Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Moron TV: Just Say Julie (1989)

Hot off her film debut in "Earth Girls Are Easy" and a novelty hit, "The Homecoming Queen's Got a Gun", Julie Brown (to be referred to as Hollywood Julie going forward) landed her first series gig in 1989.

MTV, which already had "Downtown" Julie Brown on their VJ roster, signed up Hollywood Julie for Just Say Julie, a goofy, sorta sitcom that lasted two years and change, and was in the center of the network's 7:30 pm (ET) checkerboard in back of Remote Control for most of its run.

The format was, in a way, derivative of CBS' Pee-Wee's Playhouse, in that Julie would address not only the studio audience, but the home audience as well, when visitors dropped by, unless it was a specific storyline that prohibited said format. One example came in 1990 when original VJ Martha Quinn, fresh from The Bradys, was the guest, and got into a storyline catfight with Brown over the primetime gig. I had a sample of that particular episode up a while back, but it was taken down after the YouTube user deleted the video.

Anyway, Hollywood Julie moved on to Fox's The Edge after leaving MTV, but, aside from a guest voice gig on another Fox series, Batman: The Animated Series, hasn't done much TV since. She now has her own YouTube channel, from which we get this sample:




It's not that I didn't get the comedy. The writing wasn't exactly quality satire. In other words, the writers probably taught the nimrods at Cartoon Network their creative writing course.

Rating: C-.

No comments: