Talking 9 to 5: The TV Series with The Kulturecast's Chris Stachiw

Babies Dance Pretty the City. Hello, and welcome to eighties TV ladies, part of the weirding Way Media Network. I'm your producer, Melissa Roth, and here are your hosts, Sharon Johnson and Susan Lambert Adam. Why hello there, I'm Susan and I'm Sharon. Today we are looking at an unexpected television show for us, because until just a few months ago when we were doing some research, neither Susan nor I realize this sitcom ever existed.

That's right, at least I didn't. Who knew. The massive comedy hit feature film Nine to five, which also features the even more famous nine to five Dollar parton hit song written for that film, also spawned a sit com. Yes, today we will be talking about the nine to five television series, and our special guest is fellow pop culture podcaster and a huge friend of the pod Chris Dashu. Chris is the creator and podcaster of The Culture Cast and several other television, movie and supernatural podcasts.

He is co owner, along with Mike White, of the Projection Booth of weirding Way Media. From the get go, Chris has been a huge supporter and advisor to me and to our show, we'll be talking about Chris and his podcast, as well as the nine to five TV show and movie and Jane Fonda's producing career. Welcome to eighties TV ladies, Chris Stashu, Hi, thank you for having me. It is such a pleasure to have you on the show today. I'm excited to be here.

For the most part, I feel like like it's weird because this is a bas off of a movie. Things that are based off of movies tend to have kind of a weird aura of energy around them, especially things where like everybody has recast. So it's very It's an interesting situation with this show, and I'm excited to talk about it me too. And we're recording some crossover shows with you, which we think will be super fun. We're like doing what they did in the eighties with like Simon and Simon and Magna Pi, and we're gonna hope that it'll be super fun for our listeners on both podcasts.

Yeah, we're gonna be covering well the movie that this show talks about, and then China Syndrome, All of Me, and then clearly the best of the three left for last, the Best Little Horehouse in Texas. The true that the piece to resistance of the four clearly for a reason. Yeah, it's always important to save the best for last. Yeah, best is an interesting term. All right, Before we get into nine to five, let's talk for a moment about you.

Sure, tell us a little bit about yourself. Where you grew up, where you're zooming in from now. So I'm originally from I was born in San Francisco, but I grew up in North Texas and now I live in the Midwest, in the great City of Lincoln in the state of Nebraska. And this is what I do for a living is podcasting, and y'all are part of the y'alls Giveaway where I was. Y'all are part of the weirding Way Network, which is what I do for a living, running, managing, and then creating more content than I know what to do with over there weirding Way Media, where you can find this show and so many other shows, including like Susan mentioned the show where we have a crossover episode coming up with the three of us, and then Susan, you and I did an episode with Richard where we talked about China syndrome, and then a couple other just kind of random episodes, kind of just touching more on the careers of the women in the film that this show we're gonna be talking about is based on.

So that's what I do. I just sit and run my mouth all day. Sounds like gig. Sounds like, hey, it's a good gig, all right. Tell us a little bit about your podcast, The Culture Cast.

How that happened? How did it happen? Well, one evening I was watching a movie, as I tend to do on the weekends, and friend of mine reached out to me and was like, hey, do you want to do a podcast? And I had here, here's some information eight years ago. I had no podcast background or knowledge or anything, and so I was relying on someone else to edit my show, and then that person became immensely unreliable and I had to learn how to edit a show pretty much on the fly.

It ended up being like a nine hour episode about the Teenagement, Ninja, Turtles, movies, all of them, and we had a whole bunch of interviews. It was not the best time to start, kind of the movie podcast of your dreams, but that's kind of the day I started the show myself, and so the Culture cast has been running now since October of twenty fourteen, and so that would put it at nine years this fall. And then in doing the show, I've met a whole lot of other people, including the Projection booths Mike White, which is the the kind of more educational version of my show, where I like to call my show the totally less serious version of his show, because his show is very much edutainment, a docu audio series about films that goes way more in depth than most people should, but it's really received by the audience that it's found, And so I found Mike.

We work on all kinds of things together, like well, a lot of seventies TV show podcasts about shows that I definitely didn't grow up on, like Barney Miller and Colombo and things people my age normally aren't watching. I feel like maybe I'm wrong in that regard, but I kind of have just built a body of work of talking about movies in TV. And then in twenty twenty, when the pandemic hit, we kind of transitioned into a paranormal, supernatural true crime podcast and then that arm kind of has extended out in its own interesting direction. But I don't know podcasting is never something I thought I would do, but I guess it just kind of makes sense in a way the more I think about it. And I'm glad that I kind of have found the thing that I like to do by accident, because most people never find it at all.

So that's my story. I've never no one's ever asked me. This is like the first time. I just want to point this out. I don't go on other peoples shows and talk about myself.

I am extremely uncomfortable right now talking. I'm so sorry. No, it's not a bad thing. I just don't do it like nobody ever asked. Not that I'm saying, like, please ask about my life, but it's like I've never been put on the spot like that.

So thank you. I appreciate it. You're welcome, We're happy to have you on. We're happy to talk to you about this, and you know you've been a big friend of the pod. As it were.

I didn't mention how you and I met, but we met sideways through the elephant who's not in the room. Mister Richard had him. He who talks more than maybe even I do. One might say, I don't know, I don't know how all your episodes together are less than four hours. How they ever end, Richard, we have to stop now what I can't to keep talking.

But that's how Susan and I met was through Richard reaching out to Mike and I when we started the first Actually is kind of kind of funny because Mike and I we kind of became much closer friends by starting the Coal Check podcast, and that's how Richard met us, and then we ended up being on speaking of television show from the seventies, we ended up being on the rerelease of Coal Check. A couple of years ago. We were on the Blu Ray, which was mind blowing in a way. But if we're sitting here tooting our own horn a little bit, I'm gonna get a little too in for that, because that's that's the thing that I can't believe if you're asking me about like all the things I've done and like where I am at, Like I know you're not, but just like getting to this point just thinking about it, like I'm just glad to be here, to be able to talk.

