Decoder Ring: Reconsidering One of the “Worst” TV Shows of All Time AI transcript and summary - episode of podcast Slow Burn

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (Decoder Ring: Reconsidering One of the “Worst” TV Shows of All Time) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Go to PodExtra AI's podcast page (Slow Burn) to view the AI-processed content of all episodes of this podcast.

Slow Burn episodes list: view full AI transcripts and summaries of this podcast on the blog

Episode: Decoder Ring: Reconsidering One of the “Worst” TV Shows of All Time

Author: Slate Podcasts
Duration: 01:04:20

Episode Shownotes

In 1980, a variety show debuted on NBC called Pink Lady and Jeff. Its stars were a pair of Japanese pop idols known for catchy, choreographed dance numbers. Pink Lady was inescapable in Japan: selling millions of records, appearing on TV daily, and filling arenas. But their American TV show

left audiences completely bewildered. Pink Lady and Jeff acquired legendary status as one of television’s most notorious bombs, a show that managed to kill off the entire variety show genre. Or at least—that’s how it’s been seen in America. But for the two women of Pink Lady, the show was something else. In this episode, Decoder Ring’s Evan Chung puts this so-called “megaflop” in the spotlight to find out what really went wrong. You’ll hear from Mie and Keiko Masuda of Pink Lady, their co-host Jeff Altman, head writer Mark Evanier, and legendary TV producer Sid Krofft of H.R. Pufnstuf fame. This episode was written and produced by Evan Chung. It was edited by Willa Paskin. Our translator was Eric Margolis. Decoder Ring is also produced by Max Freedman and Katie Shepherd, with help from Sofie Kodner. Derek John is Executive Producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. Special thanks to Kelly Killian, Lorne Frohman, Rowby Goren, Michael Lloyd, Cheyna Roth, Karin Fjellman, Cole delCharco, and Hannah Airriess. If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at [email protected] Want more Decoder Ring? Subscribe to Slate Plus to unlock exclusive bonus episodes. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of the Decoder Ring show page. Or, visit slate.com/decoderplus to get access wherever you listen. Disclosure: A Bond Account is a self-directed brokerage account with Public Investing, member FINRA/SIPC. Deposits into this account are used to purchase 10 investment-grade and high-yield bonds. As of 9/26/24, the average, annualized yield to worst (YTW) across the Bond Account is greater than 6%. A bond’s yield is a function of its market price, which can fluctuate; therefore, a bond’s YTW is not “locked in” until the bond is purchased, and your yield at time of purchase may be different from the yield shown here. The “locked in” YTW is not guaranteed; you may receive less than the YTW of the bonds in the Bond Account if you sell any of the bonds before maturity or if the issuer defaults on the bond. Public Investing charges a markup on each bond trade. See our Fee Schedule. Bond Accounts are not recommendations of individual bonds or default allocations. The bonds in the Bond Account have not been selected based on your needs or risk profile. See https://public.com/disclosures/bond-account to learn more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Summary

In this episode of Decoder Ring, host Evan Chung delves into the 1980 variety show 'Pink Lady and Jeff,' which aimed to introduce the famous Japanese pop duo, Pink Lady, to the American audience. Despite their success in Japan, the show became infamous for its poor reception in the U.S. The episode features insights from industry professionals and the stars themselves, highlighting the cultural misunderstandings and production challenges that led to its failure, including language barriers and an untested format. Ultimately, the show lasted only five episodes, marking a significant moment in television history that contributed to the decline of the variety genre.

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (Decoder Ring: Reconsidering One of the “Worst” TV Shows of All Time) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Full Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker_23
This podcast is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. You choose to hit play on this podcast today. Smart choice. Make another smart choice with Auto Quote Explorer to compare rates from multiple car insurance companies all at once.

00:00:15 Speaker_23
Try it at Progressive.com. Progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates. Not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy.

00:00:33 Speaker_23
Earlier this year, Decoder Ring's senior editor and producer Evan Chung got a chance to speak with a Hollywood legend.

00:00:39 Speaker_03
A legend by the name of Sid Croft.

00:00:42 Speaker_04
And if you don't know who I am, you all have a cell phone, call your grandma. You should be talking to your grandma every day anyway.

00:00:52 Speaker_03
Sid is 95 years old now, and for virtually every one of those years, he's been an entertainer.

00:00:58 Speaker_04
Ever since I'm 10, I'm in this business. It's the only business I know.

00:01:04 Speaker_23
As a little kid in the Depression, Sid fell in love with puppetry. And by the time he was a teenager, he was opening for Judy Garland and Liberace.

00:01:12 Speaker_03
And then, starting in the late 1960s, he teamed up with his brother Marty to make a series of gonzo, psychedelic children's TV shows starring some very large, very trippy puppets.

00:01:24 Speaker_05
That tree's talking. Oh, everybody talks here on Livin' Island. HR Puppet Show. Who's your friend when things get rough?

00:01:33 Speaker_04
We were the kings of Saturday morning. We were on all three networks. And we were so lucky, because we didn't have 10 cents to do those shows. But we put everything up on the screen.

00:01:47 Speaker_23
In 1975, Sid and Marty got a big break, the chance to move from Saturday mornings to primetime, when they got a call from Fred Silverman, the head of programming at ABC.

00:01:59 Speaker_04
And he said, I need a variety show. I just saw these two kids. And he said, would you just take a look at this piece of tape?

00:02:08 Speaker_03
The kids on the tape were a couple of siblings, a teenage brother and sister from Utah named Donnie and Marie Osmond.

00:02:22 Speaker_04
And I looked at it, I immediately called him back, and I said, oh my God, Fred, you just sent me a piece of magic.

00:02:34 Speaker_03
Donnie and Marie premiered on ABC in January 1976.

00:02:42 Speaker_25
I'm Donnie. And I'm Marie. Tonight, our guests are Lee Majors, the Osmond Brothers, Ice Vanities, Fairfax's Majors, and special guest star Colin.

00:02:51 Speaker_04
It became the number one show on Friday night. It went through the roof.

00:02:57 Speaker_23
Sid and Marty Kroft had proven their primetime prowess. And it's what happened after that's the reason Evan reached out to Sid in the first place.

00:03:07 Speaker_03
A few years after Donny and Marie, Fred Silverman, the ABC exec, called the Crofts up again. He'd recently moved over to NBC, and he'd just seen something intriguing on the evening news. Walter Cronkite talking about the latest imports from Japan.

00:03:22 Speaker_12
Cars, cameras, calculators, television sets. The Japanese now have packaged a new product, and it doesn't fit into any of those categories.

00:03:31 Speaker_03
Japan's economic power was on the rise at the time, and American manufacturers were growing anxious about the influx of consumer goods. But the uncategorizable product Cronkite was referring to was a pair of young women in glitzy mini dresses.

00:03:47 Speaker_18
Individually, their names are Mi and Kei. Collectively, they are Pink Lady, the most phenomenal success ever in Japanese show business.

00:03:56 Speaker_03
Me and Kay, the two members of Pink Lady, sang bubbly, disco-fied pop in Japanese. And their performances were driving a mania like the nation had never seen before.

00:04:07 Speaker_01
There are two ladies who have turned their entire country of Japan into a screaming basket case.

00:04:12 Speaker_18
Pink Lady has sold 17 million records. Fans range from the barely walking up through the bubblegum crowd.

00:04:18 Speaker_20
Nearly 300 Pink Lady products are available here, including everything from toy makeup kits to Pink Lady hot dogs.

