.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (41:51)
And I feel like this is an our generation moment and maybe it's more white women than even women of color. Because I think ten, twelve years ago we all thought that body positivity and and body acceptance was a good thing and we had grown, right? And we were we were trying to see people for who they are rather than some model of perfection that we had all lived through and we had to fit into.

And now you have Gen X saying, I don't want to go back to heroin chic. We saw what that was like. We saw how unpleasant it was to be a young woman who had to try to conform to that and aren't we smarter? Didn't we didn't we live through this so that the next generation didn't have to? What what is your thought on on that? Because I I'm not around young young women anymore, but

Eileen Kelly (42:25)
Mm-hmm.

I will say that there's still boss body positivity much more so in Gen Z. commenting on someone's body at all is is a no and they call people out on it. Regardless. Even if you even if someone says like I don't know, they ha they are in such great shape or they, you know, even if it's something that you think is positive.

they will say, Don't comment on someone's body which I really love. but I think that you can erase it totally.

There's al

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (43:22)
I mean it's with the

you know, it's with the best of intentions that they don't want you know, fifty five year old women want to impart their wisdom that it's your body and by the way, all of this messaging about you not liking your body didn't come this didn't exist before media, let alone before social media.

Eileen Kelly (43:44)
Right.

And now with a lot of diet drugs, and I'm not I'm not being negative about them. I know that they've helped a lot of people, but I think they're also being abused. And I also think that a lot of celebrities are going overboard with them and they're looking scary in the media and young women are picking up what they're putting down, you know.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (44:14)
Yeah. Yeah. i to understand the eating disorders that existed of the stars that we know and the stars who we lost, including Karen Carpenter, is the biggest one. it is just the the feeling that we have so few women to

there are people telling people

to do things to their body that it's just not worth it. women in and out of entertainment recognize that those are pressures that the world is putting on them that they don't need to put on themselves.

Eileen Kelly (44:47)
Yeah,

Yeah, I do think that young people, granted, I live in a blue bubble, but like by design. I've been outside the bubble. I like life better inside the bubble. but I do think that young people are exposed to a lot more for good and for bad, but mostly for good, on social media. they have the advantage that we didn't have of

Of being able to see so many different ways of living. And I do think that our natural inclination, our souls, right, we want good.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (45:27)
Mm. Yeah. So as a funny lady, can I ask you one more question, funny lady? Who of all of the the the women on screen on TV, who had the best timing or capacity to deliver a line? probably it's gonna probably come out of a sitcom.

Eileen Kelly (45:48)
God, that's hard to narrow it down to one, but the person's face that popped in my head as you were asking that question was Jean Stapleton.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (45:50)
Or, you know, give me

Eileen Kelly (45:57)
Her reactions, her just pondering face was hilarious. And

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (46:06)
Yeah, she

had she had a lot of facial control.

Eileen Kelly (46:10)
Yeah. her just her physicality, her energy, her and and also just how much you loved her, you know? Like she just elicited such love and empathy and sympathy and and I feel like because all the other characters were so big around her, sometimes

People didn't necessarily see her genius, you know?

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (46:41)
Yeah, yeah, and and I was just thinking, when you said the the big people around her, just how they had her costumed, her wardrobe was always very muted. Greens and beigas and browns and and then Sally Struthers would as her daughter would kinda get some of the blues and the brights and the yellows and things like that. But yeah. I had it it that had never occurred to me always.

Eileen Kelly (46:52)
Yes. Browns, mousy brown.

Right. And the and the you know, the bell bottom

hip huggers and stuff, and that was all very eye catching, you know?

Characters back then, female characters to identify with, And even though nine two one was kind of melodramatic, like it I watched that show religiously.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (47:18)
Yeah. And and the

I I lean into Betty White, in part because it just feels like whenever you see the outtakes from the Golden Girls or the little bits that are available of Mary Tyler Moore or Hot in Cleveland, everybody is just falling over themselves laughing. And she certainly w was recognized for her timing, which she honed over a, you know, a seventy year career, seventy five year career.