That's so cool. And this episode that we're doing now started because I was suggesting cool female drive eighties movies for you to watch and maybe cover on your show, and the nine to five film came up, and you invited us on your show to talk about the movie with you, and I liked it a lot. It was really fun. Had you heard of it before and not seen it or was it completely new to you? I don't know, like I had heard every Look, everybody's heard the song, you know.

I think we said as much on the episode, like everybody's heard the song, I think at this point, So I mean, look anymore? Like I feel like I don't get to watch things I really want to watch, things I need to watch, and if those things tend to intersect, awesome. If not, I will just watch whatever I need to watch and I won't get to watch what I want. It's fine. It's part of doing this, which is not that big of a deal.

So ultimately, there's like a like a lot of people, there's a list of things I would like to watch, and this was on a very long, ever growing list of things to watch. So long answer to a short question. And in doing the research on that movie, we discovered there's a television show which I didn't know. I did you know? I don't think so I must have known about it at some point and then quickly forgot about it, because at the time that the first season aired, I would have known what was coming on on all three networks because at the time they're only three.

But it was clearly not something that I watched or that stuck in my brain, so I must just completely forgotten about it. So the movies on a TV show that had two seasons on ABC and three seasons in first run syndication. It ran for eighty five episodes, and I don't remember there being a TV show, which is, as Sharon says, a little bit unusual for us here at eight TV Ladies. Yes, I think I had heard of the TV show in one of those like listicles online where it's like TV shows based on movies you didn't know existed, because I knew that there was a TV show that had Dolly Parton's sister playing her character. Obviously, she's not billed as you know, Rachel Parton, She's billed as Rachel Tennyson.

But that was like the big thing in that article was, oh, there's a nine to five TV show where the character who Dolly Parton plays is played by her sister in the show. I think what's weird is like knowing that again had never seen it, and to be fair, trying to see it seems like a problem in and of itself. My god, you know again, television show from the eighties shouldn't be this hard to find, yet it is impossible to find. Frankly, yes, now, let me ask you. I don't want to aid you, but were you alive in the eighties?

Are you in eighties TV babies and nineties TV babies? At what point in one's life would one say they were able to remember TV when they were like five or six? That would make me nineties TV? By okay, all right, that's kind of what I'm getting. I mean, I've seen probably more television from the seventies and eighties now than I have from the nineties, because my point of reference for nineties TV is like literally more or less the X Files, and I wasn't watching a lot of the big nineties shows.

I haven't seen a lot of the big nineties shows, So you know again, that's why I ask, like, where is this line? Because again, like I probably watched more two thousands TV. Like one of the first shows I remember watching was Supernatural and that was like two thousand and six. So I mean again, I watched a lot of I Love Lucy growing up because my mom loves I Love Lucy, so well that doesn't, Yeah, i'd really for real, who doesn't. So I mean that's if we're talking like that kind of television.

I grew up more around older television and The Simpsons in the nineties, so I'm a nineties TV baby, but I didn't really start having my own autonomy of TV shows until the mid two thousands. All right, fair enough, Okay, Well, so as we talk on the episode we did with you, the movie actually was really a movie about a movement, right, and the whole thing started around a labor movement literally called the nine to five movement, the seeds of which were in the civil rights, human rights, and labor rights movements of the sixties and seventies, and then amplified because the number of women and women of cople are moving into the workplace, especially into office jobs, was rising very quickly, and I sort of just want to place us a little bit for you and our listeners who weren't around in say, nineteen eighty, kind of place us in that spot.

Lots of huge advancements in the seventies and late seventies for women, and it feels like things are happening fast like Title A, Title nine Pregnancy Discrimination Act. You know, lawsuits are being won, laws are being changed, and this I didn't know. The term sexual harassment was coined in nineteen seventy five. That's the first time that there is an official term for what is happening. And the first time a suit was upheld in federal court was in nineteen seventy seven sexual harassment suit.

So I think that is sort of an important factor to both the movie and the television show and women moving into these workplace comedies in television. Because also in nineteen seventy nine, the Equal Rights Amendment stalls out, which looked like it was about to pass get ratified, become the law of the land, part of our constitution that rights shall be equal regardless of sex. It fails to get the last three states it needs to be ratified, and the Equal Rights Amendment has never become law, even though it currently now has all the ratification it needs to be law. So just FYI, let's pen that for a minute for today, and nineteen seventy nine, Jimmy Carter loses the election in nineteen eighty Ronald Reagan wins, and in December of nineteen eighty, just before nineteen eighty one, when the Reagan administration would move in and begin dismantling labor relations, affirmative action unions, and all sorts of pushback against this forward momentum, A little movie comes out December nineteenth, nineteen eighty, nine to five, starring Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Dolly Parton, and Dabney Coleman.

Written by Patricia Resnick and Colin Higgins, and directed by Colin Higgins. It is produced by Bruce Gilbert with Jane Fonda for Jane Fonda's company IPC Films. The movie grosses over one hundred million dollars, making it the second highest rated film of the entire year, just behind the Empire Strikes Back. Whatever happened to the guy that directed that movie? Did he ever do anything else?

Just say flash in the pan? Right? That's still a wild piece of information, though, Yeah, that's still a wild data point for a movie like nine to five, like up against a movie like Empire Strikes Back. Just the cultural relevance of both movies, I think is I think one is more culturally relevant than ever now and it ain't the one with the lightsabers. So who wants to synopsize the movie nine to five for us for a second?

I'll take it on. Jane Fonda plays a former housewife named Judy Burnley. She's just starting her first job as she's just recently divorced, and she meets Violet Newstead played by Lily Tomlin, who is that person in the office that knows how to get everything done that everybody else relies on. Violet is divorced as well. I believe it has kids, Yeah, with kids, although Judy Jane Found's character does not.

Dolly Parton plays Dori Ley, who is kind of a character based on herself. She's happily married. She's clearly a girl from the South, although they don't say exactly do they say, but clearly the big city country girl, yeah, exactly, and works for the big boss. She's the boss's secretarian. Everybody in the office, all the other women in the office are not particularly fond of her because they think she's sleeping with the boss because he's told everyone that they're sleeping together.

What a guy. So we learn all of this kind of through Judy's eyes. His Violet is taking around the office and explaining how things work and who's who and how things are done. Dabney Coleman plays this stereotypical but just wildly sexist, egotistical man who allows Violet to do a lot of his work for him without giving her any of the credit. Although he keeps promising her that's coming, it's coming, it's coming, the promotion she deserves, but she's still waiting and I'm so sorry.

My brain is losing its way. Violet accidentally thinks she's poisoned heart. As a result of that, these three women get close because they're bond. They're all involved in trying to help Violet out of this situation, where actually a lot of hilarity ensues. He sort of figures out that they tried to kill him, yes, and he's going to take that they tried to kill him, yes, And ultimately he basically is going to make Doorley sleep with him, or he's going to tell on them and get them in trouble, and so they kidnap him.

Well, it all sort of happens accidentally. It sort of happens. She's in the office yelling at him and he's trying to escape, and she manages to tie him to a chair using a long phone cord, and again hilarity ensues. But what is crazy is they keep him for like four to six weeks while they're waiting on some information about how he was stealing from the company in the company, and they run the company without him and nobody notices, and in fact, they improve things at the company and they make the workplace happier and healthier and implement flex hours and have childcare and increase productivity and everything's working great, and then he escapes. So it's a very funny comedy.

We talked about it on the Culture Cast like Deeper. But Jane Fonda's idea because she produced this, she produces out of her company. She wanted to make this, she knew the people who ran that movement. She said, I want to make a movie out of this movement. But it can't be preachy.

But it is important to show that you can run an office without the boss, but you can't run an office without the secretaries, and that you can run an office in a humane way that's to the benefit of the employees and in ways that help improve not just their lives, but their productivity. They become more productive workers. They want to work harder because they don't have to worry about childcare, or they can work flex times, and they can take care of their families, and that, you know, all the things that go into making your work life better. That heart was and really just about a free company out there was not really seeing even today the benefit of yes. And then she wanted to make a movie with three women.

So movie is a big hit. And then they decided to produce a TV show and is the first TV show that Jamee Fonda's company produces as far as I know from the research. It's hard, but Chris, you're absolutely right. It's hard to find out about this show. It's hard to find this hard to find this show.

I'm sure y'all will provide it to y'all's audience. But there's like like a handful of episodes on YouTube, and that's that's it. Like it is not readily available, and I wonder why. Actually, I think we probably all know where it's sitting. It's sitting in Disney's vaults now with the rest of everything that's owned by that was produced by and owned by twentieth Century Fox because it was a twentieth century Fox property and it's now owned by our friends at Disney.

And this has come up on my show a couple of times. But Disney, I don't think is interested in making something like this readily available as much as you know, producing and creating Marvel and Star Wars and content that more or less is guaranteed to make the money. So this is not high on the list anymore than Harry and Tonto being rereleased or the Other being rereleased, or so many other fantastic films and TV movies that Disney is kind of just sitting on, not saying that this is great. I'm saying that this just is worth being rereleased. It's almost hard to judge the quality of this show.

How do you judge the quality on a show that's like impossible to find and you can see like a handful of episodes, like, oh, it's terrible. How could you unless you're asking someone who watched all eighty five episodes, which is almost an impossibility at this point, Like to say it's good or bad is almost unimportant. Yes, Is it clear though, that Disney owns it? I mean the laws back then about ownership of television shows is very different. Sure, networks could own them.

I don't know if Jane Fonda's company owns it. I mean twentieth Century Fox distributed it, so I mean it's a big assumption. Sure, but let me put it this way. Disney owns twentieth century Fox is stuff now, so maybe not. But I don't think it's getting rereleased either way is probably the bigger problem.

Yeah. I think there's a couple of challenges. One, nobody archived that stuff the way that you needed to archive it. They archive stuff on film. But I believe I could be wrong that this may not have been shot on film.

The first season may have been all right, So let's talk about the episodes we were able to find, Sharon, Do you want to run us down the TV show? Just the stats? Sure? So the nine to five TV show ran five seasons, with, as Chris mentioned, eighty five episodes. It ran between nineteen eighty two and nineteen eighty eight.

Season one starred Rita Moreno as Violet, Rachel Dennison, Dolly Parton's sister as Dora Lee, and Valerie Curtin as Judy. Gene Marsh played the office kind of busybody and sort of heart spy on the secretarial floor, keeping him telling him what everybody was up to. Yes, Yes, Roz and Jeffrey Tambor played Franklin Hart the role of Dabney Coltman played in the movie. So that was the cast of the first season and was created by Michaels Beer and Kim Weiscoff, executive produced by Jane Fonda and Bruce Gilbert. And so this season is four episodes.

There are four episodes in the first season, which makes me think, and this is just me now that we know a few things about eighties television, is they got a six episode order because that's what you typically got, but two of them they didn't air, and I think part of it is and we were only able to find part of one episode, right, That's what I found. I found an entire episode from that first season with Jeffrey Tambor in the lead role. I think, okay. I found some of season one, episode three, the China Syndrome, which is a little play on Jane Fonda's movie The China Syndrome. Completely at the title.

I wasn't able to find anything from the first season in its entirety. The second season had that whole episode. I was hoping to see some Jeffrey Tambor. I was hoping to see more of him too. Yeah, Yeah, I found that episode kind of rocky.