00:04:26 Speaker_18
There's a Pink Lady TV commercial at almost any time of day or night.

00:04:29 Speaker_20
This one for an air conditioner. That one for an automatic cockroach and bug eliminated.

00:04:39 Speaker_03
Fred Silverman was amazed by the images of enormous Japanese crowds screaming in ecstasy as the two women shimmied in unison. And he couldn't wait to share what he saw with the Croft brothers.

00:04:50 Speaker_04
Oh my God, they're like bigger than the Beatles in Japan. They play stadiums and they love them. He said, just let me fly them in. I'll never forget them.

00:05:02 Speaker_03
Because just imagine what could happen if the American public got infected with Pink Lady fever too. If they could bring them over, give them their own TV show on NBC, it could potentially be the biggest smash of Sid and Marty's careers.

00:05:17 Speaker_03
And Pink Lady's too.

00:05:23 Speaker_10
I was being given an opportunity to go into American show business, so I wanted to do everything I could.

00:05:32 Speaker_11
Because it was the height of the pink lady boom, we thought we could make it in the birthplace of the entertainment industry.

00:05:40 Speaker_03
And so over the next year, meme K of Pink Lady would fly to Hollywood and Sid and Marty Kroft would build them an American star vehicle, a variety show designed to take the Pink Lady boom and turn it supersonic. But that isn't quite what happened.

00:06:05 Speaker_04
Can you imagine doing the worst show in the history of television? That's an honor.

00:06:20 Speaker_23
This is Decoder Ring. I'm Willa Paskin.

00:06:23 Speaker_03
And I'm Evan Chung. In 1980, a TV show debuted called Pink Lady and Jeff. It had the potential to bring something sensational to American airwaves. Instead, it became a punchline, a ratings disaster that left audiences completely bewildered.

00:06:41 Speaker_03
In the decades since, it's acquired legendary status as one of television's most notorious flops, a show that managed to kill off an entire genre. Or at least, that's how it's been seen in America.

00:06:55 Speaker_03
But for the two women of Pink Lady, the show is something else.

00:06:59 Speaker_03
And with their help, we're gonna put this so-called mega-flop in the spotlight to find out what this 45-year-old show has to tell us about the demands of fame, pop cultural chauvinism, and the limits of the American star machine.

00:07:14 Speaker_03
So today on Dakota Ring, how does the biggest pop sensation in the world get lost in translation?

00:07:40 Speaker_23
As the weather turns cooler, it's nice to look forward to holiday parties and curling up when it's cold outside and reaching for your favorite cozy sweater from Quince. I actually have a new cozy sweater from Quince.

00:07:53 Speaker_23
It's a cotton fisherman sweater that's perfect for the fall. Not too hot, not too cold, comfortable and yet also presentable, the whole sweater package and for a nice price too. Quince is also known for their Mongolian cashmere sweaters from just $50.

00:08:10 Speaker_23
And it's not just that. All Quince items are priced 50-80% less than similar brands. That includes beautiful leather jackets, cotton cardigans, soft denim, and so much more. Get cozy in Quince's high quality wardrobe essentials.

00:08:26 Speaker_23
Go to quince.com slash decoder for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's q u i n c e.com slash decoder to get free shipping and 365 day returns. quince.com slash decoder. It's always nice to get more for less.

00:08:50 Speaker_23
So here's a life hack that can automatically put some extra cash in your pocket. Discover will automatically double all the cash back you've earned on your credit card at the end of your first year with Cash Back Match.

00:09:02 Speaker_23
So you could get money for this holiday season and get more next holiday season. It pays to discover. See terms at discover.com slash credit card.

00:09:14 Speaker_03
By 1979, the pink lady phenomenon had been going on for years, and yet hardly anybody in the United States knew who these women were. Keiko Masuda was absolutely determined to become a singer by the time she was three years old.

00:09:39 Speaker_03
So in middle school, Kei signed up for theater club. The first meeting, they went around the room making introductions. And when the hour was up, she headed out onto her next class. But then she heard a voice echoing down the hallway, calling her name.

00:09:56 Speaker_10
It was this voice trailing off in the distance behind me. I turned around and saw a girl standing there who seemed like she was out of a fairy tale, her hair in a long braid, books clutched to her chest.

00:10:14 Speaker_03
It was a kind of fairy tale encounter, because this girl would end up changing Kei's life. This is me." She was also in the theater club. They would get cast as sisters in the school play.

00:10:28 Speaker_03
And as they talked, they discovered they shared the same visions of stardom.

00:10:35 Speaker_11
That year, we became close to one another. We realized that our dreams for the future were the same, and both of us wanted to work hard for that future together.

00:10:45 Speaker_03
Mie and Kay auditioned for the same music school in high school, and they both got in. Their singing voices were very different. Kay's is husky, while Mie's is high-pitched and pure.

00:10:54 Speaker_03
The girls were different in a lot of ways, in the way they dressed and in their personalities. Even talking to them today, Mie comes across as a bit more formal and concise, while Kay is maybe warmer, a little scattered.

00:11:06 Speaker_03
But in high school, a music teacher took a look at them and saw that they complimented each other, and he made a suggestion. Why don't you form a duo?

00:11:15 Speaker_10
It's not for that teacher. There would be no Pink Lady.

00:11:25 Speaker_03
In March 1976, after a couple of years performing together, me and Kay got a huge opportunity. A chance to sing on national TV, on a talent show called A Star is Born. They named themselves Cookie.

00:11:39 Speaker_03
They exuded a childlike innocence, wearing brightly colored bib overalls, harmonizing to a sweet, sunshiny pop song.

00:11:53 Speaker_10
The audience was completely full of people who had come to watch us. So we thought the best we could do is sing right to them with this strong feeling of, please, please let us win this.

00:12:06 Speaker_14
They had nothing to worry about.

00:12:16 Speaker_03
Immediately after the show ended, agents from production companies were lining up, making pitches to me and Kei.

00:12:25 Speaker_11
One of the producers had this passionate vision of making us into an act that could even succeed in the world of American show business.

00:12:32 Speaker_10
It was really startling. And we definitely wanted to go with his company. I think meeting him was something fated, a gift from God.

00:12:44 Speaker_03
In those days, the music industry in Japan worked kind of like the old Hollywood studio system. Performers would enter a contract with one company, essentially becoming their employees.

00:12:55 Speaker_03
The production company would determine what they sang, where they sang, and how they looked.

00:13:00 Speaker_03
And so me and Kei were taken out of view and put in the hands of a team, a composer, a lyricist, a choreographer, a stylist, working together to prepare them for their professional debut.

00:13:12 Speaker_03
And when they finally re-emerged six months later in another televised performance, they'd taken on a new name, Pink Lady, and they were virtually unrecognizable.

00:13:28 Speaker_13
Everyone was shocked.

00:13:32 Speaker_03
Gone were the childlike overalls and the gentle sunshine pop. Now they were wearing miniskirts, doing a highly choreographed routine to up-tempo disco. Mi told me that this was actually the aesthetic they'd wanted all along.

00:13:52 Speaker_15
Soul Train was on TV at the time, and I loved Soul Train.

00:14:07 Speaker_11
So we wanted to perform with that sort of soulful style that we saw on the show, like the artists who wore short shorts and boots with a lot of choreography. That was the vision we had, to become Disco Queen.

00:14:28 Speaker_03
It didn't take long. Pink Lady hit the top of the charts with their second single, S.O.S., in December 1976. It was the first of nine consecutive No. 1 singles.

00:14:47 Speaker_03
Their songs were catchy, charming, often a little goofy, and ahead of the disco curve in Japan. But it was how Pink Lady dressed and moved that really set them apart. Nobody in Japanese pop had ever looked quite like Pink Lady. Take a song like UFO.

00:15:07 Speaker_03
When they performed it on TV, they would step out in shiny tiaras shaped like alien antennae, along with sequined minidresses and go-go boots. And me and K danced side-by-side in precise, perfectly synchronized movements.

00:15:21 Speaker_03
That's how it was for every song. Every word had a gesture, every phrase a shimmy, looking like the Supremes leading an aerobics class. It was choreography frankly anybody could do, but that was the point.

00:15:35 Speaker_03
Their fans, especially young kids, bought instructional Pink Lady booklets to learn how to dance right along with them. It was like the Macarena or the YMCA, but with more steps and for every song in their repertoire.

00:15:53 Speaker_03
there was no lack of opportunity to see them dance and sing, because 1970s Japan was a nation obsessed with TV.

00:16:04 Speaker_11
It was probably the era where TV was the most integrated into society. Every household had a TV now, and we were making fun music that everyone could watch and enjoy, from kids to their grandparents.

00:16:16 Speaker_11
So I think it was arriving at that moment that helped turn us into a phenomenon.

00:16:21 Speaker_03
Pink Lady's management company kept them on a grueling minute-by-minute schedule, shuffling from TV studio to TV studio. And it wasn't just for televised performances. Me and Kei got contracted out for an absurd number of commercials, too.

00:16:41 Speaker_11
So Pink Lady was basically on TV every single day. And I think from there, we really began to reach audiences.

00:16:49 Speaker_03
According to a magazine survey, the typical Japanese person came across an image of Pink Lady an average of three to four times a day. There were three Pink Lady movies and even a 36-episode anime biopic.

00:17:04 Speaker_03
Me and Kay didn't see any of the money from the merchandising and commercials. That all went to their management company. For the first year, all they were paid was a $250 a month stipend.

00:17:15 Speaker_03
That salary did at least get bumped up as Pink Lady became by far Japan's best-selling artist of 1977 and 1978. At some points, they had the top three songs simultaneously. And then there were the concerts.

00:17:30 Speaker_03
At Korakuen Stadium in July 1978, Pink Lady played to an audience of more than 100,000 people, all chanting their name.

00:17:47 Speaker_11
We were really pouring our entire souls into every single song, every single performance, working our very hardest, singing like our lives were on the line.

00:18:01 Speaker_03
In that crowd of 100,000 in Tokyo was an American radio impresario, and after the show, he came to them with an offer. He said he could become their American manager and help break them overseas.

00:18:15 Speaker_03
Three months later, Pink Lady headed into the studio to record their first English-language single, a song tailor-made for American radio.

00:18:26 Speaker_25
Debuting here is the first American hit by the biggest-selling Japanese recording act in the world. In the past two and a half years, they've sold 17 million records. Here they are, two pretty girls from Tokyo known as Pink Lady.

00:18:40 Speaker_25
Their song, Kiss in the Dark.

00:18:44 Speaker_03
Pink Lady actually came from Shizuoka, not Tokyo, and they weren't girls, they were 21-year-old women. But Kiss in the Dark entered the U.S. charts in the summer of 1979, just barely cracking the top 40.

00:18:56 Speaker_03
It wasn't much of a hit, but it was enough to wake the American media up to the fact that something phenomenal was happening in Japan.

00:19:05 Speaker_21
Japan is sending a new export to this country, a recording by two singers who are unknown here, but in Japan, few people have better known.

00:19:16 Speaker_03
And it wasn't long until Pink Lady got word that they'd earned a new fan.

00:19:24 Speaker_10
The president of NBC happened to see us on TV. He thought we were really interesting, so he wanted to make a program with us.

00:19:33 Speaker_03
Mi and Kei had dreamed of American success from the very beginning, from the moment they signed their first contract. They weren't expecting it so soon. But here it was.

00:19:47 Speaker_11
Since we had all the momentum of the Pink Lady boom behind us, I thought that now was our best and maybe only chance to give things a shot in America.

00:19:58 Speaker_18
Pink Lady is ready for America. But is America ready for Pink Lady?

00:20:04 Speaker_03
We'll be right back.

00:20:10 Speaker_23
This episode is brought to you by public.com. Interest rates have fallen, but you can still lock in a 6% or higher yield with a bond account at public.com.

00:20:21 Speaker_23
That's a pretty big deal because when rates drop, so can the interest you earn on your investment. A bond account allows you to lock in a 6% or higher yield with a diversified portfolio of high yield and investment grade corporate bonds.

00:20:35 Speaker_23
So while other people are watching their returns shrink, you could be earning regular interest payments. But a yield is not locked in until you invest, so check it out. The good news is it only takes a couple of minutes to sign up at public.com.

00:20:50 Speaker_23
Lock in a 6% or higher yield with a bond account only at public.com forward slash decoder. Brought to you by Public Investing, member FINRA and SIPC.

00:21:03 Speaker_23
As of September 26th, 2024, the average annualized yield to worst across the bond account is greater than 6 percent. Yield to worst is not guaranteed, not an investment recommendation. All investing involves risk.

00:21:21 Speaker_23
Visit public.com slash disclosures slash bond dash account for more info. This episode is brought to you by Saks.com. There's joy in finding the perfect gift for the ones you love, but it can be a challenge. Saks.com's holiday gift guide makes it easy.

00:21:42 Speaker_23
Whether you're surprising your hard-to-shop-for sister with a Chloe bracelet bag or gifting your partner a memorable scent from Gucci, at Saks.com there's holiday inspiration for every personality on your list.

00:21:55 Speaker_23
Zacks.com does make it really easy to find inspiration. I was just on their site and like they say it is organized like a gift guide.

00:22:02 Speaker_23
They have all sorts of fun categories like cozy weekend vibes and weekend uniforms and kids pick that curate whole looks for you or your loved ones. Saks.com's hand-picked guide can help take the stress out of the holidays.

00:22:16 Speaker_23
Add instant cheer to your home with some bright decor or bundle up in a scarf coat from Totem to stay warm all season long. Find gifts guaranteed to bring joy to everyone this holiday season at Saks.com.

00:22:30 Speaker_23
That's Saks.com for the ultimate holiday gift guide and all the shopping inspiration you need.

00:22:38 Speaker_03
When Fred Silverman, the head of NBC, learned about Pink Lady, he immediately saw them as perfect material for a variety show. The variety show had been a reliable recipe for TV success for decades.

00:22:51 Speaker_03
First, you find a charismatic host who can sing and do comedy, Dean Martin or Carol Burnett. Or better yet, get two hosts, Sonny and Cher, the Smothers Brothers. Then the hosts fill the hour with playful banter and sketch comedy.

00:23:05 Speaker_03
You throw in some big name guest stars and you pack the stage with backup dancers for some spectacular musical set pieces. And few people knew how to pull off spectacle better than Sid and Marty Kroft.

00:23:18 Speaker_04
The most important thing is grabbing that audience. You've got to set the stage. You've got to take them by the hand.

00:23:27 Speaker_03
Sid and his brother Marty, who died in 2023, had filled Donny and Marie with ice skaters and balloon drops and turned it into one of the last great variety show smashes. And now Fred Silverman was tasking them with doing it again for Pink Lady.