Eileen Kelly (47:39)
Yeah.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (47:51)
And so when I watch Hot in Cleveland, it i Valerie Bertinelli, you can just tell of the look on her face when she is trying really hard to just hold it all together. And that that's that's the fun part because it's like, you know, there are people who have careers where they just get to laugh all day and and try to keep it all in, which I don't think I could do, you know, 'cause you get to a point where you're laughing so hard. But yeah, I I think about Betty White

Eileen Kelly (48:12)
Right.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (48:15)
a very, very talented stable of women who were p playing not even like secondary characters, but like, you know, repeat characters six times through the course of a twenty two episode season. And they had come from theater and they really didn't get a chance to show their chops because you just didn't do that in the seventies and eighties. You didn't you didn't bring up black women in to be funny. Yeah.

Eileen Kelly (48:27)
Yeah.

Right.

Yeah, and there was such limited opportunity. Mhm. Or it had

to be so typecast.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (48:41)
If you go into LA law, you get Jimmy s Jimmy Smith's and Blair Underwood and every once in a while they would basically say, so you want the token, you know, you want the token Hispanic, you know, the Mexican or whatever. You know, they brought that forward in a way that that there were no th sometimes the women would be making sorts of those comments and for the most part I would say that LA law is

Eileen Kelly (48:45)
I'm Blair Underwood.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (49:05)
writing is more progressive than we give it credit for. it it feels like a throwaway show when in fact they were working really hard and some of those writers w have gone on to other series. Then in the nineties it was Dr. Peter Benton in ER and he really brought home how hard he needed to work and that was, you know, through in the course of his character's many arcs, he he made that crystal clear. And and for many, I'm sure white viewers

Eileen Kelly (49:22)
Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (49:35)
This was the first time they had thought about that.

Eileen Kelly (49:38)
Right, and how he was putting Noah Wiley through his paces and I feel like on more than one occasion said, Don't think you because you're a because if I don't if I remember correctly, Carter, that character, came from a wealthy family. And he was like, Don't think because you're wealthy and white, you're gonna sail through your residency. there were many times where he addressed it head on.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (50:02)
Yeah. it again, this is all just culture through TV and the fact that

As long as it's been preserved and that's another story entirely, as long as it's preserved, it's available. And it and it's a an easy, nonpartisan way to have a conversation about where this country has been, and who brought us along to get to not so much to get to here, but to get to where we were, say or twelve years ago.

Eileen Kelly (50:27)
Right. Right.

Well said.

you

don't get from here to here without a lot of steps in between and recognizing that this was a step to that. And without this, there wouldn't be this.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (50:46)
And then it's all hard work. Because if it was easy everybody would be doing it. Yeah.

Eileen Kelly (50:48)
Yeah, it's all hard work and a vigilance. That's

right. Yeah, and then just to your point, also not allowing the people who are doing the hard work to get bullied out of it.

Which is what happened to a lot of talented women.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (51:11)
Yeah. That you have to have not only the backbone to stick to your principles and not take a buy out or not take the easy way out, it's your it's your life and it's your creativity and it's being recognized and you'll find another way to make a difference and

Why shouldn't I get mine? it's it's a you know, I can't jud it without any knowledge of any of this, I can't judge. all I can do is lament that we have so much great talent was never really able to live in the space and to produce in the space, create the way that so many men have.

Eileen Kelly (51:29)
Yeah.

Right.

and evolve and what could have become of them, who knows?

Yeah. It's a bummer, but hopefully because we have come to a place where women are so much more supportive of other women, where we've finally rejected that patriarchal mindset of pitting one against another, that there isn't enough to go around. So you can't invite your sister to come along because there's only one spot and you have to claw your way into it. hopefully there'll be less of that.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (52:26)
I would hope so, because you've got some very smart now wealthy women who are producing and and have media companies and presumably have learned the lessons of their past, but then when they sort of seep out and become shills for artificial intelligence, I'm like, hmm, you know, money is a money is a very powerful intoxicant

Eileen Kelly (52:43)
Yeah.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (52:49)
sorry, geez. Is this one of your more heavy episodes?

