Time to get things in order on this site, and back to one of bread and butter topics , that being short-lived TV series. TV series that didn't get the chance to last longer than a few episodes or a season.
"Married with Children" was one of the first series introduced when the launch of the Fox network it's subversiveness to other TV shows with families on it gave it a jump and a little spark to continue for a long time. It was created by Ron Leavitt and Michael G. Moye, but that wasn't the duo's first series, and that brings us to this short-lived NBC series from 1984. "It's Your Move"
The idea of a series being subversive leads into what this series also was aiming at as well. The main character of this series is played by Jason Bateman, who had some previous work on "Silver Spoons" and proved popular enough to be in his own series. That character was Matthew Burton a 14-year-old high school student who is a scam artist. (Aww starting off young) Kind of interesting to give a character with that characteristic as a lead. Usually, these kind of characters were "sidekicks" or background characters or something used to give our main characters someone to lead them astray to learn a lesson. Read: Eddie Haskell of "Leave it To Beaver". Nowadays, you could have series leads be this kind of character but it was more unheard of back then.
In speaking of "Married with Children" (ding) a familiar face to viewers of the show will see someone in this show Steve ! Or his actor David Garrison, who is in this series, mentioning more about this later.
The best place to start for this series is the beginning. After the jump we talk about some episodes , starting with episode 1.
I know what hurt this series in the 80's, it didn't have an awesome theme song, it's kind of bog standard normal 80's sounding theme song. The series was on at the same time as ABC's Dyntasty, awesome theme song, and it came on after NBC's "The Facts of Life" catchy as heck theme song, so maybe that's why.
It starts with our main character, Matthew, prepping for his sale of term papers. Yep, that's the kind of character he is. He has an older sister named Eileen. (The actress played Nina Webster on "The Young and The Restless") The scene gives a good insight into how Matthew works, he's a con artist and has a smooth way of talking to not give away that he's manipulating to another person. Anyway, there's apartment across the hall that was vacant and Matthew uses for his schemes and stuff and someone wants to rent it, and he needs to stop this.
Matthew's single mother comes home and she talks about her day and how things were tough and how things are expensive. Matthew sneaks some money from his pocket into this mother's purse, showing a dimension to our con man character.
The new renter across the hall is a man named Norman Lamb, played by David Garrison (as Steve in happier days) Norman is from Chicago (guess he moved back later, or this take place after he left Married in the strangest time line , we are done now) and is a writer. Matthew convinces him to "help" his sister with a paper. to get him out of the apartment. This plan backfired and Norman spent time with his mother instead. Norman also seems to be steps head of Matthew. The mother and Norman seem to get along well. Norman seems to be able to go toe to toe with Matthew.
Matthew doesn't want his mom to like this guy, he wants her with this rich guy because he thinks it would be better for everyone. Norman outsmarts Matt in a few plans its fun to see him play against these plans. Matthew makes a fake later to tell Norman he got a big writing job in New York which he reads to Matthew's mother and Matthew and says he's not taking the job. The writing in this show is tight as heck, they took Eli, Matthew's friend, spelling special wrong earlier and used it again in the fake letter.
That was the first episode.
Episodes have this working where Matthew has scheme to work for a plan. Going with the title it's like checkers or chess where Norman and Matthew try to out smart each other. It's like a cat and mouse game between the two of them. The show continued with this set up and Matthew's schemes, including a two part episode, I may talk about in a separate post in the future. That plot is wild though, Matthew creates a fake band then kills them off just to account for the fact of losing money that was for a band at a school function. That's a large scam there (Ed, Edd, n' Eddy would say that's a little too far) After episode 14, there's a change to the format after Matthew's mother finds out in episode 14 of his scheming ways.
Episode 15, they even changed the pictures in the intro. The show loses some of its edge with Matthew being more sitcom normal and not really doing anything to have the show really latch on to. If you wanted that , they were tons of sitcoms for that at the time. Maybe the show was forced to change by people not liking that the main kid character was a con artist, because , can't have that on network TV or something. The series ended after 18 episodes and wasn't renewed. In 1986, Bateman got to be in a new NBC series called "Valarie" (we aren't using that other name) and that gave him some real stardom meanwhile, Leavitt and Moye got a new chance at network series to do a little more what they wanted and taking Garrison with them to have a new sitcom in 1987 that being "Married with Children". So I mean if this series had caught own, we might have not ever gotten the Fox Network to exist for long meaning no other shows like the Simpsons coming around , in theory.
I think the first 14 episodes are great delight of a series. They didn't have the characters be one dimensional either Matthew shows a lot of care for his mother. The cast meshed well even the "annoying" friend of Matthew's , Eli, wasn't too annoying for the viewer and had his own characterizing though they had the Eli likes food running gag. The series wasn't perfect, but it was interesting and seems fresh for 1984 and even a little bit now. Maybe it came out to early to have that impact.
Tune in next time, when I write a 500,000 word post on how many shows dying in 1967 paved way for the Fox network.
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