00:23:41 Speaker_03
And they'd have to make it quick.

00:23:43 Speaker_04
Variety needs to be done tomorrow night. When they want a show, they want it for next week. It's like totally, totally insane.

00:23:54 Speaker_03
First off, they were going to need to hire a writing staff.

00:23:58 Speaker_02
And what I discovered was you didn't really work for Sid and Marty. You married into the family.

00:24:03 Speaker_03
Mark Evanier had already written for a bunch of shows for the Crofts when the woman in charge of production for them called about a new project.

00:24:10 Speaker_02
So we go to lunch, and they brought a cup of tomato soup. And as we're eating the tomato soup, she says to me, well, you never heard of these girls, but there are two women from Japan who are very hot over there. And I said, oh, pink lady?

00:24:22 Speaker_02
And she dropped her spoon in the tomato soup, and it was spattered all over both of us. And she was, like, shocked I knew who they were.

00:24:29 Speaker_03
They were on the walls of my office. It just so happened that his office mate was an American Japanophile, and coincidentally, a huge Pink Lady fan. So Mark knew they had appeal. He just had one question. I said to her, do they speak English?

00:24:43 Speaker_02
And she says, we're not sure. If there was a moment in my life when I might have thought, let's take a different path here, that might have been it.

00:24:52 Speaker_03
Fred Silverman had told Sid and Marty not to worry. Pink Lady's managers had assured him, yes, they spoke English fine. So they didn't see the need to even hire someone who spoke Japanese to be on set.

00:25:03 Speaker_03
Still, the network figured it would be smart to pair Pink Lady on screen with a more familiar-feeling presence, an American co-host they could play off of.

00:25:13 Speaker_04
Fred Silverman says, we got this comedian under contract, Jeff Altman.

00:25:19 Speaker_08
Well, I am Jeff Altman, master of my universe, and also I do some work at a gas station downtown.

00:25:28 Speaker_03
Jeff is joking, which is what he does for a living. Though in 1979, he'd only been working the L.A. comedy club circuit for a few years. Oh, where are you guys from? Oh, that's great. His stand-up set always began the same way.

00:25:42 Speaker_08
I mean, I came out on stage and would say, gee, any of you folks here been at a Hollywood party recently and wanted to try this silly little party gag? And bang, I would smash my head on a bar stool and down I would go.

00:25:57 Speaker_03
Jeff's routine also included a lot of impressions. Johnny Carson. Raymond Burr.

00:26:02 Speaker_07
Richard Nixon.

00:26:05 Speaker_03
He was starting to get steady work on TV. Talk show appearances. A guest role on the Dukes of Hazzard. Lots of commercials.

00:26:11 Speaker_08
And eventually, a network holding deal. I was just on a list with, I guess, other guys to do something for NBC. And the next thing I know, they said, well, let's hook this boy up with two Japanese girls for no damn reason.

00:26:27 Speaker_08
Yeah, I guess my name was first on the list being Altman.

00:26:30 Speaker_03
Actually, NBC was impressed with Jeff when he replaced a cast member last minute on another Variety special. So the network showed him footage of Pink Lady performing in front of enormous arena crowds in Japan and said, these are your new co-stars.

00:26:45 Speaker_08
I watched them do that and I said, these girls are tremendous. If they could open these girls up to the Western world, holy God, this show will be the most highly rated variety show in television history.

00:26:57 Speaker_08
Did you have a sense that this could be it, like this could be your big break? Oh, absolutely. I was going to be on for an hour on primetime television. And you thought to yourself, wow, this is going to be a different life.

00:27:13 Speaker_03
Now that the hosts were set and the show had become Pink Lady and Jeff, Mark Evanier and his writing staff had to get to work putting together the pilot. Though even at this point, nobody on the show had ever spoken with me or Kay.

00:27:26 Speaker_02
We had to write it without meeting them because they were so hot in Japan that they were booked constantly. And then we had to negotiate how many days we'd have them. And they kept saying, can you do this show in two days? And we said, no.

00:27:40 Speaker_02
How about two weeks? And they clutched their hearts and said, oh, no, God, we can't cancel all their concerts for two weeks.

00:27:45 Speaker_02
And I kept saying, if you can't get them here for four or five days to shoot a pilot, how are you going to get them here to do a series if this thing gets picked up?

00:27:54 Speaker_03
Eventually, the Crofts reached an agreement for Pink Lady to spend a little less than a week to rehearse and shoot the pilot. The writers would just have to have the script ready to go as soon as they arrived. The brief was pretty straightforward.

00:28:07 Speaker_03
A traditional variety show, with me and Kay and Jeff doing comic monologues and sketches, song and dance numbers sprinkled throughout, and weekly guest stars. But without having met Pink Lady, Mark had no hints as to how to write for them.

00:28:22 Speaker_02
We kept saying to the managers, what can they do? And they go, oh, they can do anything. Whatever you write, they'll be able to do. And I said, now, wait a minute. If we write open heart surgery, they can't do that. No, no, they could learn that.

00:28:33 Speaker_02
They're fine. So we wrote a script, and we just made up a relationship because we had to.

00:28:41 Speaker_08
At some point, I am at my house and the script is delivered, then there it is. We're off.

00:28:50 Speaker_03
The day Pink Lady finally landed in L.A., they were taken straight from the airport to sit in Marty's offices, where everybody was waiting.

00:28:58 Speaker_04
And these two gorgeous girls come in and I'm talking to them and Marty's talking to them.

00:29:07 Speaker_11
They talked to us for about 10 minutes. I was trying to listen with all my might, all lasered in.

00:29:13 Speaker_04
And they're bowing and bowing and bowing. And then I remember Marty finally said, do you understand a word that Sid or I... Did you understand? And they shook their head, no. No. They don't understand anything. I couldn't speak English at all.

00:29:38 Speaker_10
In Japan, I had an English teacher who would come around with me. She'd try to teach me while we were driving in the car. I was so busy with work, I'd end up falling asleep in the middle of a lesson.

00:29:50 Speaker_08
They were very talented girls, no question about that. It's just that they couldn't speak English.

00:29:56 Speaker_03
In that moment when you suddenly realized, oh, they don't in fact speak English, did something change in how you felt this show was going to go?

00:30:03 Speaker_08
Oh, absolutely. I remember having to change my underwear. That's a little joke.

00:30:10 Speaker_02
We kind of looked at each other like, everyone in the meeting looked at each other and went, oh, you mean we actually have to do this show? We're actually going to tape this thing?

00:30:20 Speaker_03
They were going to have to muddle through somehow. They wanted to rewrite the whole script to accommodate Mi and Kei, but there was no time, only a couple of days. Mi and Kei would have to memorize every line phonetically on their own.

00:30:33 Speaker_03
Even as they were shooting, there was nobody else on set who spoke Japanese.

00:30:42 Speaker_11
We got all sorts of directions, where to stand, when to start the take, and so on, but we didn't understand them. Then someone else would come to try to explain the directions to us, also in English, which we didn't understand either.

00:30:57 Speaker_11
So making the pilot was really rough.

00:31:02 Speaker_02
We taped this thing, this 15-minute pilot, and I thought it was never going to sell. Everybody thought, you know, this is nice. We got paid for doing this pilot, but then never, it's never going to pick this up.

00:31:14 Speaker_03
Two weeks later, Mark was at an interview at Universal Studios, trying to secure his next job.