Eileen Kelly (52:54)
I've I've gotten much darker than this. This isn't dark, but it's serious. I think it's it's if we're striking the right note because it is important and I and I think that our generation

For our generation, women in television was so important because that's who we spent the most time with. I mean, I think our generation spent more time watching television than probably any generation before or since. And so the fact that women characters were becoming more independent, stronger, had

jobs that we hadn't seen before. It really shaped us in a way that I don't think other generations were shaped.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (53:41)
I think you're right. And if if you could do a feminist timeline of feminist influential experiences and you have

you know, at least going back to the the second wave or what informed the second wave. Well that was really World War Two. Inasmuch as so many of our grandmothers and great grandmothers went out and either had huge gardens and were contributing that way and all the men were and Exactly. So all of that that exposure to what they could do, because they had never really been

Eileen Kelly (54:09)
Or we're like building planes or playing baseball or whatever, you know.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (54:20)
i afforded that. and they've barely been afforded the vote before all of that happened.

Eileen Kelly (54:24)
Right.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (54:24)
And

then what they created and where the second wave was, well, T V was just barely budding by the time you get the Betty Fridan's and the Marlo Thomas's, right? And that was a a relatively short period of time and it's all stacked on top of so much other social change. For instance, the Civil Rights Act of nineteen sixty four. And then what sorta created five, six, seven years of just civil rights and equal rights just

rocking the system.

Eileen Kelly (54:53)
Right.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (54:53)
I mean that was so so T V then became sort of the the happy entertainment. They didn't want to get too serious. Then finally everything starts to sort of gel a little bit. The power of T V is starting to be understood. And that's when women were stepping in. There were really good some really great men, showrunners and producers and and writers and things. And the actors the women actors followed suit and there we all were just waiting and

waiting not just for the three channels, but then for ultimately cable. And it's it you you just don't get to where we are today without that big chunk of T V taking over because we didn't have World War Two.

Eileen Kelly (55:38)
Right.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (55:38)
And

Eileen Kelly (55:38)
And so television was everything for me. And because I was a latchkey kid and because I was alone a lot, it was my babysitter, it was my companion, it was my role model and shaped me so much. and let me know what was possible.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (55:59)
And it became our education, our health education because w you know, nobody talked about breast cancer, at least not until Betty Ford was diagnosed with it and had her surgery and

Eileen Kelly (56:03)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (56:12)
You know, Gerald Ford is literally crying, you know, s at the hospital and I mean that was all just very moving and and she took us through some some really important stages in her life. And they felt like, you know, that was that was news and it was some some woman who wanted to talk about it. Well no woman in my family ever wanted to talk about anything health related.

Eileen Kelly (56:34)
Anything.

Nope. Anything. So I absorbed it like a sponge. I mean they taught me so much. Those made for TV movies were bold back then.

Do you remember there was one called There's something about Amelia, where Ted Danson was an incestuous father?

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (56:56)
N no, but it doesn't surprise me. and

Eileen Kelly (56:58)
mean I was in like junior high school and it was like,

What is going on?

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (57:03)
And Farah Fawcett in The Burning Bed and Meredith Baxter in An Eating Disorder One. Yeah, it they won't

Eileen Kelly (57:06)
Burning Bed. Baxter Burney.

Mm-hmm. Burning Bed

Anyway, there was one

with Richard Krenna where he was a horribly abusive police officer. He was horrible to women, and he ends up getting raped. This was made for TV. And it was called like the rape of so and so, like his character's name. And I think back on some of the stuff that was on television back then, and it's pretty

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (57:26)
Wow.

Eileen Kelly (57:39)
Impressive and shocking.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (57:41)
The Made for TV movies came along at a time when the films coming out of Hollywood were not as strong and the and the activity because of how family schedules were that even adults weren't going to the theater.

to see movies,

And then the Made for TV movies, which had

Call it social progress as the agenda, whether it was mental health, physical health, social justice issues, and all of these, made for TV, the mini series, all of it, you had literally Broadway you had Hollywood caliber talent. Film stars could be paid enough that they would deign to go on TV. That that was when the separation between film and TV collapsed and all of a sudden.

Eileen Kelly (58:28)
Mm-hmm.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (58:28)
sudden

if it was if it was a good pay and it was a well written script, I would do it. And and that's how you got to see Helen Hayes some of the biggest names, Mickey Moody and Ben yes, Betty Davis, Joan Cro

Eileen Kelly (58:35)
Betty Davis. Betty Davis

went on a horror movie road for a while. She was terrifying to me as a kid. Like I didn't know her in her heyday. I knew her from these made for TV terrifying movies.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (58:52)
Yeah, and yeah, and Jane Fonda was I mean everybody they are almost unfindable today because they were not they were not preserved the way that series were preserved. They it was never really expected they would ever rerun again even. And they weren't necessarily packaged for even VHS.

