Pastore's Complaint. (Pas∙'t r∙ēz K m∙'plānt), n. A phobia against violence and sex on television, exacerbated by recent disturbances in American society and by the Noxzema "take-it-all-off" commercial. [Named after Rhode Island Senator John O. Pastore.]
JOHN PASTORE is chairman of the powerful Senate Communications Subcommittee, and when he has a complaint, the television industry has a sympathetic reaction verging on panic. As early as last may, Michael Dann, CBS senior vice president for programming, warned a national meeting of his network's station managers that the political atmosphere discouraged innovation and that the 1969-70 series would be "the same crap as last."
After viewing twelve of the season's 23 new shows, one concludes that Dann's foreboding is all too true. Rarely has a season seemed so regressive. The stars are primarily safe and established, the formats are past their prime, and most of the scripts are an insult to intelligence. The fault is certainly not all Pastore's; the television industry is completely capable of hitting bottom all by itself. And if a people gets the television it deserves, the American people should be ashamed of themselves.
Unprecedentedly, not one of those 23 new series is a western or an old-fashioned cops-and-robbers show. Instead, there is a swing back to the situation comedy and, for action, to the less lethal lawyers, teachers and, especially, doctors. Sex is out, but procreation is certainly in. The eight new situation comedies will introduce at least eleven kids among them, and some of the holdover shows are hugely pregnant. Samantha in Bewitched will bear her second child in November; Agents 86 and 99 in Get Smart are expecting twins.
DRAMATIC SERIES
Perhaps the opening week's most promising premiere is Room 222 (ABC), in which Lloyd Haynes plays a black Mr. Novak, a masterful and empathic teacher of history in an urban high school. Supporting characters include an iconoclastic Jewish principal (Michael Constantine) who openly hates PTA meetings, and a stereotypical, wide-eyed, white apprentice teacher (Karen Valentine) capable of telling Haynes, "I think it's so significant that you're colored." Except for such sappy moments, Room 222 may prove to be more good-humoredly wise on the problems of school prejudice and board-of-education bureaucracy than that overpraised book and film Up the Down Staircase.
The drama of Man v. Disease is as old as Hippocrates, but it still works —witness Ben Casey, Dr. Kildare, The Nurses. And, this season, witness CBS's Medical Center. One minor problem seems to be that the scriptwriters are running out of diseases. In this week's premiere, for example, O. J. Simpson plays a guest role as an All-America college halfback desperately trying to suppress symptoms of a mystery ailment lest it jeopardize a $500,000 pro offer. (A nice bit of casting, that, although in real life O.J. got an estimated $350,000 from the Buffalo Bills.) The rest of the program rang changes on the versus pattern: Young Doctor Chad Everett v. Old Doctor James Daly; modern technology v. pheochromocytoma, of all things. Simpson, incidentally, seemed headed for recovery.