Once upon a time there was a brilliant television series named Remember WENN. It ran for four seasons, fifty-six episodes, and was supposed to run for a fifth, if shorter season, when it was abruptly canceled by AMC, who didn't even have the decency to tell the show's creator, Rupert Holmes, up front that his series was canceled. They waited until he was on the road with a play and then announced the cancellation, and it was the fans—one of whom was me—who broke the news to him.

Remember WENN took place at radio station WENN in Pittsburgh, PA, from September 1939 to December 1941, and, had it continued, would have followed the cast into World War II. It was literate, used clever wordplay evocative of the radio comedies of the same era, never devolved into the boob jokes and sniggery sex comedy that was common in network comedies at the time. The series was filmed in Astoria in New York City, and the cast was more familiar to stage audiences than television fans, except for character actor John Bedford Lloyd, although several of the actors made appearances on that other New York-filmed series, Law & Order.

Since the series aired on AMC, there were really no ratings for it, but the series was the darling of several reviewers, and it garnered pretty much mostly good reviews everywhere. In the fourth season especially, several celebrity guest stars, like Daniel Benzali, Jason Alexander, and Greg Germann were added to the mix. Alas, the new regime, which wanted a "younger, hipper" image than AMC's old movie classics, wanted the series out, too. (They replaced it with a series about the movies, The Lot, which was, frankly, a mess.)

The other thing Remember WENN garnered was a large crowd of loyal fans. Since the series was set in the 1940s and about old time radio, you might have thought the fans would be older. Surprisingly, though some of them were, a large number were young. The founder of the WENN chat group was twelve years old. Many of the fans were in junior- and high school, a number of others were college-age and watched the series in their dorm rooms. The rest of us ranged from 30s through 50s (I was 41 at the time the series premiered), and our oldest fan was also the father of the series' creator, Leonard Goldstein, Rupert Holmes' dad, who was a fixture on the chat for several years.

AMC for years tried to disavow the series. They proclaimed Mad Men as their very first "original series." For years they ignored fans' pleas for a DVD set. But today AMC now has a streaming service which they need to fill with programming, so, besides all their new original programming (most of which seems to be four million iterations of their zombie show, The Walking Dead) they needed fill time. And so, Remember WENN has been revived on AMC+.

In the meantime an outfit called "Stars in the House," a video podcast hosted by Seth Rudetsky and James Wesley to benefit the theaters shuttered by the coronavirus pandemic, put together a Remember WENN reunion on February 23. It was broadcast via YouTube with a chat function enabled on the side.

Well, to our absolute delight, not only did most of the cast manage to show up "live" (only Hugh O'Gorman and C.J. Byrnes couldn't make it, and they sent recorded messages), including Melinda Mullins, who now lives in France and logged in at two in the morning, but creator Rupert Holmes was there as well, and the cast was able to spring a surprise that some of the fans knew about as well: a birthday greeting, as Rupert's 75th birthday was the next day, February 24. This was sheer pleasure; you hear so many stories about how some television cast members don't get along (apparently Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic of Castle hated each other), but the WENN cast apparently adored each other and they were delighted to reunite. At one point John Bedford Lloyd asked if Teressa (Rupert's super-special assistant) could collect everyone's e-mail addresses so that the cast could communicate with each other. It was two hours of wonderful memories and laughter.

The really special thing was that of the crowd on chat, over half of the people were either original members of the original WENN chat group (myself, Rodney, Alena, Biz, Brett, Katie, Julia, John, Mallory—who was thirteen when she joined the group!—and more), plus a bunch more of the later denizens like Rita, Erin, Meggan, etc. So while we were watching and listening to the cast have their reunion, we were having a reunion at the same time. These were people we talked to for years, even after the series ended; we were still having chat ten years after the show was canceled, albeit less often, but still up until midnight, one o'clock on Saturday nights. Heck, I put chat programs on my later phones and tables so I could do chat as well as attend conventions. We were like one big family and on February 23 it was the biggest, bonniest family reunion ever.

There was even a happy ending to this story: Biz created a WENN chat room on Discord, which appears to be a kind of chat room that's open all the time, and now we have a place to meet again.

If you were a Remember WENN fan, you may enjoy this replay of the reunion, and you can see all of us having fun on the chat as well.