Eileen Kelly (58:59)
Yeah.

Mm. Yeah.

Hmm. Yeah, there were some really scary made for TV movies, like three parters. There was one about John Wayne Gacy starring The actor that Dennett

You know him. He was in everything. He was like a big blonde, like football build. He played John Wayne Gacy. He was terrifying.

Well, I can think of Richard Cratner right now. I I can't remember this guy's name. Valerie Burtonelli was in one. She was in a few, but she was in one that was really scary and I feel like it was so it was about her sister being murdered and it was I don't know what it was called, but it was terrifying and it was like a three parter.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (59:47)
It's

Eileen Kelly (59:58)
Yeah, there were quite a lot and the quality was really high.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (1:00:03)
the only ones that IMDB are popping up are from two thousand nineteen, two thousand and twenty two.

Eileen Kelly (1:00:11)
Denehee, Brian Denih.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (1:00:13)
Brian Dunahy, sure, sure. Yeah, he's passed.

Eileen Kelly (1:00:15)
Yeah. He played John

Wayne Gacy and man was it scary. And it was, I don't know, a three or four parter. and there were a lot of movies like that. for some reason, I don't know, the seventies and eighties, the horror genre was at its peak.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (1:00:28)
Yeah. You know, they they pushed it

as as much as they could without as long as it was showing after eight o'clock or after, you know, family viewing hour and all of that. It you know, it was no more or less violent than what you were seeing in, Banachek or Night Stalker or whatever. So

Eileen Kelly (1:00:45)
yeah,

Night Stalker. I loved that show. That was also scary. yeah, and Valerie Bertinelli played the sister of a murder victim. I think her husband murdered her, but they couldn't prove it. It was so good. She did a lot of good made for T V movies.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (1:01:02)
And Lindsay Wagner I think she and Meredith Baxter probably have very similar filmographies from made for T V movies, but they got us through all of it. Everything from sexual harassment and assault and divorce and all of the things.

Eileen Kelly (1:01:08)
Yeah.

like they were almo

they were almost like the after school specials for adults. Right? They had social agendas.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (1:01:22)
Yeah, really. Really. That

they did and they taught, you know, they were teaching women who otherwise couldn't talk about these things at, you know, at church or with the neighbor ladies or if they worked outside the home. But if they were kind of housebound, this was their this was their connection to what how other people lived the same way that you started this conversation with I learned a lot about how to live by watching women on TV.

Eileen Kelly (1:01:38)
Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Yeah,

and I and I do think that most women of our generation did. And most women were shaped very much by what they saw other women doing on television. You know, when they were girls watching women on television shaped them probably in ways that no other generation has before or since.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (1:02:15)
Y and you know

some people would say maybe, well, we're making too much of a blanket statement about this, that we're we're giving too much power to T V. And a few thoughts. Number one is we don't have nearly the record and the proof of what our childhoods were like because we didn't we weren't taking pictures of ourselves every day. and and unless you journaled about it all, which I didn't, you just weren't really necessarily thinking about the future but

Eileen Kelly (1:02:22)
yeah.

Right.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (1:02:45)
But here was this thing that filled time when you were bored and we were bored. But even for a woman today who either realistically can say, we didn't have a TV or you know, I was always busy doing other things, so I never really got into shows, they still experienced as you do with the result of intersectional feminism, everybody, everybody's situation has changed.

So even if you never watched Cagney and Lacey or Police Woman, you know, eight years earlier or Law and Order eight years later, women are walking around with with better posture and better capacity to process things because that's where that's where they learned it. And

Eileen Kelly (1:03:23)
Mm-hmm.

Right, and also

they're talking to the person who maybe didn't watch it, but giving advice to this person with the information and wisdom that they've taken from these shows, from these characters, from these storylines.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (1:03:53)
Because whether it's the golden girls or

Or any of the Norman Lear series, or living single. So many of these particularly sitcoms, work off of sort of universal conflict. it is universal in terms of the construction of the story, but then also the universal principles of lying and being caught lying and cheating and sparing somebody else's feelings with a little white lie and

things that are universal to humanity and that's what keeps them timeless.

