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Mad Magazine TV Parodies

R

RicoGregg

A little strike relief....

I'm willing to take an educated guess and say that most of us have read Mad Magazine at some point in our lives. A staple of Mad were the TV parodies, which were often quite funny. I especially liked some of the titles. Some that I can remember:

Lost In Space - Loused Up In Space
Star Trek - Star Blech
The Defenders - The Defensers
M*A*S*H - M*A*S*H*U*G*A
All In The Family - Gall In The Family
LaVerne & Shirley - LaVoine & Shoiley
Batman - Batsman
Dallas - Dullas
Wagon Train - Dragin Train
Vegas - ve-GASS
Marcus Welby MD - Makeus Sickby MD

As you can tell, I haven't read Mad Magazine much lately.
Remember any others?
 
I don't know what the title was, and it dates back to
the '50s, but Mad Magazine once did a parody of "The
Millionaire" in which Michael Anthony delivers a million-
dollar check and the recipient tears it up, saying "I
don't need this. I'm Mike Todd" (whose "Around the
World in 80 Days" was cleaning up at the box office
at the time).
 
I remember well the "Star Blech" parody, being a big ST:TOS fan at the time -- laughed my a** off at that one. Especially the scene where Spock reports a problem with the transporter, and he's standing there with a foot sticking out of his ear, an arm attached to his chest, etc.

Another good one I recall was the parody of "The Partridge Family" -- I don't recall the pun-ny title, but I remember Keith was referred to as "Teeth," which gave me a chuckle.

Not a full show parody, but they once did a feature called something like "If other people talked like Don Rickles." One of the examples was Captain Kangaroo. One panel showed a typically stonefaced Mr. Green Jeans, with the Captain berating him. "Why so sad, Mr. Green Jeans? Could it be because you still get paid scale, and I make 5 million bucks a year?"
 
"Funny and Glare" comes to mind.
 
Sadly, Mad mag is going downhill. I've been reading it since the 60's [and getting in trouble at elementary school for reading it]. Too many of the old timers that were there at the beginning have passed away. I remember when they used to spoof a TV show and a movie in the same issue, now they rarely do that. If they do spoof a movie, it tends to be a Warner Brothers movie......no surprise there, seeing as how they are owned by Time-Warner. And it's really sad that they now have ads....even though they say that it now makes it possible for them to print in color. I have a feeling that Bill Gaines is spinning in his grave at what has happened to his magazine.
 
MAD's sendup of the M*A*S*H *movie*was called M*I*S*H*M*O*S*H. (This was right after the movie came out but before the TV show began.)

I do remember a letter to the ed. re the M*A*S*H movie spoof that read, "M*A*S*H was a S*M*A*S*H! Your satire of it was a T*R*A*S*H!"

ixnay
 
It seems that "MAD TV" is only like the publication in name now and nothing else. Watch a show from the first season and watch how heavily they connected themselves to it.
 
The "Millionaire" parody I mentioned earlier came under
the "Scenes We'd Like To See" section. A caricature
of Marvin Miller approaches a man and says, "My name
is Michael Anthony and I have been authorized to give
you a check for one million dollars." The recipient says,
"My name is Mike Todd AND I DON'T NEED YOUR CHECK"
just before tearing it up.
 
YEKIMI said:
Sadly, Mad mag is going downhill. I've been reading it since the 60's [and getting in trouble at elementary school for reading it]. Too many of the old timers that were there at the beginning have passed away. I remember when they used to spoof a TV show and a movie in the same issue, now they rarely do that. If they do spoof a movie, it tends to be a Warner Brothers movie......no surprise there, seeing as how they are owned by Time-Warner. And it's really sad that they now have ads....even though they say that it now makes it possible for them to print in color. I have a feeling that Bill Gaines is spinning in his grave at what has happened to his magazine.
Click to expand...

For all intents and purposes, Mad Magazine died when William Gaines died. The beginning of the end was when Gaines let the brilliant artist Don Martin defect to rival Cracked after a dispute over ownership of Martin's drawings.

The most brilliant parody involving Mad happened when they were the target. The National Lampoon did this ingenious piece about Mad called "Citizen Gaines", an obvious take-off on both Mad and Citizen Kane. Instead of Kane's word "Rosebud", which fueled Citizen Kane's plot, Gaines' word was "Satire". It was done by the Lampoon in a Mad movie parody-style of drawing. At the time, there was a fierce rivalry between Mad & the Lampoon.
 
Oh yeah! I had forgotten about that From National Lampoon. I was a huge fan of their magazine and their radio show they had on in the 70s for a while. and poor old Cracked Magazine.....I think they are in their third re-incarnation now and it has to be the worst of the bunch. Cracked was brilliant when John Sevrin was working for them although still not as good as Mad.
 
Just remembered another one:

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea - Voyage to See What's on the Bottom


KML-224 said:
It seems that "MAD TV" is only like the publication in name now and nothing else. Watch a show from the first season and watch how heavily they connected themselves to it.
Click to expand...

That first season, didn't Mad TV have an animated Spy vs. Spy? Seems to me that they would would have stuck with that.
 
The creative artists are gone...along with its daring independant spirit.
...makes me wonder if Time-Warner imposed creative control and its newer batch of "the usual gang of yes men...'er-i mean idiots"
 
YEKIMI said:
Oh yeah! I had forgotten about that From National Lampoon. I was a huge fan of their magazine and their radio show they had on in the 70s for a while. and poor old Cracked Magazine.....I think they are in their third re-incarnation now and it has to be the worst of the bunch. Cracked was brilliant when John Sevrin was working for them although still not as good as Mad.
Click to expand...

They're web-only now.

http://www.cracked.com/
 
Web only? Wonder when that happened.....I saw Cracked at Barnes & Noble a couple of times last year, skimmed through it and saw how awful it had become. Guess they couldn't get enough people to subscribe. :(
 
I just remembered yet another, and it should have been obvious:

WKRP in Cincinnati - WKRaP in Cincinnati
 
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