And if that's not enough Remember WENN for you, Rodney Walker, who used to be known for his in-depth "Walk Throughs" of the episodes, has done a bravura "Walk Through" of the reunion:

Remember WENN Reunion Walk-Through

Labels: friends, Remember WENN, television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:26:00 PM

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Seeing the series again on "real TV" was wonderful, except for the commercials that are, as always today, thrown in with no rhyme or reason in the the middle of dialog, songs, etc. I was told it was obvious AMC had found the master copies of the episodes and even had them upgraded to 720p, and indeed the episodes looked quite nice and bright and appealing on HD television. They showed the Christmas episode and five others, including the election episode, which was appropriate, and on Facebook everyone compared notes. I've missed those Saturday nights on chat where we all watched episodes and then came in the chat room to talk about them!

Labels: computers, health, Remember WENN, shopping, weather

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 9:35:00 PM

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Does anyone still remember WENN?

Labels: DVDs, fandom, health, Remember WENN, shopping, voting

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:55:00 PM

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Well, I did go to the doctor on Wednesday. James was feeling as bad as I was by that point, so we arranged two appointments, one after the other. Thankfully, my sore throat is just that; it's been hurting so bad I was afraid of an infection. She basically told us both we just had to see this through because it was just a virus that's been hitting a lot of people. She did give me some cough medicine in case the cough kept me up and advised me to just keep hitting the saline, drinking water, and getting enough rest. She advised James to get some saline solution for his nose and rest as much as could.

Which brings us to today. Sleep late, saline, breakfast, dog walk, then I thought I might actually do something daring, like...venture into the public. Gawsh. Think of that. It was supposed to be warm this afternoon, up into the mid 50s, and sunny; no better weather.

I kept it easy: I went to Barnes & Noble to see if the January/February "Landlove" or "Landscape" were in and just look around. I found the clearance tables down to 75 percent off, and nabbed two of their Christmas bags that originally sold at $25 each for $3 each, big sturdy cloth bags, one red, one green, with the opposite color for the lining. As I buy more Christmas gifts I can keep them in these bags. (They had more; I should have gotten the other two—went back later and they were gone. Oh, well.)

So I went up to the Town Center store and found "Landscape" and the new "Just Cross Stitch" and bought a book of Longmire short stories since they didn't have the first book in the series. While I was there, I scanned the Publix app since there is a Publix next door to the bookstore. Whoa! Score! They are finally doing a BOGO on the lower-sugar Quaker instant oatmeal. They haven't included the lower sugar in months and my supply was running really low, despite using regular oatmeal at home. So I went happily through the store gathering twofers: pork loin chops, a Post pecan and grain cereal which looks like the old Trader Joe's version that they don't sell anymore, cookies and crackers for Atomicon, etc. Unfortunately I only got four boxes of oatmeal and they had only five of my yogurt flavor, so, while heading for home, since it was on my route, stopped at the Publix on Dallas Highway to pick up more oatmeal and enough yogurt for two weeks. Plus by this time it was warm enough to go short sleeves.

And since I was on Dallas Highway anyway, I went the mile up the road to that Barnes & Noble and found "Landlove" and picked up the Christmas edition of "Country Life" that was still on their magazine stand. I like picking up "Country Life" every once in a while, if nothing else just to see the pretentious advertisements for homes. (This one is no different. There are 58 pages of home ads before you ever get to the magazine content, of homes all over one million pounds! :-) After that you get to the cool articles on winter gardens, Lichfield Cathedral, ermines, behind the scenes at the Royal Ballet doing The Nutcracker, a salute to The 39 Steps, and holly. However, no clearance bargains at either Town Center or West Cobb. You win some, you lose some.

Got home in time to walk Tucker before James got home. We had supper at Tin Drum, used a couple of Bed, Bath & Beyond coupons, and then I ran into Barnes & Noble only to discover, yes, the rest of the Christmas bags were gone.

Still, a profitable day and a good dinner. My sinuses were killing me from about the time I arrived in Kennesaw, but I'm tired of this stupid cold and have to go to work on Monday anyway. I was feeling pretty woozy by dinnertime, but the meal helped at least. More saline, more Ibuprofin and on we go...

In the meantime, I had a delightful surprise on Facebook this afternoon. Rupert Holmes had told me he was going to be interviewed for a "New York Times" article about the 20th anniversary of Remember WENN, but he didn't know when an article would appear. Well, the article showed up on the "Times" website today and will be in the real paper on Sunday! The WENN Facebook group was alight with delight!

Labels: books, food, health, magazines, Remember WENN, shopping

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:09:00 PM

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I still for the life of me can't figure out why we can't get a DVD release on this series. Obscure 1960s series like Good Morning, World and Fractured Flickers have been given a DVD set, but not this great series that had an OTR touch, some classy guest stars, and a matchless cast.

C'mon, AMC. You've given us adulterous ad-men, drug dealers, and zombies. How about something nice for a change?

Today's NYT article!

Labels: Remember WENN, television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 5:46:00 PM

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