00:31:19 Speaker_02
On my way out, I stopped at a payphone, checked to find my voicemail at home, and there was a message saying, we sold the show. And I went, what?

00:31:33 Speaker_03
It's possible Fred Silverman picked up the show because the pilot wasn't nearly as rough as Mark thought it was. But the other explanation is that NBC was in deep trouble. It was dead last in the ratings and coming close to bankruptcy.

00:31:49 Speaker_03
To save the network, Silverman had gone on a programming spree, commissioning nearly 60 pilots at once, aggressively tossing out the old nightly lineups to make room for dozens of new high-concept shows, in the hope that at least one of these big swings would pay off.

00:32:06 Speaker_03
Pink Lady at least were proven moneymakers in Japan. So NBC put in an order for six episodes.

00:32:15 Speaker_19
They're hotter than the Odd Couple, sunnier than Sonny and Cher. It's me and Key. It's Kay. And Jeff. Pink Lady, a new series coming soon on NBC. You bet.

00:32:26 Speaker_03
The show was set to debut in March 1980. Me and Kay would be coming over to America for an extended period this time. The pilot they'd already taped was just a demo. It would never air.

00:32:37 Speaker_03
For Sid Croft, that meant an opportunity to start from scratch, to solve the absurd predicament of having hosts who couldn't speak the language the show had to be in.

00:32:47 Speaker_04
You know, it's just, what am I going to do with them?

00:32:51 Speaker_03
And then he got an idea. Why not lean into the absurdity?

00:32:57 Speaker_04
I want to do a show that the next day at the water cooler, everybody says, holy shit, did you see that? What was that?

00:33:07 Speaker_02
Just making it a show that people would watch because it was so bizarre. I just want to do something weird.

00:33:14 Speaker_03
But Fred Silverman at NBC did not want weird.

00:33:17 Speaker_04
He said, no. And so I said, Fred, what is it that you want? He said, I want Donnie Murray. I said, I can't give you that.

00:33:28 Speaker_02
We kept hearing the phrase traditional variety shows. This has got to be a traditional variety show. And I kept saying, we don't have traditional variety show stars.

00:33:36 Speaker_03
But they figured they did at least have three stars. Me and Kay couldn't speak English, but they could sing and dance. Jeff couldn't sing or dance, but he could do comedy.

00:33:46 Speaker_02
So between the three of them, we kind of had, you know, an amalgam variety show star.

00:33:53 Speaker_03
So nobody was feeling despondent once they got going. Yeah, it was an odd premise. But in the TV business, having an odd premise wasn't an automatic death sentence.

00:34:03 Speaker_03
Mark remembers a time when everybody was chattering about CBS having the dumbest idea ever, a sitcom version of the Korean War satire, MASH.

00:34:13 Speaker_02
And it turned out to be one of the most successful TV shows ever done. So you go, let's see where this goes. It might catch on.

00:34:21 Speaker_08
I had the best set designer and costume. It was a good cast, crew. I walk into the studio and away we go.

00:34:32 Speaker_03
While the Americans were revved up, scrambling to figure out how to make it work, from talking to me, I don't get the sense that Pink Lady was feeling much pressure about the show doing well.

00:34:46 Speaker_11
Since we debuted, we'd just been trying our best at everything. I didn't really think much about success. We were rising so high, and we just wanted to keep taking on new challenges, one after the next.

00:34:58 Speaker_11
Going to America was just one of those challenges. So I don't think I was particularly nervous.

00:35:05 Speaker_03
Spending weeks learning and rehearsing each episode was a ton of work, no doubt. But it didn't compare to the craziness they were used to in Japan, being the most famous people alive, making 16 appearances a day.

00:35:18 Speaker_03
Hollywood, in comparison, was a place they could relax.

00:35:23 Speaker_11
In Japan, everyone knew us everywhere, and I couldn't exactly go out freely. But in America, where people didn't know me yet, I could go anywhere, and it felt like I received my freedom.

00:35:35 Speaker_11
So, on the contrary, it was a really wonderful thing that we weren't so known in America.

00:35:42 Speaker_03
But on March 1, 1980, millions of Americans were about to get a chance to learn who they were.

00:35:51 Speaker_19
Welcome to Pink Lady.

00:35:54 Speaker_08
Do you remember the night that the first episode went on air? I do. My part would be, you know, come out at the beginning and do a monologue.

00:36:06 Speaker_03
Jeff opened things up with his usual barstool prop comedy.

00:36:12 Speaker_08
Get the show started and introduce the girls.

00:36:14 Speaker_09
So ladies and gentlemen, please welcome me and Kay, the wonderful Pink Lady.

00:36:19 Speaker_03
And out they came, in slinky pink dresses, to do the first of several numbers, all of them in English.

00:36:35 Speaker_11
For a one-hour variety show, there were a lot of musical performances. We had to remember all the English lyrics and the choreography, too. And then there was all the banter they had to memorize.

00:36:47 Speaker_05
Now, you girls do speak English.

00:36:49 Speaker_15
Oh, yes. We spend many, many hours in Japan learning. We wanted to speak perfect English when we got here.

00:36:56 Speaker_09
Oh, and you speak English, too.

00:36:58 Speaker_15
Yes. Do you?

00:37:02 Speaker_03
Me and Kei at least had a Japanese interpreter on set at this point, but they still had to learn everything phonetically.

00:37:12 Speaker_11
All we could do was memorize and memorize the pronunciation and try our best to form the words.

00:37:19 Speaker_15
But I like you already, Jeff. You are so, so handsome.

00:37:23 Speaker_09
Oh, you just get turned on by my sexy round eyes.

00:37:26 Speaker_15
Oh, brother.

00:37:29 Speaker_03
For the comedy sketches, the writers tried to come up with scenarios where me and Kay had to say as little English as possible, like with Jeff playing a televangelist, healing me of boogie fever.

00:37:51 Speaker_03
Episode 2 guest-starred the legendary comic Sid Caesar as Mienke's kimono-wearing dad getting them ready for a date.

00:37:58 Speaker_00
It all builds up to a big, show-stopping medley performed by Pink Lady.

00:38:19 Speaker_03
And every episode would end the same way, with me and Kei in bikinis, dragging Jeff in his tuxedo into a jacuzzi.

00:38:26 Speaker_13
We have Japanese custom. At the end of the day, time to go into hot tub.

00:38:33 Speaker_05
Time to go into hot tub? No. I don't go into hot tub. No.

00:38:37 Speaker_04
And it was my idea as the hot tub at the end. I needed an ending. At least I got something weird in there.

00:38:45 Speaker_16
Good night!

00:38:52 Speaker_08
I remember watching the show and thinking to myself, man, this is pretty good. Everything looked like it was going to work. But I was wrong.

00:39:02 Speaker_04
It was like a nightmare.

00:39:04 Speaker_02
Everything you could do wrong went wrong for us.

00:39:08 Speaker_03
That's after the break.

00:39:14 Speaker_07
While we're waiting, a word from Alpo. Hi, this is Ed McMahon. Boy, Alpo's good for your dog, good for the whole family. Have you got it, Evan?

00:39:29 Speaker_23
Audible's best of 2024 picks are here. Discover the year's top audiobooks, podcasts, and originals in all your favorite genres.

00:39:38 Speaker_23
From memoirs and sci-fi to mysteries and thrillers, from romance and well-being to fiction, Audible's carefully curated list in every category is the best way to hear 2024's best of the year in audio entertainment.

