We went away for Martin Luther King Day weekend and much drama ensued. First, we braved a Midwestern ice storm. Then, while we were gone, our landlord accidentally set off our house alarm and the police showed up. We came back Monday exhausted, (after a Chief’s playoffs defeat), to find one of my favorite Sonny & Cher show episodes airing, the one with Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr. which I love because they sing one of my childhood jams, "You Don't Have to Be a Star," and it’s one of the few episodes I remember seeing when it originally aired. It also has an amazingly progressive satire of Gone with the Wind where McCoo and Davis Jr. play Rhett and Scarlett. 

But it wasn’t taping!! Oh, the horror. I have actually had obsessed fan dreams about this exact thing: I find Sonny & Cher shows in the TV Guide but I can’t tape them, or  I find rare record albums in store bins but I can’t get them to the checkout counter. What would Freud say? I don’t have a clue but I was definitely experiencing missing a Cher show anxiety. Then I realized GetTV was not categorizing each Cher series correctly and that’s why the McCoo/Davis Jr. show wasn’t taping. Lucky for me and my obsession, GetTV has been airing reruns of the reruns and I caught the show a few weeks later.

So I’ve become a bit ambivalent about GetTV recently. First there have been the aforementioned DVR issues. There are three separate shows to track, understandably unavoidable, but when I set up a Comedy Hour series recording, DISH can’t recognize all the future airings of Comedy Hours. And furthermore, and this is a persnickety, obsessed, scholarly issue, GetTV mis-titles some Comedy Hours as the later day S&C Shows and vice versa. Criminy!

And then there are times of plenty and times of scarcity, like mid-January when GetTV aired as many as three new shows a Monday night. Then a month later you get no new shows and lots of reruns of reruns. They are keeping us on our toes, DVR-wise.

In any case, there have been way too many shows in the new year for me to even research online. So that whole idea of keeping up in the blog isn’t going to work, even with sketches of recaps. But I do want to address these shows in a blow-by-blow way and have decided that when GetTV has finished it’s run of them, I’ll start from the beginning and do recaps of every skit, song (with links if possible), and information on which channel aired what skits. And I'll include some scholarship that proceeds with the evolution of the show.

In the meantime, to tide you over, here are a slew of show promos:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Yru15nXFSI
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwubvgLrtew
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CgvBPOSswU
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqxgyIYx5vI
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJxRRngptQA
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8osrVUThmoE
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HE2nR-S-OdY
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gILMVZDxjKo
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qWR6MGF07k

And here's a Sonny Comedy Review promo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5q2ihScKfbc

And here's a thing called a Bumper. What is this thing called a Bumper?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5ak-yYrVCQ
Note where the bumper says: “the Indian always wins.”

Two captures from the Sonny & Cher and Cher Christmas shows aired this year on GetTV.

I can't believe these things don't already exist on the Internet. I fantasize that someone even owns this record album prop.

And I dearly love this bit from Redd Foxx. Merry Christmas to all the Bigots!

Cher was involved in a lot of Christmas caroling throughout the 1970s and it's taken me a while to get the shows straight. The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour Christmas Collection DVD, as it turns out, does not show the pure, original episodes as it turns out.

The 12/20/1972 Show

This is the show with Cher (and Sonny) singing "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" with the "One Tin Soldier" cartoon. This itself is a poignant song to revisit considering the rise of white nationalism and bigotry happening right now.

The 12/19/1973 Show

This was a full-blown Christmas show completely outside of their normal set, most notable for Cher's infamous rendition of "O Holy Night."

• Sonny & Cher sing their upbeat version of "Jingle Bells"
• Cher Sings "A Gift of Song"
• Cher sings "O Holy Night"
• Christmas in Germantown Medley
• The Ending

But there are also other notable moments, like William Conrad reading a long, boring Christmas poem with Sonny & Cher in rapt attention, Sonny & Cher sitting on Santa's lap, and an incredibly odd Indian-Italian mashup with Cher dressed as a plains Indian skipping around with a talking bear looking for snow. The song is tragically ear-wormy but the set design is amazing. I don't remember ever seeing this on the DVD version of the show.

The 12/21/1975 Cher Show

Wow! The Cher show last night was lovely and amazing and so very timely.