Maybe that's why it felt like it hadn't really found its tone for a TV series as opposed to the movie, because obviously they're not going to go through the same beats, right, They're not going to kidnap the boss. Yeah, because that's a movie story exactly. But it just felt like it was still kind of finding its way a little bit and hadn't really And perhaps it's evidence by the fact that Jeffrey Tambor was replaced by Peter Bonners they weren't quite sure they had found it either, and that may have been part of their attempt to try to change it into something that was more television ready. Well, and this has a ton of cast changeover from first season to second season, and then it looks like it's canceled, and then first run syndication picks it up, so there's a big break.

It runs from eighty two to eighty three, and then it comes back in first run syndication eighty six to eighty eight, which is a huge gap. Yeah, right, who was waiting that long. I was like, it's like four years like somebo somebody sitting like wrapping their fingers on the table, like nine to five shows better be coming back, Like no, I think nobody acts that way now about TV. Like if things are gone for a year, people forget. Like when Game of Thrones was like we'll be back in eighteen months, it's like, so long for fifteen months, like not gonna remember anything, Like it's insanity to me.

It's it's like the show has gone for four years and it still comes back somehow. But it wasn't gone because what you had then that you don't have now is syndication, right, and that there were only a few channels and there wasn't enough content and so they just reran episode. So they're rerunning episodes of a show called nine to five, which if you didn't catch it at the time that it aired, you could catch it again and again and again and again until you're sick of that theme song. I'm sick of hearing it. I don't want to hear Dolly anymore.

Nine to five from five until midnight every day on CW. I was also surprised that the song opens the show, but not Dolly Parton singing it. So in season one she doesn't sing it, season two it's her singing it. It's pretty much the song from the movie, right, and then in season three it is season four and five it's just an instrumental. I think that was the on a very serious episode on nine to five, Like that's they take the Dolly Parton music out.

I'm joking, but like that could that could be why I did want to mention first episode of the show is directed by someone who the pretty good hands to be in Nome Pitlick, who cut his teeth on Barney Miller. Won an Emmy because of Barney Miller. That's why I was really hoping like to find like he actually directed the first two episodes. So like the show starts off on the right foot and they're putting their best foot forward. Jane Fonda is involved until the third season of the show, right, and the look of that first season from the snippets we saw it looks really good.

Yeah, it looks unusual. I'm sure it's shot on film. Actually that season was shot on film. I think by season three they may be shooting on video because the look of the show is different and some might call it worse and terrible. Probably didn't have the same budget that they had when it was on Networks.

Some might say, I have heard, I mean the show doesn't I think I saw from all over the run of the show, and it seemed like the log or the show went on the cheaper. It looked that was eighties television. If you made it to season three, they just apparently cut your budget and you just kept running. You guys can do it. You're fine, you know what you're doing already.

But episode three was directed by Nell Cox, who is a female director from the seventies and eighties and directed a bit of stuff, and so that I thought was really important. And the episode three was written by Deborah Frank and Scott Rubinstein. There were women in the writer and director positions on this show very early on. I definitely think that was Jane Fonda and the mission of the show. I'm going to say, because the mission of the show was to promote women and to have women in these roles and to say that women could be in these spaces.

And Jane Fonda, I think spent a lot of time putting her money where her mouth was. What do y'all think about the again, like obviously, like you just mentioned Susan, like, the show is less static than most TV shows tend to be. What did y'all think about the recas of the main three, at least the main versions of the recas, like Rita Moreno, Rachel Dennison, and Valerie Curtin. I guess those are the three big ones right of the little that we can see. Rita Moreno is amazing.

I think she's great. She's funny, she's smart. She totally buy her as running this office or able to run this office. I really liked her. I agree, I thought she was great too.

Valerie Curtin played Judy a little more neurotic, for lack of a better word. It was less naive and more neurotic. Yeah, and more anxious. Yes, that's the word I'm looking for. Rachel Dennison in the first season was clearly showing that she was not an experienced actress.

She got better by the time I saw the episodes from the last season. I thought she got much better. But in the first season it was you know again, she's charming, yes, she's sweet, but she's playing the character. It's just if you've just come off that movie Dolly Parton is a huge surprise in the movie. I mean, she is so good in that movie.

Yeah, and it's clear that Rachel Dennison is in the TV show because she's Dolly Parton's sister and she sort of looks fine. Yeah, Dory, she's the one that they cast to be the most like the character in the movie, clearly, and I'd liked that they kind of shifted a little bit for the other characters. Valerie Curtain is sort of doing her own thing. She's not quite playing Jane Fonda, and Rida Marina is not trying to do Lily Tomlin. She's doing Rida Marina.

But I appreciate that. What did you think? I thought Valerie Curtain was interesting. It kind of didn't realize she was playing the Jane Fonda character until they said the name. Because it's not different, but it is different.

I don't know how to explain it, like it's different, but not in a way that's unwelcome. You know, I wouldn't want someone to just go and do the Jane Vonda thing, because it's more or less Rachel Dennison is doing, which is just the Dolly Parton thing, which that's what you need in this show. You need to recapture that chemistry somehow, and I think that they do by having Rachel Dennison as kind of the I'm not saying anchor is and she drags everybody down. I'm saying anchor is, And she's the one who's there the entire time. She is there for the entire run of the show, and I think by having her there, there's at least a point of reference for the characters to interact with that feels consistent with what the movie was trying to get across.

I think to your point, Sharon, the longer the show went on and the more I saw of it, the better Rachel Dennison got. It's frankly kind of surprising. This was more or less it like she did this and nothing else. And by the kind of the later episodes that I saw, she was fine, Like for a network television show doing kind of the Dolly Parton adjacent thing, and she was perfectly fine. And she does get better, and she's the only cast member that stays all the way through.

