Cuddle Up to a Warm TV Past

“I treat my body as a temple, Laverne. You have chosen to treat yours as an amusement park.”

--Clip from “The Laverne & Shirley Reunion” on ABC

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“Girls don’t bother me. I never give them a second thought. My first thought covers everything. Anyway, I wanna tell ya . . . .”

--A 1955 Bob Hope clip from “Ed Sullivan’s All-Star Comedy Special” on CBS

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“That’s a tostada.”

--Patrick Duffy in an old Taco Bell commercial on NBC’s “An All-Star Word From Our Sponsor”

Why do we love nostalgia? Because it’s comforting, a chain of continuity in our lives. And because it reacquaints us with old friends while charting our personal histories. It’s a feel-good time machine whooshing us away from today’s headaches back to earlier eras, when we were younger and, we imagine with selective memories, life was simpler and more enjoyable. Like, sure, there were all those jollies during the golden days of McCarthyism, the Vietnam War and Watergate. And was the Cold War fun or what?

Why do the television networks love nostalgia? Because we love nostalgia. Also because it beats creativity. And because reliving the past is, in most cases, bankably cost-effective. In other words, a good buy for the money: some clips, some commentary from original participants and say good night, Gracie.

Hence, the prime-time lineup for the May ratings sweeps (which began last Thursday and runs through May 24). It includes 17 nostalgia-type programs, not counting ABC’s remakes of old Disney films--the just-aired “Escape to Witch Mountain” and Saturday’s “Freaky Friday.”

Some of the others may be freaky enough.

On that list are two comedy series that, in effect, are temporarily remaking themselves into older comedies. Cast members from the box-office smash “The Brady Bunch” make cameo appearances Tuesday on NBC’s “Wings,” when a stressed-out Helen dreams she’s Marcia Brady. And the May 24 episode of ABC’s “Roseanne” is an homage to “Gilligan’s Island” creator Sherwood Schwartz, in which Dan fantasizes that he and his family are stranded on an uncharted island where he is the skipper, his sister-in-law, Jackie, is Gilligan and Roseanne is that voluptuous movie star, Ginger.

Meanwhile, Thursday’s “Hope & Gloria” on NBC will reunite Alan Thicke of that series with his former “Growing Pains” colleagues--Joanna Kerns, Kirk Cameron and Jeremy Miller. The plot has a “Growing Pains” reunion foisted on the talk show hosted by Thicke’s “Hope & Gloria” character.

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More traditional are this month’s 10 nostalgia specials that rely largely on clips. Wednesday brings NBC’s “An All-Star Word From Our Sponsor,” which includes old commercials in which Bruce Willis, Sharon Stone, Susan Sarandon, John Travolta, Jeff Daniels and other young hucksters appeared years before they became famous. Also expect a heavy dose of clips from CBS on Thursday’s “Where Are They Now?,” which will update America on some of yesteryear’s celebrities. And on Saturday, Brett Butler, Dana Carvey, Howie Mandel, Eddie Murphy, Roseanne, Lily Tomlin and Robin Williams look back at the comedians who inspired them on ABC’s “Who Makes You Laugh?”

Viewers apparently love seeing entertainment VIPs when they were nobodies. So, exploiting a good thing, ABC returns May 11 with “Before They Were Stars, Part III,” featuring early performances of such “nobodies” as Travolta, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dana Delany, Nicole Kidman, Keanu Reeves and Ellen DeGeneres. But wait. There’s more as ABC continues that night with “fascinating, fun-filled clips” on “The Ultimate TV Trivia Challenge,” which will challenge viewers with questions about their all-time favorite series and stars.

Just who are these effete snobs who say TV is a wasteland? Why, on May 13, NBC delivers “TV’s Funniest Families: The Kids,” featuring clips from such series as “I Love Lucy,” “Family Ties,” “The Cosby Show,” “The Brady Bunch” and “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father.” And only two nights later, Brett Butler hosts ABC’s “TV Laughs at Life,” a special on sitcom episodes that chronicle life’s epic moments, such as falling in love, giving birth, weddings, funerals, birthdays and anniversaries. To say nothing of sitting in front of your set watching old clips.

And that’s not all. Clips of Milton Berle, Flip Wilson, Shecky Greene, Red Skelton, Bob Hope, Jack Benny and other comics highlight “Ed Sullivan’s All-Star Comedy Special” on May 19, back-to-back on CBS with “TV’s All-Time Favorites,” in which those nostalgia-niks Dawn Wells of “Gilligan’s Island,” Jerry Mathers of “Leave It to Beaver” and Davy Jones of “The Monkees” host a salute to TV’s funniest pets, best bombshells, biggest shenanigans and wackiest families. The Manson family is excluded.

And coming May 22 is ABC’s “The Laverne & Shirley Reunion,” with Penny Marshall, Cindy Williams and others filling time among clips of one of TV’s most popular series ever.

It was NBC’s series of “Perry Mason”-emeritus movies that so profoundly affirmed that occasionally revisiting classic TV characters could be good business. In that tradition, Sunday brought NBC’s “The Return of Hunter,” featuring the return of Fred Dryer. And coming May 14 on CBS is James Garner in “The Rockford Files: A Blessing in Disguise.”

In between--and absolutely worth watching--is the second of four CBS movies reprising one of TV’s most arresting and watchable pairs of TV detectives. “Cagney & Lacey: Together Again” airs Tuesday at 9 p.m.

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To update you, the former Detective Chris Cagney (Sharon Gless) is now Lt. Cagney-Burton, on assignment to a New York assistant D.A. and married to a hotshot Clinton appointee who has moved to Washington. Retired from the force, Mary Beth Lacey (Tyne Daly) gets a temporary assignment with her former partner to help make ends meet, and her husband, Harvey (John Karlen), is stewing at home while recovering from a heart attack.

The characters themselves may engender nostalgia, but there is nothing the least dated about this story by Terry Louise Fisher and Steve Brown, which dives into urban chaos, the problems of the homeless and street violence. Saying he has to wear a flak jacket for protection, an Asian store owner asks: “What kind of country this?”

Things are no smoother on the home front for either Cagney or Lacey. Cagney’s marriage may be on the skids and, a longtime recovering alcoholic, she considers jumping off the wagon. Lacey is so stressed over money problems and the seething Harvey’s self-destructive behavior that she’s smoking again.

The homicide they’re solving is interesting for its percolating social anger, but it’s their personal lives and intimacy as friends--a sort of magical combativeness--that make these two sizzle. Although this is not exactly dueling double chins, the writers take delight in comedically playing to their protagonists’ creeping matronliness and menopause.

“Hot flashes, insomnia, diminished libido,” Cagney reflects, angrily. “Why don’t they take me out and shoot me?”

Neither Daly nor Gless is afraid to show bulges. As a result, Lacey waddles a bit when she walks. And when a huffing, puffing Cagney chases after a petty thief, you’re reminded of a bag of potatoes with legs.

It may not be glamorous, but it’s swell theater. The performances by Gless, Daly and Karlen are superior, and once again so is the series, even when trickled out as ratings-sweeps nostalgia.