Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about TV and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the TV urban legends featured so far.
TV URBAN LEGEND: Ross and Rachel were originally not going to get together at the end of “Friends.”
Series finales of famous television shows are extremely difficult for show creators to write, since fans have such high expectations for the very last episode of their favorite series. As a result, many famous TV series have had endings that range from artfully bizarre like “St. Elsewhere”, calmly subdued like “Cheers” and, well, blowing the entire town up like “Little House on the Prairie.” There’s almost no “set” way to write a series finale.
By the end of the tenth season of the hit sitcom, “Friends,” however, there was little left undecided for the series.
Phoebe had already gotten married, Chandler and Monica’s child was not yet born, but obviously no one was expecting a light sitcom to go anywhere dark with a storyline like that (although there was a twist, when it turned out that the woman whose baby Chandler and Monica were adopting actually was having twins!), so the show’s last episode really turned on one question – were Ross and Rachel going to end up together? Every since their famous (or is it infamous?) “break” in Season 3, the show had held off on getting Ross and Rachel back together, coming up with plotline after plotline designed to keep them apart (even some overly outlandish ones that they ended up not actually using). So with the last episode upon the show, what was going to happen with Ross and Rachel? In a shocking spoiler for a show that ended a dozen years ago, Ross and Rachel did end up together, as Rachel got off of a plane bound for Paris after Ross declared his love for her right before she boarded the plane. However, reader Bret S. wrote in to ask if the show originally had a different ending where Ross and Rachel did not end up together (in the alternative, he also wanted to know if they at least filmed an alternate ending where they did not end up together – he had heard the former, but was sure that the latter was at least true).
So did Ross and Rachel almost not make it in “The Last One”?
Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about TV and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the TV urban legends featured so far.
TV URBAN LEGEND: The federal government once secretly paid TV networks for having anti-drug messages in episodes of their shows.
We are all familiar with TV shows working with the United States government to have special “Anti-drug” episodes. This was particularly the “in” thing to do when Nancy Reagan was the First Lady, as she made a big deal about appearing on popular sitcoms among kids to promote her anti-drug programs. Here she is with Gary Coleman from an anti-drug episode of Diff’rent Strokes…
And here’s an episode of Punky Brewster that tied in with the First Lady’s “Just Say No” campaign…
That’s all well and good, but what if the government got involved more surreptitiously? That was the case with an anti-drug program that came about towards the end of Bill Clinton’s presidency that unintentional led to a bizarre situation where the government was effectively secretly paying TV networks for having anti-drug messages in their shows. Read on to see how it all went down! Read the rest of this entry »
Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about movies and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the Movie urban legends featured so far.
MOVIE URBAN LEGEND: Marvel cannot use Kang, one of the biggest Avengers villains, in their Avengers films.
Very few things in the world of pop culture are quite as confusing as the matter of who controls the production rights of various Marvel Comics characters, since Marvel has parceled out the rights to their characters to so many different studios over the years that it can be extremely complicated figuring out who owns what character and when said studio got control of said character. We have already addressed a few of these confusing rights issues in the case of whether Deadpool was part of Fox’s X-Men rights or whether the Incredible Hulk’s movie rights are fully owned by Marvel Studios. Today, though, we delve into one of the most surprising characters whose rights are not controlled by Marvel Studios, and thus off-limits for the Avengers films
– one of the Avengers’ earliest and greatest foes, Kang!
Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about music and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the movie urban legends featured so far.
MUSIC URBAN LEGEND: It is a mystery as to what “that” is in the hit Meatloaf song, “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)”
This is a bit of a goofier legend than normal, but reader Erica wrote in to say that she was reading AllMusic and saw a review of the song that stated:
The lyrics build suspense by portraying a romance-consumed lover who pledges to do anything in the name of love except ‘that,’ a mysterious thing that he will not specify. This mystery becomes clear in the second part, where the woman he loves prophesizes that once the glow of love wears off that “you’ll see that its time to move on” and “sooner or later you’ll be screwing around,” an accusation that prompts him to give his titular pledge one last time.
She thought that there was a legend here about how people don’t really know what the song is about. After Erica wrote me about it, I noticed that there were actually a few other notable reviewers over the years who WERE confused about what “that” was in the song. Enough that I began to think that this might actually be worthy of writing about. So what the heck, it may be a bit silly, but I’ll tackle the “legend” of what the “that” in “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)” is! Truly the most important legend of all-time! Read the rest of this entry »
Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about movies and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the Movie urban legends featured so far.
MOVIE URBAN LEGEND: Ingrid Bergman was publicly censured in the United States Senate over her adultery.
Ingrid Bergman was one of the most striking and effective actresses of her time (or heck, any time, really).
The Swedish actress is perhaps best known for her starring role opposite Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca…
but she starred in many films, winning a Best Actress Academy Award in 1945 for Gaslight…
In 1949, she wrote to the famed Italian Director Roberto Rossellini to express interest in working with him on a film.
He then cast her in the Italian film Stromboli…
While working on the film in 1949, the two fell in love (even though both were married, and Bergman had a young daughter in the United States). Bergman also became pregnant with Rossellini’s child, giving birth to a son in February of 1950.