I Yeah, she's there now, That's what I'm saying. Like, because she's there the whole time, you get to your interact with Sally Struthers. You're gonna to see her interact with Leia Airs in that third season, which there's even like the third season feels like the one that's really hard to find. The third season's hard to find, and the third season is the only one without Valerie Curtain. They kick Valerie Curtain to the curb and bring in Leiah Airs, Yeah, to sort of not replace her as that character.

She's playing a different character from what I read, because again it's hard to find. And Peter Bonners is their first season two and three playing Heart. But then season four and five they bring in Sally Struthers, right, Rita Moreno's gone, and Edward Winter as well, Yes, who plays kind of a more likable heart kind of character. Right, Yeah, he's not as awful. Yeah, And here's my biggest problem with past season two.

From what we can tell season one and two, the Boss is the antagonist. Based on what I can read about the synopsis of the show, he's being an egotistical, sexist jerk. He's not as bad as Dabney Coleman because it's a sitcom and you have to like him sort of, but by the later seasons it is not the movie. Now it's not an artist from the movie. The situation itself has shifted, and it's basically this harried male boss trying to deal with all these crazy women.

That's literally what it felt like in some of those episodes. To me, it became more of a standard office sitcom. I still thought the women were the focus and their trials and tribulations with these crazy bosses that they have to work with. These You've got the idiot who's you know, who's an executive because god knows why there's actually a female executive. I never did quite figure out what she was doing, but it's it's hard to track someone.

Yeah, and then you've got everybody's boss played by Edgar Winter, who's Dora Lee is his secretary, and again he's the kinder. He's the boss that comes in at the big boss that comes in at the end of the movie. He's like, oh, he's still just but he's more competent and he's less ikey than Heart was. But it's about the workplace, and I still think it's more about how the women have to put up with all of this as opposed to the opposite of the men, sort of because it's clear that they're still not getting their respect they deserve, especially when you look at this idiot executive who does god knows what. But it's still about them and what they have to put up with, those those three women.

There was one of the later episodes that felt very off because it felt like it was more about the boss than it was about the women. That the Fred Applegate episode where they introduce another another boss. Yes, there's like three bosses or something. There's a short, little fat boss and there's a tall, not as abrasive boss, and then there's like one other guy. It's like geeze by.

Oh, they each needed an antagonistic person to play playoff of, is probably what they thought. By the end, it's like Jesus six main actors as you're like leads just like it and it don't need those combinations. It's two three of them are men. Like. Their ratio shifts dramatically from the first season where it's clearly the women are centered, the women are top of the call sheet, and it's way more women than men in those scenes, in those stories, and then by the end the opening sequence is literally here's some three women, oh, and here's some guys, and here's more guys, and here's another guy like you're like, but if you're working in an office at that time, that was the reality.

To me. It still felt like the women were telling the story through them. It was still their story, okay, telling the story through them about all these executives, some of them who were brighter than others, that they had to deal with to try to keep their jobs or to try to get jobs, or having watched hard ever all of I I think I thought it was a full episode. Maybe it wasn't the one that we watched. From the first season, it seemed like they maybe couldn't quite figure out a way to stay with what the movie was into a television show.

And so what they seem to have done finally going a syndication perhaps is expand the universe a little bit, because how do you sustain I mean, this heart guy, there's just he's so awful. How do you keep that? How do you stay in that job? Yeah? For you, That's what I was going to say.

How was that a show for more than a season? Maybe? I think that's always a challenge of turning a movie into a television show, which happened, as you said, a lot in the eighties. I think the most successful I would say from that era, which from the seventies and eighties, would be Mash. Of course, like Mash is the gold standard.

Is there a example that is TV to movie that worked though, That is a good question. That's like a more recent thing. I can think of the Test Files in the nineties, but like I think, I don't know if that was happening in the eighties. The other direction clearly was happening this way. Twenty one Jump Street okay, The Adams Family okay, the A Team okay, The Hulk, Yes, a Hulk cartoon, The Hulk that was a comic before it was a TV a TV show and then hasn't even longer.

Tale Wonder Woman is now a movie. Wonder Woman. Oh, I was talking just in the eighties. I mean we're talking like now, like yeah, but but I was more like in the eighties, Like, were there things in the eighties where it was like a show that became a movie. I'm going to guess, because I mean, even then there was this bifurcation between television and movies.

It doesn't really exist in the same way today. It was really hard for TV actors to make the leap over to movies, and you didn't get a lot of contemporary movie actors doing television. They tended to be you know, more seasoned actors who are doing guest roles or whatever. It's. Things have changed a lot in that regard, and there was, and I think there still is, kind of a sense that at getting people to go to a movie theater and pay to see something that they've been watching on television for free is difficult.

It's not something that normally happens. I don't know that many of them were very successful. The Muppet Show. The Muppet Show was a television show and almost same timeframe had successful theatrical films. And then there's a lot of TV movies that are done after these shows.

But there was something that wasn't surprising. Did the start treks? But was that eighties? Start trek was sixties and then that the movies movies were started in the eighties, Twilight Zone sixties and eighties. There is there's the huge gap between sort of seventies and eighties shows that are now remade you know, quite differently Police Squad to you know, Naked Gun, the Fugitive, the Fugitive.

Yeah, like that's it's just like it wasn't. I feel like the other direction, there's that little bit of lag time because it needs to maybe like build up kind of that head esteem to get back to that point. I mean something like even Community now is getting a movie and it's a contemporary show that's taken. I don't even know if it's been a decade since that show Wasn't on, but it's been a while, so I feel like it happens the other direction faster, Especially in the age I mean, there were plenty of eighties cartoons based off of movies. I mean it seemed like every movie that came out that could be halfway marketed to kids was turned into cartoon.

