Mark Harmon was the only panel guest on Colbert Friday night. I guess he was the perfect Friday night guest, as he is non topical, and the interview could have been taped anytime in the last week or two. But what stood out is how retro (and interesting);the segments were. Someone did a great pre-interview with him, and he had three or four traditional talk show Hollywood stories to tell, which Colbert set him up for in non ironic fashion - about Johnny Carson, Michael Cain who was with him on his first talk show appearance on (probably) Merv Griffin, Karl Malden and Elizabeth Taylor. They were not as dramatic or funny as the story Dave liked to celebrate as the best talk show story ever, but they reminded me why that style, in many wats deconstructed by the Letterman approach to the genre, worked, when it worked and was done right. He also promoed the upcoming return of a certain character on his TV show.
I’m not a huge Harmon fan, but like most people I find him likable, and his performance as a secret service agent for 3 or 4 episodes on TWW will always live as one of the best guest starring arcs in the history of dramatic television. Also, I grew up in Los Angeles back in the day, and remember him as a UCLA QB ( though I was a USC fan), and knew his father as the UCLA play by play and sports guy on KTLA. If I were interviewing him I definitely would have talked about TWW (when Harmon was a guest on TWWW podcast he talked about how those episodes led to the Gibbs role, first on JAG and then NCIS), his football days and his rather amazing father, and the controversies on NCIS and the later spin off. But I have to say the old school talk show story approach was entertaining. -- Sent from Gmail Mobile -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to tvornottv+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAKGtkYK-Te6c_sWXo1d5PGOs3RRPceMnMO_y2cF51UKCmryk4g%40mail.gmail.com.