00:39:52 Speaker_23
Like the star-studded production of George Orwell's 1984, which both honors and reinvigorates the terrifying classic. It's one of the best original dramatizations out there. A romance that hits the spot. Like Emily Henry's funny story.

00:40:05 Speaker_23
Or heartfelt memoirs like Supreme Court Justice Kitanji Brown Jackson's lovely one. Listen to the year's best fiction. Like The Women by Kristen Hanna and Percival Everett's brilliantly subversive James. Audible. There's more to imagine when you listen.

00:40:20 Speaker_23
Go to audible.com slash decoder and discover all the year's best waiting for you. Managing finances can feel complicated, but it doesn't have to be. RocketMoney simplifies everything.

00:40:38 Speaker_23
RocketMoney is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. See all of your subscriptions in one place.

00:40:51 Speaker_23
If there are any you don't want, RocketMoney can help you cancel them with a few taps. Get alerts if bills increase, if there's unusual spending, or if you're close to going over budget. RocketMoney will even try to negotiate lower bills for you.

00:41:03 Speaker_23
RocketMoney has over 5 million users and has saved a total of $500 million in cancelled subscriptions, saving members up to $740 a year when using all of the app's premium features. Stop wasting money on things you don't use.

00:41:17 Speaker_23
Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to RocketMoney.com slash decoder. That's RocketMoney.com slash decoder. RocketMoney.com slash decoder.

00:41:37 Speaker_03
According to head writer Mark Evanier, the problems on the set of Pink Lady and Jeff started at the very beginning, and they had to do with something they should have realized would be a challenge. In America, Pink Lady were unknowns.

00:41:50 Speaker_02
Nobody wanted to be on the show as a guest star. The client would come back and say, who the hell is Pink Lady? One of them actually said, why do they have a variety show and I don't?

00:41:57 Speaker_02
I'm not going to go on this show and I should be the star of this show, not them.

00:42:01 Speaker_15
You said you were going to get us some big name stars on the show. Yes, so far, all we've seen is you.

00:42:09 Speaker_02
So we had to literally write the scripts without stars. They would come in to us and say, what's on show three? We got to send the TV guide listing in. We didn't know. We would write something and hope we got.

00:42:22 Speaker_03
Like the time when the writers were promised that Dionne Warwick was going to appear.

00:42:26 Speaker_02
We go, OK, then we'd write a sketch for Dionne Warwick.

00:42:34 Speaker_03
Two days later, they were told, bad news, Dionne dropped out. But hey, Buddy Ebsen from the Beverly Hillbillies was available. Could they just plug him into their script?

00:42:43 Speaker_12
What you cooking, Granny? That's my spring tonic. Mmm, got a dandy hand on it this year.

00:42:49 Speaker_02
And we'd say, no, we can't switch the Dionne Warwick sketch to Buddy Ebsen. That was a literal example. We did everything backwards.

00:42:55 Speaker_03
When guests were finally booked, it was often at the very last minute. They'd basically have to walk right on stage and perform the material cold. That's if they were there at all. Many of the so-called musical guests were literally just music videos.

00:43:10 Speaker_03
Ultimately, Sid and Marty Kroft would have to open up their Rolodexes and call in favors to book some old showbiz legends a little past their heyday.

00:43:18 Speaker_08
I mean, gosh, we had Roy Orbison. We had Jerry Lewis. Working with Sid Caesar was one of the high points of my career.

00:43:29 Speaker_03
But the last-minute bookings made the writers' jobs very difficult. And it was even tougher for Pink Lady, struggling to keep up with the script.

00:43:40 Speaker_10
I'd stay up all night memorizing lines if I needed to. And when I did sleep, the words would enter into my dreams. Plus, there were five new songs with choreography to learn every week. And the script kept changing every rehearsal, every day.

00:43:56 Speaker_02
we'd want to change a word and there was like a panic because it would destroy their performances. They had done it by memory and they couldn't unlearn it.

00:44:05 Speaker_11
And it's like, I had just finally remembered that line. You look so handsome in your tuxedo.

00:44:12 Speaker_15
How did you get off the wedding cake?

00:44:15 Speaker_09
A clue.

00:44:17 Speaker_15
Jeff, do you ever wear a robe?

00:44:20 Speaker_09
Robes? Well, sure. You know, like when I'm home and relaxing or I'm, you know, not working.

00:44:24 Speaker_15
That's awesome.

00:44:26 Speaker_03
there were other behind-the-scenes problems.

00:44:29 Speaker_03
Clashes with the director, a battle with standards and practices, disastrous run-throughs with the backup dancers, even a still unresolved fight with me and Kay's managers over whether the show was actually called Pink Lady and Jeff or simply Pink Lady.

00:44:44 Speaker_02
So I don't know what the title of the show officially was, honest to God. We just used both titles interchangeably and nobody cared because nobody was watching.

00:44:55 Speaker_03
The show opened in 49th place in the ratings and dropped further with episode two. Critics did not like it, whatever its title was. It was called a dreary exercise and an abomination.

00:45:09 Speaker_03
One reviewer said, I've seen a lot of strange things on television, but I don't recall anything as mystifying as Pink Lady and Jeff. In a letter to the LA Times, a viewer wrote, On December 7, 1941, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.

00:45:25 Speaker_03
On August 6, 1945, the United States bombed Hiroshima. On March 1, 1980, NBC bombed the American TV public. Was the show really that bad? In the annals of Hollywood, there are myriad stories of a film or TV show that is reviled on its initial release.

00:45:50 Speaker_03
Then years later, it's rediscovered and reappraised as a flawed masterpiece. Pink Lady and Jeff is not one of those shows. But some of the sketches do have a certain ragged, weird charm.

00:46:03 Speaker_03
Like a surreal parody of Celebrity Roasts, where Abraham Lincoln gets skewered by John Wilkes Booth, Jefferson Davis, and Mary Todd Lincoln.

00:46:13 Speaker_27
I'm just kidding, baby. But if I were to describe our love life in one sentence, it would have to be, foreplay was seven years ago.

00:46:25 Speaker_03
There are musical sequences I find delightful. Whenever Pink Lady gets to sing and dance, it's very fun. And they have a great band behind them. At the same time, there's also corny jokes that fall flat.

00:46:46 Speaker_03
Some real clunkers of scenes that come across as pretty half-baked. Like a sketch where a stand-up comic on The Tonight Show speaks Japanese. That's the entire joke, I guess? And there are other sketches where the jokes are more than just slapdash.

00:47:15 Speaker_03
Moments of orientalist humor and leering exoticism. The cheesecake hot tub bikini scenes and the yellow face and fake Japanese. It was a different era. This kind of stuff was all over TV. And yet, today, a lot of the show veers into the cringeworthy.

00:47:40 Speaker_03
But that's looking through contemporary eyes. I don't get the sense that me or Kay were bothered by it at the time. And I really don't think that racial or sexist humor is what turned off audiences in 1980.

00:47:52 Speaker_03
Instead, what they couldn't handle was me and Kay speaking accented English.

00:47:56 Speaker_15
Tonight, we have our guest star, Hugh Hefner and the Playmates. And our musical guest, Cheap Trick.

00:48:08 Speaker_08
You know, they were pretty, they danced well, and they were fun to look at. But, you know, when they're mispronouncing some of the words, you know, people at home are sitting there going, hey, Martha, could you go out and get me another beer?

00:48:22 Speaker_06
I can't understand these girls.