Ghostbusters, I mean not Star Wars, but like I mean most, I mean most things were existing to sell toys, and they could sell a toy by making a movie into a cartoon, they would. So, as someone who grew up watching Godzilla and Men in Black in the cartoon, it's like those things did not need to exist, and even though I enjoyed them, they didn't need to exist. Yeah, so there was a lot more movies spawning television shows than television show spawning movies. Although now if you include, you know, the Star Skin Hutches and oh yeah, twenty one Jumps Streets and things like that. There's a lot more of seventies and eighties and nineties television launching pretty big movies now right, yeah, you know, like you said, twenty one Jump Street got a sequel.

Even Charlie's Angels, Charlie's Angels, the eight Team. You know, these are shows that as we sort of re reuse ip and their names, they're familiar names. Nine to five was created into a TV show because the movie and the song were so successful and the song we're not even talking about. They put that song on that show. You could sell to syndication based on the song alone, because the song was a number one song.

It was Dolly Parton's one of her biggest of the decade, maybe one of her biggest of all time, right and one two Grammys and an Oscar nomination. At least, I believe it's a big deal. It was a It was a big deal. It was. That's I mean nine to five the name, right, Like, that's why I was turned into a musical in two thousand and nine because everything old is new again, and I have to say the musical is easier to find on streaming than the television show, and it shouldn't be.

I mean, however, I did enjoy checking it out. But what I do like, it's the same writer that adapted it to a musical. It's Patricia Resnick adapted the book and Dolly Parton does the music, so it's really quite great. They of course have the nine to five song, so that's just right there. You know, you've got your great opening number.

And they fixed some story problems I had with the movie in the second act and in the final scenes. I've always felt it was a little bit like you know, d Sex Maknina and a little too like oh and then the Big Boss comes in and kind of solves everything. I wish we'd been able to watch more of the show to see how they kind of wrangle the end of the movie into the beginning of the show, because they must have done some interesting gymnastics to get from the end of the movie where they essentially say, well, he goes away and they go and do the future eventually do something else, but the show picks up again, like since we're not able to see it, like I would love to have seen the gymnastics. They go through it to see if they undo the ending of the movie, if they change it in a substantive way, because the movie's ending is pretty like cut and dried, like this is what happened.

If I had to guess, they just ignore the whole second and third act and it's just start at the beginning of the movie with all what the dynamics are and right from there, right, just tell the movie as a show, like they don't even bother. Yeah, that would be the way I would have done it. Like they're not mutually exclusive. It doesn't need to be like I don't know, like you can draw from it, but like it would be weird to be like, oh we other ending didn't matter never mind, Like yeah, I don't know. Again, Jane Fonda was involved either way, so her I feel like she would have had some say in it, at least I think because the first episode we were able to find pieces of was episode three, and it was sort of like the alternate dimension.

We start in the same place as the movie, and then we just go in this way and we don't end up kidnapping him yet. Let's save that for season three. Yeah, that's my guess, and I'm looking here. It is. So the first episode, Violet and Judy suspect a new secretary has been hired for her physical attributes, so Judy is the arrival are unknown into the movie, into the movie when Judy Jane Fonda's character in the movie shows up to get a job for the first time because she's been married and now she's divorced, and now she has to take care of herself and she doesn't have kids.

Violet has kids, but in this case, the new girl in town is Rachel Dennison. Is the Dolly Parton character, right, which makes sense why she's with the show the entire run. She's the main character of the show. There you go, he's the main character of the show. But I don't get that.

I get the Violet as the main character of the show from the episodes we saw. Yeah, but it's just me anyway. So but clearly she's hired by Heart to be the new secretary, and that flips the world up, and that's a great place to start. It's like a prequel. It's a little bit of a prequel, yeah, except that Judy's already it's a little bit of it.

I imagine. Yeah's reimagining the world, but the world is very clear. I did love the look of the opening sequence because it looked like the movie, and I love the look of the show for that season. And I liked in the second season episode that I was able to find the Oldest Profession Season two episode fifteen, directed by Peter Baldwin, written by Freddie Tobin, which I went in to look up, has a number of credits around the eighties, and I think, but it's hard to track any more information except that there is a playwright, Freddie Tobin, and I believe it's a woman. It's Freddie with f R E D.

I is how it's spelled, and I'm making a long swing at that. Freddie Tobin is a female writer who was a playwright and then became a supcom writer. But in the episode The Secretaries, and I love that, that's how you tell these stories, That's how they're told in these synopsises. The secretaries do this, and the secretaries do that, because secretary is such a loaded word. It's like housewife, right, It's such a seventies, eighties, nineties word.

So you know the assistants, you know the coordinators, which but the ladies need more money, so they take on a second job as doing singing telegrams. And singing telegrams are such an eighties thing. It's really funny that that was a story. You can understand. Just to speak of our friend Richard HadAM.

He and his friend Larry did two stooges singing telegram in the eighties when he was in high school. He and Lara used to go and be you know, most and Curly and whoever they were doing the singing telegram for. They would basically incorporate as their third stooge and they would be the three stooges. They weren't singing, they were doing a little bit, but it was to deliver this you know, telegram of happy birthday or you know, happy anniversary, because that's what you would do, is send the two stooges to wish someone a happy anniversary. Um.

People talk about what they would do if they invented a time machine. I know where I'm going and I know what I want to see. Richard doing the two stooges bit would be pretty great. Let me ask you this. Has he told the story of using that to get in a room?

I think so. As he told the story, of I don't want to tell it because I don't know. I can't, I can't speak about it. It's you know, if he hasn't told it, it says his to tell anyway. They're just a radio show.

I heard it, you heard it, given the story of radio show. Yeah, okay, so when years ago, yes, I actually heard it on the radio. You heard it on the radio. There you go, so yes. So he's already told the story of when he basically sent himself to Stephen Cannell in order to use the singing singing telegram bit to then basically go on Stephen Cannell's birthday to basically go, oh, and I have a script and he was in high school.