Eileen Kelly (1:04:23)
Right.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. the other thing is I remember going into school and discussing made-for-TV

movies or after school specials or even reruns of good times that were on at 4.30 the next day talking to friends about it.

my gosh, did you see good times yesterday? This happened and that happened and you know, discussing it. And it really was shaping us.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (1:04:49)
I guess I now that you say that, I'm pretty sure that there were at least in a couple different when I was in probably junior high and high school where like literally the school district had videotaped whether it was a made for T V movie or a mini series that was based on literature or whatever. that was the easy class because you got to watch a movie for half of it or all of it or two of

Eileen Kelly (1:05:12)
Yeah.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (1:05:13)
And schools didn't have to pay for the licensing rights or anything. They just made sure that somebody was there to press record.

Eileen Kelly (1:05:19)
Hit record, yeah. It was that simple back then. I really I think that what you do is so important because women during the 60s, 70s, 80s on television shaped our generation in a way that I don't think has happened before or since. And examining it and asking questions and going back and

rewatching it, discussing it, i it's important and I'm really glad you're doing what you're doing.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (1:05:57)
Well thank you. Thank you. I will say that while you got into this with comedy and and that it is more Herstory the comedy of the human existence versus something that's biting and satiric and, you know, kinda

kind of mean and everything, you are able to navigate through pop culture Herstory as good as anybody. you know, the the impact of the AIDS crisis or, kind of l these things that we have lived through, you've given the milestones enough attention that the context becomes easy to then fortify.

you've done a lot of thinking about this stuff and what's important. And because this audience, at least to my understanding, women between call it forty five and sixty five, we still have a lot left in the tank. And and that's and that's both a lot left in the tank that is positive and a lot that is making us angry.

Eileen Kelly (1:06:47)
We sure do.

Yes.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (1:06:55)
And

and we need to recognize the things that bring us together and I, think we just can't talk enough about and to perhaps make sure that our white listeners in particular realize that that is one more area where the inequity persisted for

Eileen Kelly (1:07:16)
And I think because women, especially our generation and the previous generation, have been conditioned for so long to feel like

I mean, we watched many movies where the woman would just wait to be saved. Right? That's what we have to keep reminding ourselves. We are the heroes. We are the ones that need to do something about it.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (1:07:41)
And it becomes as simple an action as deciding that you're gonna take your sons to a woman doctor, pediatrician, for as long as you possibly can, that they recognize this is normal, and that because it is normal, they see a woman scientist, a woman who understands public health, a woman who is compassionate in delivering care who isn't their mother.

And that's important.

Eileen Kelly (1:08:09)
It really is. It is. And I'll tell you, there are a couple of moments in my experience as a mother that stay with me. And you know, motherhood is hard and there's a lot of there's a lot of difficult times and times where you're kind of clawing your way through the day. But then there are moments that you're like, okay, I'm doing a good job.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (1:08:33)
So it's it's a moment where we all can just get along because we've got each other to to help us. And I think that's where strangers with kittens creates a very safe space to have these conversations.

recognizing that we are who we are and or at least willing to talk about it.

Eileen Kelly (1:08:50)
Yeah,

and and learn and evolve.

Well, thank you so much for being here. It's been lovely talking to you. And I want everyone to to go check out your website, check out your podcast, Advanced TV Herstory, which is on Apple Podcasts and anywhere you get your podcasts.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (1:08:52)
Right.

I

Yep.

the podcast comes out in video form. and audio. So you can go to YouTube, Spotify, Pandora. my website is Cynthia Bemis Abrams dot com. Also my little cheat is T V Hurstory dot com.

Eileen Kelly (1:09:24)
And we'll have all the links on socials. Thank you so much for being here.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (1:09:27)
Great.

Thank you and keep doing what you're doing and I can't wait to ponder who I should recommend you chat with next.

Eileen Kelly (1:09:38)
Thanks. I can't wait to hear it. Bye.

Cynthia Bemis Abrams (1:09:40)
All right. Take care. Bye.