00:48:25 Speaker_03
One critic wrote that not only had Mienke not mastered English, they seemed to have scarcely confronted it. Another said that whoever thought they could host an American variety series had to have rocks in his head.

00:48:38 Speaker_03
It didn't matter if the writers were trying to spin the language issues into comedy.

00:48:43 Speaker_15
Everyone asked us strange questions.

00:48:46 Speaker_09
Strange questions like what?

00:48:47 Speaker_15
Like, what did they assign?

00:48:50 Speaker_09
Oh, they're talking about your horoscope.

00:48:52 Speaker_15
Horoscope? Oh, horoscope! We should have told them we are Leos.

00:48:59 Speaker_09
Oh, you're Leos? I thought you girls were Sagittarians.

00:49:02 Speaker_13
We are, but we can't pronounce it.

00:49:06 Speaker_03
Watching these routines, I actually find it pretty remarkable what me and Kay managed to do, considering. If you thrust me onto Japanese TV, I could only dream of doing so well. But audiences were not going to grade Pink Lady on a curve.

00:49:21 Speaker_03
They expected them to be like standard American variety stars. But me and Kay were not standard American variety stars. And that's why NBC had brought them over. Because they were huge Japanese pop stars. Because Pink Lady was exceptional.

00:49:37 Speaker_03
But then the network had forced them into the familiar American variety show host template. It was like NBC chickened out or completely missed the point of what had made Pink Lady stars to begin with.

00:49:49 Speaker_03
They didn't even allow them to perform their own hit songs.

00:49:53 Speaker_02
It was absolutely forbidden for them to sing in Japanese.

00:49:56 Speaker_08
They were just, you know, covering exclusively American music.

00:50:07 Speaker_02
If we could have just let them go up there and sing the songs they knew and do the choreography they knew, the kind of stuff that filled stadiums in Japan, there would have been a comfort level there.

00:50:18 Speaker_03
Under immense pressure from the producers and Jeff, the network eventually relented somewhat. Pink Lady got to perform a total of two Japanese songs in some later episodes, their highlights of the whole series. But it was too late.

00:50:32 Speaker_03
The viewing audience had already turned on them.

00:50:35 Speaker_02
I felt sorry for Pink Lady. I felt sorry for me and Kay. They were being worked beyond their capabilities. We felt terrible putting them in this situation, but there seemed to be no way to course correct this mistake that had been made.

00:50:48 Speaker_03
As the weeks went on, being in America seemed to be having an effect on me and Kay.

00:50:53 Speaker_02
They were on permanent jet lag every moment they were in America. They were literally, and I'm not exaggerating, falling asleep in the rehearsal hall.

00:51:01 Speaker_08
Just being in a studio in America for 12 hours a day trying to learn English was depressing. And so from time to time, you would see Kay crying. It was rough.

00:51:18 Speaker_03
Kay told me she was upset, but it wasn't simple homesickness or the condescending jokes or the workload. Again, to Pink Lady, Hollywood was practically a quiet refuge in comparison to the frenzy of Japanese stardom. And that was the issue.

00:51:36 Speaker_03
Being in America gave Kay an opportunity to pause and reflect on the entirety of the past three years of fame, which had been going full speed since she was a teenager.

00:51:47 Speaker_03
And it was finally dawning on her just how unrelenting and unsustainable it all was.

00:51:56 Speaker_10
Pink Lady had shot up in the world like a rocket, all the way to the moon. But there was another me, the me that was still there, with her feet on the ground, and it was like I had a bird's eye view of her or something.

00:52:13 Speaker_10
Every time I stood on stage, it felt like my heart was going to leap out of my mouth and I was going to forget the words, screw up the choreography. It was an intense way to live. I didn't have time to eat or sleep. It was concert after concert.

00:52:30 Speaker_10
It was really, I don't know, my nerves just got ground down over time.

00:52:36 Speaker_03
Kay had virtually no control over her career. Pink Lady's production company decided everything, and pocketed the bulk of the millions in revenue they generated. She just had to perform where she was told in exchange for a salary.

00:52:49 Speaker_03
That's how the Japanese music industry worked. Kay had been trying to tell her management that things needed to improve, her schedule, her life. But nothing was getting better. Meanwhile, the numbers for Pink Lady and Jeff were getting worse and worse.

00:53:04 Speaker_03
The show had dropped to 66th place out of 69 in the ratings.

00:53:08 Speaker_08
And when I saw them start to plummet, you knew something was not right.

00:53:13 Speaker_04
It was awful.

00:53:14 Speaker_08
Producer Sid Croft again.

00:53:16 Speaker_04
It was, you know, it was just a show that didn't have an edge to it or anything.

00:53:23 Speaker_03
So how did Pink Lady and Jeff come to an end then?

00:53:25 Speaker_04
Well, they got canceled.

00:53:29 Speaker_08
On the fifth show, we got the call. I'm sorry, but we've canceled your show. See ya.

00:53:35 Speaker_03
NBC didn't even bother airing the sixth episode, which they'd already taped. You know, it was just, it was awful. Was there ever a moment of you feeling like this was your chance and it was blown, like you'll never get this opportunity again?

00:53:49 Speaker_08
Yes, I did. I thought to myself, here I am starring in an hour variety show on a network. Surely fame is headed my way. Well, it wasn't on long enough for that to have happened, and there were no offers coming in after that.

00:54:07 Speaker_03
Jeff never got the opportunity to host his own show again. But he did make his way back to TV, becoming a fixture on the late-night talk circuit. His career recovered, but the reputation of Pink Lady and Jeff never did.

00:54:21 Speaker_03
In 2002, TV Guide featured it as one of the 50 worst shows in television history. You know, I'm proud of that. Do you think that's fair? Do you think it's one of the worst television shows of all time?

00:54:34 Speaker_04
Yeah. You do? Well, can you name some others?

00:54:38 Speaker_02
Well, I think that reputation is held by a lot of people who never saw the show and who just heard, oh, they put two girls who couldn't speak English on TV. That deserves to be the worst show ever, just for that reason alone.

00:54:53 Speaker_03
Pink Lady and Jeff isn't good. But being cringy or corny and dated doesn't actually make it different from most other variety shows of the era, including the successful ones, including Donnie and Marie.

00:55:09 Speaker_25
A few weeks ago, I made a birdcage disappear.

00:55:12 Speaker_24
Donnie's very good at making things disappear, like my hairspray and my nail file. And where's my comb?

00:55:19 Speaker_25
Cute Marie.

00:55:20 Speaker_03
And I think people in 1980 were picking up on that. There's a reason that after the failure of Pink Lady and Jeff, the entire genre of the variety show essentially went extinct.

00:55:31 Speaker_03
Not only was NBC imposing a format on Pink Lady that didn't work for them, it was a format that audiences didn't want at all anymore.

00:55:40 Speaker_08
I didn't see the change in television that was happening. Between SNL and Letterman, there was a completely different way of looking at television, kind of laughing at the old standards that had come before.

00:55:56 Speaker_08
And the variety show was being left, I think, in the dust. It just had run its course.

00:56:02 Speaker_03
SNL, which was also on NBC, even parodied Pink Lady and Jeff, bizarrely replacing Jeff Altman with the astronomer Carl Sagan.

00:56:10 Speaker_22
Now, this big bang theory of the universe is the one that's most popular with scientists right now.

00:56:16 Speaker_27
Oh, yes. Carl, we have that in Japan.