That's that, you know what? Yeah, I believe it. Yep. And then later years later, he was hired by Stephen Cannell to write one of the first adaptions of the A Team into a movie. He got hired and paid, He worked with Stephen Cannell and Stephen Cannell's team, and he never mentioned that story.

Oh wow, that's the best part of the story right there, because man, what is that conversation? Like, I just wanted to let you know. At one point, someone who looked like me may have come to your office. He looked very different. That's the benefit.

Probably he's like, I know, yet he doesn't even recognize me anyway. This is something that showed up in the seventies though, because they used it in Barney Miller, and it's like, that's not a thing. It's so not a thing anymore. No doorbells to avoid having to open the door to people. No one's gonna be like, there's a person I don't know my front door, dressed up like a shark.

Let me let me open my door and see what they want. Like, yeah, that's not happening. Yeah, it's not happening in twenty twenty three. I'm not even I'm not even going to interact with them through my ring doorbell. Let alone go and stand on my front porch and interact with them, or like you said, Sharon, invite them in my home, Like no, thank you, I'm good.

Hey, we don't have the same office culture. But b even when we did, you couldn't get into those offices now, even after basically after nine to eleven or even before that, Yeah, there was no way to get into spaces like that and do that kind of interesting anachronism, yes, but when they're doing this, basically a vice cop thinks because they're all dressed up in these weird, wacky costumes and he thinks their prostitutes and arrests them, and then they end up spending the night in jail with the nanny I brand dresser playing the actual woman sex worker in the scene. And again, for me, that was a great episode because that was very much in a very funny, interesting way talking about the roles for women, talking about challenges for women.

They have to take a second job because they need more money and they're overworked, and then they're mistaken for sex workers and then they're in jail and they're not believed. But then there's an interchange with an actual sex worker who is sort of going, hey, this is back off they, you know, because Rina Marna gets all judgy, you know, Violet gets all judgy about it. And I just thought that was really great. I thought that was a really great episode. I thought everybody was funny.

I thought Valerie Curtin was hilarious because she starts like, this is a great story and she starts using the paper towels to write the story of their drama. I was really I was like, I want more of that show, and that's season two. And it was nice to see a very young fran Dresser too, just oh my gosh, she was adorable. I liked her because, like you could pick her out immediately because it's not an immediate close shot on her, but it's like pretty far back and again on YouTube, pretty grady. But the moment you see her, it's like, it's fran Dresser and she's not.

Really, she's not. She still sounds like fran Dresser, but she's not doing the she's not doing the fran Dresser thing that everybody expects now, but it's still a little bit there. But she's great. It look this is like this show clearly had some legs, and the minor amount that we could find, I think it's pretty entertaining, pretty stock in trade what they were doing at the time. It was only Yeah, the stories they were telling were pretty interesting, and I think it was more important that it's three female leads as the ones taking this show where it needs to go, not relying on a mail anything.

Really, I mean, again, the male antagonist, at least as we're led to believe the first two maybe three seasons clearly they kind of just went overboard later of the show win. But I like the stories that they're telling are so focused on the three leads, and that's I think that's really smart. Yeah, and I like Sally Struthers too. I don't dislike or I just think after Rita Moreno, it was just a and it's different character like, it just feels different. Everything feels different.

So it's clearly a revamp. It's clearly several years later, Jane Fonda and her producer leave basically after season two because of creative differences with the studio network. An interesting fact toid of when this premiered, it launched the same time as Cagney and Lacy Cagney Lacy on CBS, This on ABC. And I just thought that was really interesting and I wonder who jumped against each other first, it says I was reading it says that there was an actor who was in Cagney and Lacey and was on this show as well, and playing the kid right, playing Violet Son in this show. So playing Violet Son in this show and playing Lacy Son in LA sort of like Beverly Garland playing I know mothers have not the same time, but close enough, and this kid's playing everybody's son and across the networks.

I guess, oh my gosh, all right, well we haven't taken a break. I'm just gonna say, we have to take a break, and then we'll come back from a break and we're back. I need to be back, all right. So sort of wrap up on nine to five TV show, Chris, I will tell you that I think a few things came out of the TV show and the movie. Obviously, the pairing of the three personality types of the actresses in the movie very clearly influenced the TV shows kind of expectations for the actresses that they wanted to play the three leads.

And then what's interesting is eighty for Brady comes out this year and you have Rita Moreno and Lily Tomlin finally working together because Rita Moreno was in the t V show. Jane Fonda produces TV show, so they're working together on the show. They're not in the same scenes right like so, but it is very much the eighty for Brady because it involves three people involved in either the movie or the television show Nine to five, which is kind of I don't think the movie eighty for Brady and even Grayson Frankie don't exist without nine to five and them figuring out what that chemistry is between the three of them and kind of that pairing. I think. I mean again, Dolly Parton shows up in the last season of Grayson Frankie for a reason because of nine to five.

Like, this movie has some really long kind of pop culture ties that mean eighty for Brady came out like early twenty twenty three. The effect of the nine to five movie clearly is resonating into today literally, But it's so interesting, and I want to give Jane Fonda some props. Man, she produced these really amazing movies in the seventies and eighties, China Syndrome, Electric Horseman, nine to five, and nine to five. Everything you read about that was it was her. It was her saying, I want to make a movie out of a movement.

I have these friends that are doing this thing, and I want to make it about these women. And she was the one that was like, oh, I want to put Lily Tomlin in this. I want to work with Lily Tomlin. Oh my god, I'm listening to Dolly Parton sing one of her songs. But there's a story where she's like I was hearing Dolly Parton saying, I was like, oh, Dolly Partner would be great as Dora Lee.

And she sort of built that movie with Colin Higgins. But really I got to give her props for that. And then she was like, I'm going to do television and feature film. People didn't do television, as we said, right, but she's like, I'm going to go try this out. I don't know that she did any other television because I don't think the experience was as welcoming.

