ESSAY 13
PINK LADY & JEFF: 30 YEARS LATER
by Jeffrey C. Branch
It’s hard to believe thirty years have passed since NBC launched their semi-great experiment when they paired two cute Japanese pop singers who barely spoke passable English with a then (and now) unknown comic in a limited run primetime comedy-variety show. A show that, depending on you talk to, effectively killed what had been a long-running staple of TV viewing since the 1950’s. Yes, it was three decades ago this month when Pink Lady & Jeff graced(?) American television screens, and so, on this, the 30th anniversary of its less than auspicious debut, I thought I’d share some thoughts about the show, the good, the bad and the truly godawful.
I’ve always been of two minds about PL&J from the very first time I watched it back in March of 1980, and these opinions haven’t changed. On one hand, the show was an absolute train wreck: bad scripts, lousy acting, crappy jokes, and middle of the road guest stars, the show stunk, plain and simple. But on the other hand, Mie and Kei were center stage, dazzling the audience with their tremendous talent as singers while trying their best to elicit laughs as neophyte comediennes. So what if the girls were hopelessly burdened by the woefully unfunny Jeff Altman and all the rest of the garbage that was part of the show. Just to have watched the girls was a delight for me. In a way, I associated PL&J with a 50 car pile-up on the expressway, it was a nightmare, but I couldn’t turn away, the show was wonderfully wretched, six unforgettable episodes of mindless fluff that had me either openly cringing, rolling my eyes or shaking my head. To say PL& J wasn’t a first-class example of “must see TV” would be one hell of an understatement.
Having watched the show prior to crafting this essay (two episodes a night over three evenings, doing it all in one sitting would’ve driven me insane), I wanted to reacquaint myself with all that wonderful wretchedness. From Altman’s first opening monologue to the gang’s last foray in the hot tub, the first thought that came to mind was, “My God! This actually got the green light from the big shots at NBC? What were they smoking?” Even though worse, if not far worse shows have come and gone in the three decades since PL&J, it remains, in some circles, the standard bearer for rotten television, not to mention the butt of jokes, including a parody done on Saturday Night Live, something I wish I had seen. Now, I don’t blame Mie and Kei for their part in that travesty, heaven knows they did the best they could under incredibly trying circumstances, especially poor Kei who was never keen about being on the show (she was homesick for her boyfriend back in Japan) and was almost unintelligible at times when she spoke.
And yet, Mie and Kei soldiered on like the show biz troopers they were. They endured Altman’s pathetic attempts at humor, the ridiculously hokey (and, in the case of Sid Caesar and his moronic “Papa-san” caricature, degrading) skits, not to mention the embarrassing indignity of having their names stenciled on the outfits they wore, as if the audience needed help telling the girls apart along with the relentlessly cheesy atmosphere that permeated everything. Three decades later, I remain astonished that the show not only got off the drawing board, but was actually made. If Sid and Marty Krofft were to try and pitch PL & J to any of the networks today, they would’ve been laughed right out each and every boardroom, and that includes FOX which made its bread and butter catering to the lowest common denominator and churned out more than their fair share of mind numbing trash over the years. Not even the smallest, least known cable channel would’ve taken a flyer on PL&J. That’s how radioactive the whole concept was.
And yet, despite all those glaring negatives which were legion, I loved PL&J. Of course, that fondness came from seeing Mie and Kei who were just as lovely, just as talented, just as dynamic as I remembered them from when I was in Japan. While the show itself was a Grade-A, unmitigated catastrophe, not to mention a full-blown ratings disaster (some markets, like Philadelphia, yanked the show from their schedule before its run ended in order to stem the bleeding) that probably made NBC a laughingstock, I flat out didn’t care, because the Ladies were there, and I wasn’t alone in thinking that way. Ever since I launched the website in late 1998, followed by the Pink Primetime feature in 2000 on the 20th anniversary of PL&J, I’ve gotten correspondence from many people over the years who told me how they discovered Pink Lady and fell in love with Mie and Kei after watching the show, proving beyond any doubt that something extremely good can come from something extremely bad. I believed that then, and I believe it now.
While PL&J represented the last time Mie and Kei got any sort of exposure in America, their place in the lexicon of our country’s pop culture history is assured, thanks entirely to the show, so you could say that’s a good thing. I wonder if the Ladies spend any time thinking about their haphazard foray on U.S. television all those many years ago, do Mie and Kei look back fondly on the entire experience, despite its warts, or have they forever purged those events from their memory banks? Not since the heyday of ABBA in the late 70’s had any non-English speaking foreign act caused the sort of commotion Pink Lady had when they came to the States and did the show, nor had any other act from Japan gotten the sort of attention Mie and Kei had in the three decades since PL&J aired. After having read this essay, and going over all the Pink Primetime features, I’m sure this has you just dying to get your hands on the show, doesn’t it? Well, you can find PL&J on eBay or Amazon.com, I checked, so go and get it! NOW!!
If you consider yourself a true Pink Lady fan, you owe it to yourself to own the DVD’s of this delightfully disastrous show that possessed a special sort of charm that can’t be put into words. That charm of course, came from Mie and Kei, the rest, including Jeff Altman, was nothing more than excess baggage. And so, to quote the Ladies themselves, I close this piece with the very words they ended every episode with----Good night!!