00:56:20 Speaker_22
You do?

00:56:21 Speaker_27
Sure. That's what happens when a bullet train hit a dachshund.

00:56:26 Speaker_03
Well, maybe SNL hasn't aged that well either. I asked me and Kay about what went wrong with Pink Lady and Jeff, and their answers really surprised me. Both of them seemed genuinely unaware that the show has a bad reputation at all.

00:56:47 Speaker_10
I don't really know the answer to that. I heard that the ratings were really good in America. So when you're saying that it didn't become a big hit, is that different from the TV ratings?

00:57:02 Speaker_11
Yeah, I hadn't heard anything about the reception being poor.

00:57:06 Speaker_03
I don't think the explanation for this is that they're naive or sheltered. I mean, if they'd had a flop in Japan, they would have known. It's that their American TV show was a curiosity for them, a one-time challenge they'd pulled off.

00:57:20 Speaker_03
And now they were as ready to move on from it as NBC. In fact, me has a very different understanding of how the show came to an end.

00:57:31 Speaker_11
Well, we were the ones who canceled the show. We weren't told that the show was canceled. We decided against doing more episodes. So I think the show was a success.

00:57:42 Speaker_03
Me and Kay had always dreamed of making it in America. It did have significance to them. But the United States is not the center of the cultural universe. It just wasn't worth it to them to continue.

00:57:54 Speaker_03
Especially when their real careers, their Japanese careers, needed attention. The truth is that the Pink Lady boom in Japan had already peaked before they even left for America. They'd never been critical darlings.

00:58:08 Speaker_03
But now their singles were charting lower and lower. They got caught in a scandal involving a declined invitation to an important televised event, and the media was turning against them as a result.

00:58:20 Speaker_03
All of this was on their minds when they were preoccupied on set. And when they returned to Japan, the decline accelerated.

00:58:29 Speaker_11
Unfortunately, Japan took us disappearing at that time as something like us throwing Japan in the garbage bin. When we got back, the bashing and criticism of Pink Lady was really intense.

00:58:42 Speaker_03
It all took its toll. Five months after the Pink Lady and Jeff show ended, me and Kay announced their breakup. They closed things out with one final concert in the rain in March 1981.

00:59:02 Speaker_13
But now that I think about it,

00:59:08 Speaker_03
If she could do it all over again, Kei would have loved to wait to come to America after learning English better.

00:59:14 Speaker_03
But she also loves the Japanese language, loves its beauty, and she sees no reason why music can't reach people even when they don't understand the words. And Kei's right. It turns out that Pink Lady was decades ahead of its time.

00:59:28 Speaker_03
Today, the English language does not hold a monopoly on global pop stardom. There is an enormous audience worldwide for entertainment from Japan,

00:59:37 Speaker_03
in Hong Kong and South Korea, groups like BTS have achieved exactly the crossover dominance that NBC had hoped for. Me and Kei continue to have solo careers in Japan, and they've reunited as Pink Lady several times over the past four decades.

01:00:00 Speaker_03
Because audiences still want to see their synchronized dance moves, still want to hear their catchy confections. Because it doesn't matter where you're listening from. A perfect pop song is still a perfect pop song.

01:00:28 Speaker_03
This is Decoder Ring, I'm Evan Chung.

01:00:31 Speaker_23
And I'm Willa Paskin. There's so much more we could tell you about Pink Lady that we didn't have time for. So luckily we have a special Decoder Ring bonus episode for Slate Plus members that's going to do just that.

01:00:44 Speaker_23
It's a conversation Evan had with Patrick Galbraith, an anthropologist based in Tokyo who studies what's known as Japanese idol culture. Pink Lady helped define that culture, and it's still going strong.

01:00:56 Speaker_23
They're a fascinating category of Japanese celebrity that's been around since the 1960s. And though idols have no exact Western equivalent, they have an extraordinary resonance with contemporary influencers and fan culture.

01:01:11 Speaker_26
Idols are not synonymous with pop stars because an idol is supposed to be what's called Toshindai, supposed to be human-sized. So the human-sized performer becomes approachable, relatable, accessible.

01:01:24 Speaker_26
They're kind of based on this principle that they appeal directly to the audience for support. If you like my song, if you like my band, please support me, buy the CD. It's a phenomenon that's marked by intimacy.

01:01:38 Speaker_23
You can listen to this fascinating conversation by signing up for Slate Plus.

01:01:42 Speaker_23
If you are already a Slate Plus member, you can subscribe now on Apple Podcasts by clicking Try Free at the top of the Decoder Ring show page, or visit slate.com slash decoder plus to get access wherever you listen.

01:01:57 Speaker_23
We're going to be releasing bonus episodes regularly, including answers to mailbag questions, so please sign up now.

01:02:04 Speaker_23
Don't forget Slate Plus members also get to listen to our show and every other Slate podcast without any ads, and you get unlimited access to Slate's website.

01:02:13 Speaker_23
Again, you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts by clicking try free or visit slate.com slash decoder plus to sign up. If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, please email us at DecoderRing at Slate.com.

01:02:28 Speaker_23
This episode was written and produced by Evan Chung. It was edited by me. Our translator was Eric Margolis. Decoder Ring is produced by me, Evan, Max Friedman, and Katie Shepard, with help from Sophie Codner. Derek John is executive producer.

01:02:43 Speaker_23
Merrick Jacob is senior technical director. Special thanks to Kelly Killian, Lorne Frohman, Roby Gorin, Michael Lloyd, Shana Roth, Karen Fjellman, Cole Del Charco, and Hannah Ares.

01:02:56 Speaker_23
If you haven't yet, please subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends. We'll see you in two weeks.

01:03:08 Speaker_08
Quick story, so I'm sitting in Marty Kroff's office, and I don't know how he got into the studio. A guy walks into his office and says, you know, put me on the show, put me on the show. I do great bird impressions.

01:03:22 Speaker_08
And Marty says, we just don't need any people who do bird impressions. And the guy said, you don't understand. I do tremendous bird impressions. I'm really, really terrific at this. And Marty said to him, well,

01:03:37 Speaker_08
I don't need anybody who does bird impressions, I'm sorry. And the guy says, listen, you don't understand, Mr. Croft, I do the best bird impressions in the world. And Marty said, I'm sorry, I can't help you.

01:03:49 Speaker_08
And the guy said, okay, and flew out the window.

01:03:55 Speaker_23
This episode is brought to you by Saks.com. There's joy in finding the perfect gift for the ones you love, but it can be a challenge. Saks.com's holiday gift guide makes it easy.

01:04:07 Speaker_23
Whether you're surprising your hard-to-shop-for sister with a Chloe bracelet bag or gifting your partner a memorable scent from Gucci, at Saks.com there's holiday inspiration for every personality on your list.

01:04:20 Speaker_23
Zacks.com does make it really easy to find inspiration. I was just on their site and like they say it is organized like a gift guide.

01:04:27 Speaker_23
They have all sorts of fun categories like cozy weekend vibes and weekend uniforms and kids pick that curate whole looks for you or your loved ones. Saks.com's hand-picked guide can help take the stress out of the holidays.

01:04:41 Speaker_23
Add instant cheer to your home with some bright decor or bundle up in a scarf coat from Totem to stay warm all season long. Find gifts guaranteed to bring joy to everyone this holiday season at Saks.com.

01:04:56 Speaker_23
That's Saks.com for the ultimate holiday gift guide and all the shopping inspiration you need.