Fantasy Casting: Bewitched 2014

[the G-man]

It was the 60s, who wasn’t?

As I said, Darrin seemed bad even by those standards

 

[Guy Gardener]

Honestly, I'd rather have a reboot with a more open minded Darrin. My mom pointed out recently, that if you think about it Darrin is kind of a prejudiced ass, he basically forces Samantha to deny a huge part of her identity.
I think a new version, with a more modern approach to the Stephens' relationship could be a lot of fun.

Your mum is smart, but Endora said as much almost every episode.

Picture in you mind that Samatha was instead an African American lady passing for white, and Darrin was doing his best to make sure that the house was not burnt down and the family lynched, by their neighbors who were not cool with with black people not knowing their place.

 

[Nerys Myk]

As I said, Darrin seemed bad even by those standards

By tv character standards? It seemed everyone was drinking back then. We’ll, maybe not Andy Taylor.

 

[Christopher]

By tv character standards? It seemed everyone was drinking back then. We’ll, maybe not Andy Taylor.

That's why, in "The Deadly Years," the computer said that the senile, deteriorating Captain Kirk had a physical age "between 60 and 72," when in real life Shatner is more robust than that at 91. All the heavy drinking and smoking and air pollution back then aged people prematurely, and they thought it was normal.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

Your mum is smart, but Endora said as much almost every episode.

That's what I had pointed out about Sam's father (Maurice); he--and just about every witch & warlock wver seen on the series (with the exception of Aunt Clara and Esmeralda) were relentless with their hateful comments about Darrin and mortals overall. Darrin was powerless to really do anything to stop or offset it, save for a very few random episodes where he had to use either an amulet (to make Endora treat him kindly), or the help of another witch, but as always, he would spend most of his time as the target of constant, anti-human slurs.

 

[Mudd]

People did not "age prematurely" at those rates in the 1960s - that's absurdly unobservant and poorly thought out, especially using Shatner at 91 as an example of what may be reasonably expected now.

You're actually positing that there's been a twenty to twenty-five year lengthening of the robust, healthy life expectancy of someone in the West over a period of fifty-odd years, and then attributing that (non-existent) difference to lifestyle choices and "pollution."

If one really oversimplified and abused statistics, one could argue - rather desperately - for an increase among men of about half that.

Your second-hand notions of how extremely different those choices and environmental conditions were is ridiculously exaggerated.

And you're trying to explain a line of dialogue in a TV teleplay on the basis of assumed information about that era that's just absurd to anyone who lived through it.

If any likely explanation for the silly piece of dialogue is required

Spoiler

It's really not,

it's more likely just that the plot demanded that Kirk be senile, but Shatner (as reported) was unwilling to be made up nearly as heavily as Doohan and Kelley so they fudged the dialogue.

 

[the G-man]

By tv character standards? It seemed everyone was drinking back then. We’ll, maybe not Andy Taylor.

Not everyone on the shows I watched was doing three martini lunches followed by a pitcher of ‘em upon arrival home.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Not everyone on the shows I watched was doing three martini lunches followed by a pitcher of ‘em upon arrival home.

I'm mostly just joking about the attitudes towards alcohol in 60s sitcoms. I literally grew up in the 60s (born in 1959) so I saw a lot of those shows first run.

 

[Maurice]

“People aged faster” is mostly “our generations are so much better than previous ones” self-congratulatory crap. A lot what we perceive about people looking older at the same age in the past is fashion. People dressed and groomed more formally in the past, and hair and makeup styles then look antiquated now. I was just looking at slides taken in 1959–60 and once you see people in swim trunks or casual wear “with their hair down” a lot of them look a lot younger. Perception isn’t necessarily reality FFS.

 

[Maurice]

If two actors are going to be playing enemies on a regular basis, it's probably best if they are good friends in real life, with a lot of mutual trust so that they feel comfortable enough not to hold back on playing the enmity.

Nope. Anyone who’s actually worked on a set or with professional actors—which you haven’t as far as I can tell—has seen how some of them can be ice cold with each other until “magic time” and they switch on. The inverse is also true. What’s important is trust that the other actor is going to behave professionally. Actors are individuals of course, and the interactions between any two runs the full spectrum of human behavior.

 

[Christopher]

“People aged faster” is mostly “our generations are so much better than previous ones” self-congratulatory crap.

You completely missed my point. I wasn't saying it was fact, I was saying it was the perception at the time, as evidenced by "The Deadly Years." The culture assumed that people would be decrepit and near death in their sixties or early seventies, because it was common enough to influence perceptions.

I mean, I come from a family whose members usually make it to their 80s or 90s. My paternal grandmother was born before 1900 and died at 93. My father and his siblings were of the same generation as William Shatner or older, and though my father only made it to 77 thanks to Parkinson's, all three of his older siblings outlived him, and his sister is still with us. So I certainly don't need it explained to me that people could live long lives. But you can't deny that "The Deadly Years"' "age sixty to seventy-two" line is laughable by modern understandings of longevity. Clearly the perceptions were different then.

Nope. Anyone who’s actually worked on a set or with professional actors—which you haven’t as far as I can tell—has seen how some of them can be ice cold with each other until “magic time” and they switch on. The inverse is also true.

Again, not at all what I meant. I said it would probably help, not that it was absolutely required.

 

[Mudd]

I wasn't saying it was fact, I was saying it was the perception at the time, as evidenced by "The Deadly Years."

That's an untruth. In fact, you said both:

All the heavy drinking and smoking and air pollution back then aged people prematurely, and they thought it was normal.

What people are rightly taking issue with are your erroneous claims about the differences in human aging over the last several decades - issues of fact. That you used untrue assertions about factual matters to support a superficial opinion about how people in an era you didn't experience supposedly perceived what they saw in a given Star Trek episode as they watched it is beside the point.

That you offer an episode of a skiffy TV show as substantial evidence of "the perception of the time" is, frankly, silly.