Mr. Cher Scholar groaned when he heard The Hudson Brother and The Lennon Sisters were the guests. Never a value add there. But we both thoroughly enjoyed every scene Redd Foxx was in, including two really, really amazing pieces: Redd Foxx reading Christmas Wishes for Bigots, (God, I wish this was on YouTube–I will try to transpose it for us), and Redd Foxx as Elmer the Elf showing us all Santa's VIP gifts for the big celebrities of 1975. It was very funny.

Cher sings "White Christmas/We Need A Little Christmas" and the musical numbers make great effort to be multi-cultural, including:

• "Some Children See Him" which Cher sings beautifully, all while surrounded with a plethora of poinsettias.
• The full-cast big band medley at the end is very festive, lovely and international.

Cher also dons a Santa wig and beard for Chastity and Chastity also does some real tap dancing.  Oh, and we see Laverne's bedroom.

Great, great show.

The 12/5/1976 Show

I haven't seen this show in a while but it's the only Christmas show after Sonny & Cher reunite.

– Opening duet: Sonny & Cher sing their uptempo "Jingle Bells"

– All-cast medley with Chastity, Elijah, Bernadette Peters and Captain Kangaroo

– Laverne with Alvie

Merry Christmas, y'all!

I don't have time to cover all the show in depth anymore but I can try to link to some of the online musical numbers with a few comments.

1/3/1972 Show

Opening duet: "Sooner or Later"  is a song from The Grass Roots.

Cher's solo: "Come Rain or Shine" was recorded by everybody, including famously by Billie Holiday.  Mr. Cher Scholar and I joked her wig looks like 1960s rich housewife hair or an unkempt Marlo Thomas. It's a really bad wig and the early solo spots are so shadowy.

Concert segment: "Mr. Tamborine Man/Joy to the World" (with Dinah Shore). One of Cher's many Bob Dylan covers, a hit by The Byrds and Three Dog Night. Sonny & Cher did this song twice on their shows. This is the not-so-hot version. See Cher's lovely 70s fringe knot swinging around.

The show's close.

2/6/1974 Show

Concert segment: "HiHeel Sneakers/Barefootin" ("Sneakers" is a Tommy Tucker song and "Barefootin" is a Robert Parker song. Sonny wears a hilarious Miami-themed cabano boy shirt (I call this a Barry Manilow shirt). Cher sports an afro ponytail. Good mike tossing by Cher.

Cher Solo: "Working Together" with Cher in that macramé head thing Groovy organ. 

9/15/1972 Show

Opening Duet: "Let Me Down Easy"  in white outfits with blue and green stripes. Don’t know who originally recorded this song but Dusty Springfield did a slow groovy cover in 1972 on the Dusty in London album. Cher also recorded it for her 1972 Foxy Lady album.

All the Michael Jackson and The Jackson Five material from the show, including "what are you gonna be when you grow up," "Looking Through My Window" and "Ben."  Interesting look at the pre-teen Michael Jackson.

Vamp Segment. 

It annoyed me that the episode right before the U.S. election was the Ronald Reagan episode. Good bit of S&C self-deprecation here though and one of the best looks at the oddity that is the Bono Award.

Cher Solo: "Say it Isn’t So" in that famous fuchsia dress. Heavy Vaseline job here and we see Cher's belly button.

Years 1 – 9/26/1973 Show

This was the show immediately after the election. Although it's one of the unsatisfying "Years" episodes, it has some sketches to note:

• Early reality TV Chastity video while Cher sings "Chastity Sun" – my favorite picture from that is to the right, although who doesn't take pause at the prominent "It's a Girl" button shot.
• Concert Segment: Medley with Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons and Bobby Vinton.
• The rock and roll diner segment, not online, is eerie in how it predicts Cher's contractual struggles with Sonny and her later rise to fame, complete with her future 1980s "look."

The Vamp Through Time

I've never watched these shows in sequential order, which would be good to do so I could see how segments and trends on the show evolve. For instance, it's interesting to note how the Vamp dress evolved over the course of The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour.

1. The simple blood red dress with long, curled hair,
2. The shiny hot red dress with the curly wig and pinned heart,
3. The later-day cross-hatch textured dress.