As you might imagine, this news did not exactly go over well in the United States.
Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about music and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the movie urban legends featured so far.
MUSIC URBAN LEGEND: Don Henley wrote “The Last Worthless Evening” about Michelle Pfeiffer.
In 1989, Don Henley had himself one heck of a career boost with his third solo album, End of the Innocence, which contained three Top 40 singles.
The title track, “End of the Innocence,” plus “The Heart of the Matter” and “The Last Worthless Evening” (it also had a fourth single nearly make the top 40, “New York Minute”)…
The song is about Henley telling a woman that she should be with him and if she does, she will no longer spend any more “worthless evenings”. Here is the first verse:
I know you broke up with him
And your heart’s still on the shelf
It’s been over two years for me
And I’m still not quite myself
You can’t be with someone new
And you can’t go back to him
You’re beginning to realize
That it’s sink or swim
I see you around sometimes
And my heart just melts
You’re lookin’ like if you had your wish
You’d be somewhere else
And it just breaks my heart
To see you here this way
Someday I’ll get the nerve
To walk up to you and say
This is the last worthless evening
That you’ll have to spend
Just gimme a chance
To show you how to love again
The longtime rumor is that the song is about famed movie star Michelle Pfeiffer. Is that true? Read the rest of this entry »
Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about TV and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the TV urban legends featured so far.
TV URBAN LEGEND: Mister Ed was given small electric shocks to make him move his mouth to make it look like he was talking.
Uncredited old cowboy actor Allan “Rocky” Lane provided Ed’s voice (when the show became a hit, Lane objected to the “uncredited” part, but he never did get credit while the show was originally airing). But for decades, people have wondered how exactly, did the show get the horse (Bamboo Harvester) to moves its lips when Ed talked? The mystery has led to some interesting rumors over the years, including that the show would give the horse mild electric shocks to make him move his lips!
Among the people who read that initial article was a man named Loren Gitthens, who had a fascinating story to tell about the Ghostface mask that I figured it would be worth running as an addendum to that original piece.
Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about TV and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the TV urban legends featured so far.
TV URBAN LEGEND: Jon Polito’s public complaints about the direction of Homicide: Life on the Street got his character killed off in an ignominious manner.
Homicide: Life on the Street debuted in 1993. Based on David Simon’s non-fiction book of roughly the same name (Simon’s book was called Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, as he followed the Baltimore Homicide Department around for a year), the series was a critical smash hit. It is still remarkable the high level of quality that the show (particularly writers Tom Fontana and James Yoshimura and producer Barry Levinson in those early days) were able to achieve with Homicide on network television in the mid-1990s. Homicide would not look out of place on HBO in 2016, that’s how ahead of its time was (okay, the 1990s fashion would probably need to be updated a bit).
One area where the show was very faithful initially was in the cops who worked in Homicide. In real life, the mix tended to be older male white detectives and younger male black detectives. That’s what they did on the show, with Ned Beatty and Jon Polito playing two of the older cops on the show, Stan “Big Man” Bolander (based on one of the major characters in the Simon book) and Steve Crosetti, respectively…
Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about movies and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the Movie urban legends featured so far.
MOVIE URBAN LEGEND: George Lucas initially planned on killing Darth Vader off in the first sequel to Star Wars.
A while back, I talked about how in 1976 George Lucas had Alan Dean Foster write a screenplay for possible sequel to the first Star Wars film. This was when Lucas wasn’t sure what kind of box office numbers the film would do. There was a chance that the film could bomb, but there was also a chance that the film might do just “okay” business. Good enough to merit a sequel, but not good enough to merit a big budget sequel. So Foster worked out a screenplay for a low-budget sequel to the film. Obviously, the film became a big hit, so Foster’s screenplay was not necessary, and it instead became his Star Wars novel, Splinter of the Mind’s Eye.
One of the fascinating things that we’ve seen come up in a number of Star Wars legends over the years (like whether Darth Vader was always going to be Luke’s father or whether Luke and Leia were always going to be siblings) is that George Lucas was a lot looser with the Star Wars canon at the time. That was quite logical, of course, as he did not yet know that he had created a blockbuster film franchise. He just knew that he had made a film that he was hoping would be a hit but was fully prepared for it to not be a hit (he had even made a bet with Steven Spielberg that the film would not be as successful as Spielberg’s next film!). One of the great pieces of historical Star Wars information are the story conferences that Lucas, Foster and Lucasfilm Vice President Charles Lippincott had back in 1976. The great Star Wars historian J W Rinzler transcribed the conference and they revealed a great many things – including Lucas’ desire to move on from Darth Vader as soon as he could!
If you enjoy this site, there's a good chance you'll enjoy my books from Plume Publishing (a division of Penguin-Random House Books) Was Superman a Spy? and other Comic Book Legends Revealed! and Why Does Batman Carry Shark Repellent?. Plus, my newest book from Triumph Books, 100 Things X-Men Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die
Here are links to some fine online bookstores where you can order copies of the books!
100 THINGS X-MEN FANS SHOULD KNOW AND DO BEFORE THEY DIE