Maybe we can get it on the show one day and ask her. But what was interesting to me is there's a book about the nine to five working movement and this is what they had to say about the movie, which I thought was really interesting. The most important effect of the movie was a change in public consciousness. Before the film came out, and I'm paraphrasing a little bit, we had to argue and argue and argue about whether there was even discrimination in the workplace. We had to present proof.

We had to convince people, including women, that they were being treated unfairly. After the movie came out, the argument was over, Yes, the movie was silly, but the silliness worked by making millions of people laugh at this boss's bad behavior. The film ended the debate. We were no longer arguing that it was happening. We now were arguing the question of what should be done about it?

And if you're making a movie that's a huge, awesome hit and is also changing the conversation about how people are treated in the workplace, I don't know which one is better for your legacy. I mean, I think for me, I'm just glad that something like this exists and is still relevant and it's I mean again, the musical is not like it came out in the nineties, came out a couple of years ago type thing like that. For me is the big takeaway is that the success of this movie allowed a lot more successes down the road, and that's never a bad thing, especially like you just mentioned, Susan, the ones that are a little bit hard to maybe do intentionally, but at least they did happen. Yeah, And I think just opened the door of like everything like hidden figures.

You think, oh, this is it, this is the last door. Yes. Of course, black women can lead a movie and make it a huge, huge hit, and they'll be all sorts of them now right, I know, but we just keep knocking on the door. All right. Woo, thank you so much for coming on the show and talking with us about nine to five television Show.

Hopefully we'll be able to find it streaming somewhere someday. I'm hopeful that as we continue down the streaming road that they will get to some seventies, eighties and nineties shows that are a little lost right now out and don't seem to have a home, because I think they're important to have archived somewhere. There are plenty of boutique labels out there that could pick this up. I'm sure somebody's got the original somewhere that they could just read. The song might be hard.

The song of music is also hard. If you didn't clear it for everything, you have to go back and clear it and that is very difficult. But if anybody could pull it off, it might be someone like Jane Fonda, Valid Parton and rad A Moreno are going, yeah, we want this to happen, And then I don't know, Disney might say yes, or Paramount Plus should pick it up. Figure out how to have it. Nine to five the TV Show Streaming but with a different intro song just that wouldn't that be something?

Well? I think that's what one of the little hidden videos that we found. I think they changed the title song in order for it not to be pulled, because I think as soon as that song hits in say a YouTube video or something, it probably gets pulled pretty quickly. They're working eight to six in this versions, just slightly just lightly different, and we we clear. I'm kind of a ten to six scal myself.

Nine to five seems like a drag, all right. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Where can people find you? You can find me over at Weirdingwaymedia dot com, where you can find this lovely show and so many other shows that so many other people are putting together every week, myself included, and the aforementioned Mike White and y'all. So that's where you can find this show and all the other shows of the Weirdingway Media Network.

Fantastic. Thank you so much, Thank you for having me. Have a good one, Chris, Take care, Chris. Thank you for today's audioography. To learn more about the movement that started at all, visit nine to five dot org.

That's the number nine t o the Number five dot org and you can read the book working nine to five, A Woman's Movement, a labor Union, and the iconic movie by Ellen Cassidy. You can watch nine to five, The Story of Her Movement by Julie Reichert and Stephen Bogner on Netflix, and just for fun, because she's fabulous, you can follow Rita Moreno on Twitter. That is, if Twitter is still a thing when we air this, because every week it feels like it's about to follow apart. The wheels are coming off, but I'm still there. Twitter dot com slash the Rita Moreno.

We've got a couple of listeners. Shout outs first to Shari Likestari, thank you so much for becoming a Patreon supporter. It means so much to us. If you want to be as cool as Shari Likestari, then join us at patreon dot com slash eighties tv Ladies and become a Patreon supporter. If you do so, you get ad free episodes and special behind the scenes video with Susan and I.

And coolest of all, you can watch some of our guest interviews. That's true, and Shari like Starr, you've been emailing us almost since the beginning, So thank you for being one of our original RG supporters. And I also want to thank Lena for reaching out on email to us first time listener. She remembers seeing Stephanie Zimbilis being interviewed and she just got to us and Remington Steel and she was like, oh, I'm sorry I didn't get to the show yet. I'm like, listen, you can join this show anytime.

It's never too late. You can hop in the middle, you can hop in the beginning. We're happy to talk forever and always about eighties TV ladies. And I also want to shout out to our listeners on YouTube to Larry, who did indeed remind me and I'm going to be corrected because Archie did change over the course of the show. I said that he didn't over the course of All in the Family.

One of the comments on our say gay looking Back at seventies, eighties, nineties gay Representation and Television with Matt Baum, he wrote a very thoughtful comment about how he did, and he gave an episode example to prove it. We love your comments there, so please keep them coming. Anyone can subscribe at YouTube dot com, slash at symbol Eighties TV Ladies. We'll see you there. Thank you for listening to Eighties TV Ladies.

Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or on your favorite podcast platform. We're on all of them. Spotify, Google Podcasts, Good Pods, search Eighties TV Ladies and tell your friends. And I want to shout out again to Chris Stashue and Chris and Mike White at weirding Way Media where you can find this podcast and there's along with many other very cool podcasts on the weirding Way Network. Hey, if you know or have a copy of the nine to five TV show, let us know.

We would love to actually watch all of the episodes, and not just the like four and a half we got to scramble up on YouTube. So please send us a message if you have a secret five seasons of this show. We hope Eighties TV Ladies brings you joy and laughter and lots of fabulous new and old shows to watch, all of which we'll lead us forward toward being amazing ladies of the twenty first century. Working nine two five, What a way to make a living? Barely get in by it's all taken that no given, I don't know those but it's super awesome anyway, something if you learn it nine two five that's perfect